Why Contractors Automate Time and Attendance

WHY CONTRACTORS AUTOMATE TIME AND ATTENDANCE

FROM A LEADER IN WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

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WHY CONTRACTORS AUTOMATE TIME AND ATTENDANCE

INTRODUCTION Labor costs are the largest controllable expense for most contractors. Contractors seeking to manage their workforce and track services effectively are increasingly turning to automated time and attendance solutions. Automated systems enable contractors to reduce costs related to staffing, compliance, billing, and payroll.

Key differences in solution and functionality will cause benefits to vary. To maximize the benefits of an automated time and attendance solution, contractors need to consider the following:

AUTOMATION Complete automation of the workforce management process — including scheduling, timekeeping, attendance, and leave management — enables contractors to increase visibility into and control of labor costs and mitigate compliance risk.

MITC provides real-time validation and processing to increase accuracy and simplify work for managers.

INTEGRATION Traditional systems often restrict data to different departments or programs (e.g., schedules, timesheets, HR, payroll, financials or other systems) with little or no real-time integration. This delays workforce management processes and leaves them prone to error. Costly validation efforts, unmanaged employee absences, inaccurate or late payroll or billing, and a general lack of management oversight and control can result. These

“Traditional systems often restrict data to different departments or programs with little or no real-time integration. This delays workforce management processes and leaves them prone to error.”

COST OF OWNERSHIP The degree to which a time and attendance system meets or exceeds the needs of a contractor has a direct impact on the cost of deploying the system and maintaining it over time. MITC is a flexible, modular contractor time and attendance solution that enables contractors to keep pace with ever evolving needs to keep costs low and ensure that the workforce management process is accurate, efficient, and compliant.

error-prone un-integrated systems lead to increased costs,

MITC is designed for contractors. Its ease of use means that ther

compliance issues, and the inability to respond quickly to

eis no need for contractors to make significant investments of

changing conditions. Implementing an integrated MITC

time or money to train managers to use the system. Managers

solution can eliminate such workforce management issues to

can quickly be trained on MITC because the system is easy,

improve a contractor’s administrative operations and its overall

intuitive, and deployed “out of the box” for contractors. From

performance.

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WHY CONTRACTORS AUTOMATE TIME AND ATTENDANCE having no system to moving over to MITC, the ROI payback

legal consequences associated with those errors) and improves

period can be less than six months.

productivity.

For many contractors, if workforce management processes

MITC is designed to work with existing systems by integrating

for scheduling, timekeeping, and absence management

with HR, payroll, billing, finance, and other applications. Data

exist independently and/or disconnected from payroll and

collection can be carried out through telephone, time data

HR processes. Typically with contractors, the payroll or HR

terminals, or internet.

department has primary responsibility for handling workforce management processes, often using manual, paper-based

CONFIGURABILITY AND FLEXIBILITY

processes or legacy software.

MITC is modular and configurable. MITC can accommodate a contractor’s unique and changing requirements. This can reduce training needs, support costs, and implementation

“MITC is designed for contractors to be easy to use, intuitive, and deployed ‘out of the box.’”

headaches. MITC helps ensure consistency and ongoing support as contractor-specific upgrades are applied.

MITC solutions are designed to reduce the time, effort, and costs managers expend on the basic administration of scheduling, documentation and tracking employees. Using real-time information provides the mean to control costs and manage employees better.

INTEGRATION ACROSS PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS MITC enables automation and integration among timekeeping, absence

management,

and

scheduling/labor

tracking

applications, and it works with existing payroll and financial systems.

Manually entering time and attendance data for employee payroll or billing purposes is by its very nature an error-prone process.

MITC eliminates manual entry of timekeeping and billing data, as well as manual validation of entries for errors and discrepancies. It thereby eliminates errors (and the potential

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MITC is highly affordable. MITC can be cost-effectively deployed at a small contractor, perhaps identifying one program where problems are particularly acute and payback is most obvious. It can also be used across all jobs at a large contractor, providing a completely integrated time and attendance, scheduling, workforce management, HR, and payroll solution.

MITC helps contractors get a better handle on overtime.

Accuracy and control are always lacking with manual processes.

MITC tightens labor tracking so that contractors have better control. Paper-based systems are very inefficient. Employees often record their own hours on paper, supervisors sign the paper and hand it over to a payroll clerk who collects all such documents and may then enter the data onto a separate timesheet or spreadsheet. Days can be spent just entering the data into payroll or billing.

Manual systems are marked by inaccurate pay and billing; inconsistent policy enforcement in areas such as pay differentials, holiday pay, and PTO accruals; and an inability to identify where overtime really occurred. If a query arises, hours can be wasted recreating this same information.

MITC can record employee attendance at multiple jobs and pay

“Manual systems are marked by inaccurate pay; inconsistent policy enforcement in areas such as pay differentials, holiday pay and PTO accruals; and an inability to identify where overtime really occurred.�

differentials. MITC integrates with existing systems, reducing the data entry of timecard information from days to minutes.

Supervisors have immediate access to time recording and labor tracking. Contractors can see where money is being spent for labor and overtime, who is approving it, how it is happening,

and more using Managers Mobile Work Center.

