Time and Attendance

Do you have a time and attendance system installed at your place of work? A traditional punch clock? Or are you still hand writing timeslips… or worse yet, not recording employee time at all?

If you haven’t installed a time clock or time tracking software, why not?

Photo by Joshua Davis

Penny Wise

I was talking recently with a friend of mine, a small business owner. I know he computes his payroll using the “consistent hope” method. (In other words, he doesn’t track employee time; rather, he just consistently pays everybody for 40 hours a week and hopes for the best.)

Since I work for a time and attendance company, I was curious as to why he hasn’t set up some kind of formal time tracking system. So I asked.

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Photo Credit: R.K. Richardson

Many time and attendance software packages and programmable clocks offer the option of configuring automatic meal break deductions. At first blush, it sounds tempting. No more worries about employees forgetting to clock in and out at their lunch break period. Everything gets taken care of “automatically,” untouched by human hands. So let’s all go configure our systems and clocks to automatically deduct lunch breaks, eh?

Whoa — not so fast! The automatic lunch deduction may just turn out to be more trouble than it’s worth for you.

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As part of my job, I regularly review news alerts related to wage and hour issues, looking for interesting stories to pass along to you. As a result, I read about the results of a lot of lawsuits brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Over time, I’ve noticed trends — certain themes that occur over and over.

For instance, one trend I’ve noticed is employers being found guilty of inadequate record keeping and failure to accurately record employee time worked. Unfortunately, these failures end up costing them money… often quite a lot of money. Sometimes it even costs them their business.

It seems a distressing number of employers out there are still tracking time by the “seat of the pants” method. Unfortunately for them, when it comes to recording time and attendance and paying eligible employees’ overtime, “best guess” won’t cut it. It’s not just a good idea; it’s the law: your records need to be accurate and complete.

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One of the topics our customers seem to sometimes find confusing is that of “rounding.” See, it’s one of those things that — if you use it correctly — can make your life a lot easier… but if you don’t, it can make for big trouble.

Which I guess scares some folks a bit. Can’t say as I blame them. Wage and hour lawsuits and DOL investigations aren’t a lot of fun.

So a lot of people simply don’t use the rounding settings in their time and attendance software. But, honestly, I think that’s a mistake. And I’m not just saying that because I work for a time and attendance company! Configured properly, rounding rules in your software can save you time on payroll preparation and could even save you money.

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