5 time card problems the best timesheet software companies can solve

You’re looking for the best timesheet software company to help you master workforce management. But what makes a timesheet solution “the best”?

All kinds of organisations use timesheets: construction companies, manufacturers, non-profits, big companies and small ones. But in our experience, the best solution is the one that solves your unique challenges. It’s a little bit different for everyone.

So, let’s try a new angle on this topic – one that puts your needs at the centre.

In this post, we’re going to list some of the biggest challenges that companies like yours face when handling employee timesheets. Then, we’re going to highlight the benefits you should be looking for when comparing the best timesheet software companies.

You’ll learn what’s possible when you partner with the best timesheet software companies – like Rotageek – and what you need from your new solution. Let’s look at these challenges.

1. Cutting out payroll mistakes

Does any other business function demand accuracy like payroll does? Get payroll wrong and suddenly you have an accounting problem, an employee happiness problem, and maybe even an attendance problem.

You know you’re working with one of the best timesheet software companies when they help you…

• Stop relying on written time cards. Automating your timesheets is the answer. Because automation takes away the risk of manual errors and saves your team's time.
• Base payroll on digital attendance records, not written records that can be forgotten or recorded incorrectly. Your ideal timesheet software solution should integrate seamlessly with your payroll software, even if they’re made by different companies.

Audit your timesheets to spot payroll mistakes before they become a problem. The best timesheet software solutions, including Rotageek, audit your timesheets for you.

2. Getting labour costs exactly right – by getting timekeeping right

Paper or digital, timesheets are an irreplaceable tool for any business that needs to track and schedule working hours.

The problem is: timesheets that employees fill by hand, whether using a pen or keyboard, are often less than 100% accurate. They’re prone to mistakes, and those mistakes can cost you or your staff money by causing overpayment or underpayment issues.

The best timekeeping software verifies when employees have clocked in or out, and it can do it in a variety of ways:

• Photo capture
• Geo-location data
• Use of biometric data

Rotageek supports all these methods, and even provides a handy mobile app to make things easy for your employees and managers.

3. Not relying on guesswork for labour demand forecasts

Labour demand forecasting is super-important to get right, because when you get it wrong you’re either understaffed or paying wages you didn’t need to.

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses are still relying on guesswork, intuition, and experience to forecast labour demand for the next week or month. How often do you think they get it perfect? Unless it’s 100% of the time (and it isn’t), they’re losing money.

The best timesheet software companies put your data to work. They capture data on customer demand – automatically – and use it to forecast labour to fit future demand – also automatically.

In the case of Rotageek, this data-driven approach is proven to save you up to 8% on labour spend.

4. Handling absence and other unplanned events

Timesheets and rotas are easy when all your staff are available, and everyone clocks in and out when you expect them to. When staff go off sick, request leave, or are absent for other reasons, that’s when the best-designed timesheet gets messy.

Suddenly, you’ve questions to answer. How do you handle leave requests? Can you easily check whether staff have leave left to take? How do you adjust your schedule in time? How do you find other staff to fill in for absentees, and let them know in time?

The best timesheet software has really smart answers to these questions. (We call it smart workforce scheduling for a reason.) In the case of Rotageek, you can simply…

• Make it easy for staff to report absence or request leave, with the Rotageek mobile app
• See worker’s remaining leave allowance when they make a request, and easily respond. Staff can check their own leave allowance, too.
• Easily find someone to cover shifts – it takes a few clicks, and Rotageek handles the communications side of things
• Receive absence insights that alert you to absence management issues

If all this sounds useful, you can learn more on our Leave & Absence Management solution page.

5. Taking away timesheet pain

If you’re still using a spreadsheet, or any old-fashioned staff timesheet or timecard solution, your biggest challenge could be to modernise and leave all of its irritations behind.

You might be in this boat if your company’s timekeeping process looks like this:

1. Prepare the week’s timesheets or timecards
2. Workers and/or managers fill timesheets in by hand
3. Managers check timesheets several times per week and chase staff for missing info
4. Admin staff input timesheet data so it can be used by other departments
5. Multiple staff members check and process data for payroll and compliance

Software can take most of this hassle away. With Rotageek, for example, you can remind staff when they need to clock in or out, and you can use rules to automate payroll and compliance. And once we’ve helped you set it up, you’re done with tedious timesheets.

Want to learn more about transforming your timesheets?

It can be a wrench to transform systems you’ve relied on for a long time. Even though timesheet solutions like Rotageek are proven to save time and money, it’s hard to take the leap and transform.

That’s why we’ve prepared a guide to the risks and rewards of timesheet software, to help companies like yours see past common misconceptions and make an informed choice. If you’d like to learn more, click below.

Read “6 misconceptions of implementing employee scheduling software”