Those managers who used to be responsible for collecting timecards are able to spend their time on higher-level tasks.

and who is using sick and vacation time.

REAL-TIME DATA COLLECTION

Managers will now have much more information at their

Real-time data collection means immediate validation of all

disposal. This access to information helps managers identify

time entry. This can prevent problems such as unnecessary

problems and take corrective action before they snowball

or unplanned overtime, overlapping shifts, missed billing and

into larger issues such as the need to correct payroll checks.

unauthorized attendance. Avoiding these types of problems

The information made available through MITC enables the

dramatically reduces the need to make corrections later and

contractor to enforce many workforce rules that were not

helps ensure accurate payroll processing.

applied consistently.

Ideally, MITC time and attendance is fully integrated into the

Managers can access MITC from anywhere, any time using

workforce management process to enable employee self-

any internet-enabled device, such as a smartphone. Managers

service. Self-service provides employees access to telephone

can check attendance at any job, quickly fill open positions by

voice messages, PC text messages and their own timesheets.

searching the database for available and qualified employees,

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WHY CONTRACTORS AUTOMATE TIME AND ATTENDANCE It allows them to submit PTO requests and receive training and other HR-related alerts.

Schedule

prompting

EASE OF USE By enabling employees and managers to enter data and review

helps

reduce

absenteeism

by

information easily via an intuitive user interface, MITC speeds

automatically reminding employees of their next shift by text

accurate data collection, facilitates employee self-service, and

or email, and can even include helpful work instructions.

lightens managers’ administrative burdens. In addition, MITC is

By enhancing visibility of data in real time, MITC enables

designed for contractors, easy to use, and more engaging for

managers to make better decisions regarding scheduling,

all employees.

managing absences, ensuring payroll and billing accuracy, and

MITC can help contractors eliminate manual intervention,

ultimately controlling costs. In addition, real-time processing

reduce fraud, and increase payroll and billing accuracy. These

can eliminate validation efforts that are typically conducted well

issues typically arise when the timekeeping processes are

after the fact.

largely manual and nonintegrated. Ultimately, such benefits

If an employee fails to show up, MITC can notify management

result in bottom-line benefits to the contractor, including

within five minutes of the shift start that an employee has not

reduced costs, increased productivity, and better compliance.

clocked in. This kind of real-time notification allows managers to take appropriate action quickly rather than react to a complaint well after the fact. In addition, check call systems can be deployed to ensure staff at 24 x 7 locations stay awake and onsite.

Using real-time data, MITC even provides advance warning of potential problems, such as an employee approaching overtime or ACA entitlement, in need of training or license

“Self-service provides employees access to telephone voice messages, PC text messages and their own timesheets.”

renewal, and more. MITC eliminates the need to use reports, manual emails, and to-do lists. MITC scans your database in search of discrepancies and changes. When a discrepancy or change is identified, it sends an alert via text or email to the manager assigned to that employee or job.

Delivering real-time voice messages and alerts to staff by telephone or PC when they clock in helps improves communication with multiple remote locations, and eliminates the need for multiple efforts by managers to communicate customer requests to hard-to-contact employees.

Many contractors are hampered by manual and non-integrated processes that restrict insight into workforce management. MITC real-time integrated automation offers a number of benefits, including more efficient processes, ease of matching labor to work to optimize use of resources, reduced human intervention to minimize errors and improve administrative productivity, and increased compliance.

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MITC offers an integrated solution with products for scheduling, absence management, time and attendance, labor management, human resource management, and data collection devices.

CONCLUSION Workforce resources are a strategic asset. Even in a down economy with high unemployment, contractors have to manage these resources wisely.

MITC provides complete automation and offers contractors a “single source of truth� for employee data. The modules are designed to eliminate redundant data entry and consequently reduce errors and administrative costs. By providing centralized

Contractors that use MITC to efficiently and effectively manage their workforce can achieve real benefits in terms of cost savings, increased billing, productivity gains, compliance efforts, and

and integrated tools that collect data in real time, MITC aims

alignment between employees and company goals.

to reduce costs and improve productivity related to workforce

MITC is designed to offer automation, ease of use, integration

administration tasks.

with existing HR, payroll, billing and financial systems, and realtime data processing for quick validation.

MITC has the following capabilities: Time and attendance applications that enable the elimination of paper-based systems

Automatic application of policies regarding overtime, differentials, holidays, etc.

Electronic timecard edits and automatic recalculation to facilitate correct payments Scheduling applications

Automate eligibility requirements for paid and unpaid leave Manager alerts for exceptions and potential violations Capture billing and accounting

ABOUT MITC MITC provides modular workforce management solutions and services to support all the needs of contractors — time and attendance, advanced employee scheduling, payroll rules and reporting engine, workforce analytics, payroll and billing integration, and more. For 25 years, MITC has grown to serve over 1,500 organizations (with anywhere form 5 to 10,000 employees) in the USA, the UK , Africa, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. They have selected MITC to help control costs, save time, improve productivity and ensure compliance.

Visit www.mitcsoftware.com to learn more.

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