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The Problem with Manual Time Tracking

Written by Liam Roberge | Mar 7, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Chances are pretty good that your daily life looks nothing like it did a few decades ago. Your alarm is on your smartphone, not a clock by your bed. You ask your favorite conversational AI bot what the weather is going to be for the day. You scroll the daily news on your tablet; you don't ever pick up the newspaper. Driving to work, your car tells you the fastest route and exactly how many miles you can go before you need to stop for gas. Maybe your vehicle doesn't even use gas at all! With all of these tech advancements making your daily life so much easier, why would you still work the same way you did years ago?

For scheduling managers, the stark contrast between today's convenient tech advancements and how they do their job couldn't be more clear. Perhaps this applies to you. How much time does manually scheduling cost you? Most managers tell us that they spend eight or 10 hours creating work schedules each week. That's almost 25% of your time, a full quarter! In the average year, that's over 60 days spent creating schedules.

Common Issues That Result From Manual Time Tracking

For far too many companies, manual time tracking is still the standard. Just because something is "the way I've always done it" doesn't mean it's the right way to continue to do it. Manually tracking time and schedules is incredibly time consuming.

When you're stuck using manual time tracking, you're more than likely facing common hurdles such as longer reconciliation time, forced timecard adjustments, re-issuance of checks, and more. A few of the most damaging problems include:

Errors and Inaccuracies

Manual time tracking has a high probability of being inaccurate. A number of data entry errors can lead to inaccurate payments, discrepancies in hours worked, payroll calculation gaps, and other frustrating issues.

These inaccuracies lead to a tremendous amount of wasted resources for the company and lost productivity for you. Manual data entry is a time-consuming and expensive process on its own, and then when you count the time and effort necessary to correct errors it's even worse.

With the proper employee shift scheduling software in place, you no longer have to worry about expensive and time-consuming manual data entry errors. When it’s time to process payroll, you can quickly sync the data. The number of errors incurred will still be significantly reduced.

Labor Law and Other Violations

You'd never break the law on purpose, but mistakes happen when you're doing all the work manually. It is essential that you are correctly tracking employee breaks and lunches, as well as accurately scheduling the total hours worked.

If a company fails to account for hours properly worked or improperly records overtime hours as regular hours, even by mistake, this can lead to severe violations. By accurately logging your team's time spent working, on break, or on a vacation day, you're able to remain labor law compliant.

The right software makes your schedule more accurate. As well, if there do happen to be any discrepancies, they can be easily handled via access to historical data. It's one less thing for you to worry about!

Overtime Costs

No matter your industry, time is money. If you make a mistake and schedule a staff member to work more than 40 hours, your payroll is going to be off for the pay period. It's impossible to stick to a budget if some team members are randomly making "time and a half."

Of course, this assumes your employees are even willing to work overtime in the first place. Studies show us that high overtime rates also correlate to high turnover rates. It is true that some like having the extra pay, but not all do. It leads to a plethora of issues, including inner fighting among team members. Too much overtime can leave your employees feeling overworked, which leads to low morale across the board. It's difficult to maintain high retention rates if employees are randomly scheduled for overtime without their knowledge or consent.

It's easy to see how employee shift scheduling software could help alleviate this burden. If you want to, you are able to create your shifts first and then let employees pick up what they can work. Simply use the software to create your shift template, generate the schedule, and publish it. They'll receive a notification that they have shifts available to be picked up. Your job is done!

How Employee Shift Scheduling Software from SubItUp Can Help

SubItUp offers a variety of different solutions, depending on what your exact problems are. Are you bogged down with the repetitive nature of manually scheduling your employees? You'll be amazed at auto-generated scheduling. SubItUp adds speed and accuracy to your employee scheduling process.

In fact, SubItUp saves the average user 80-85% of their time creating schedules. Many scheduling managers that were spending up to 10 hours now spend two hours or less. This is because we work hard to understand how you schedule your team. We find ways to improve your unique routine and then wrap SubItUp's workforce tools around you and your team! Our scheduling templates to do things faster, plus you're able to eliminate frustrating back-and-forth because Social Scheduling™ lets employees resolve coverage problems.

Teams everywhere choose SubItUp to make work life better! Our software keeps over 46,000 employees scheduled daily. Whether you work in higher education, healthcare, or just about any other industry, your shift scheduling can be made easier through the right employee shift scheduling software. In fact, SubItUp offers 300 different methods of scheduling, to ensure you find the solution that is just right for your unique needs.

Are you ready to learn more about what SubItUp can do for you? Schedule a consultation and let's talk about outcomes together.