Employee Time Cards: The Impact on Small Business

For most small business owners, there’s a contestant temptation to do everything yourself.

After all, you started your business on your own initiative, and have grown it yourself from the ground up. You’re familiar with every aspect of your company, and the product or service you offer, and when there’s something that needs to be done, naturally you rise to the occasion.

While this initiative is a great thing, and in many cases, is what’s responsible for your company’s success in the first place, the truth is that your time is limited and tremendously valuable. Eventually, your business reaches the point where it’s no longer feasible or realistic to take on every task yourself, and it becomes time to outsource some of those responsibilities.

The issue of employee time cards and payroll is one area where it’s especially important to consider outsourcing. Once you have more than just one or two employees, outsourcing some of the responsibilities associated with this area becomes even more vital. After all, there are laws regarding employee pay, both on the state and federal level, and these regulations are constantly changing. Ensuring that you’re handling everything in a way that’s in compliance is important for helping you to avoid potentially costly mistakes and even the risk of lawsuits.

Fortunately, when it comes to updating your employee off site employee time tracking software, there’s an easy way to ensure that you’re paying your employees in a timely manner: by updating your old time card system with a robust, time tracking program.

With an up-to-date simple time card system, you can outsource much of the work that’s involved with verifying employee work hours, and ensure that you’re paying your team accurately, and in a timely manner. With this in mind, let’s look at a few different ways that a time tracking system can benefit your business.

Improved Time Management

It’s not just for big companies; time tracking solutions can benefit small business owners too. Here’s a look at a few benefits now.

• Calculating Overtime

When it comes to overtime, you are generally required to pay your employees time and a half for their overtime worked, regardless of if you authorized the overtime or not. By having an updated time tracking time card system available, though, you can easily calculate which employees have worked overtime, and pay them accordingly. You’ll also have a better insight into knowing if your employees are taking, and getting paid for unauthorized overtime. An updated time card tracking system can also help you review and be aware of ‘repeat offenders’ who are working unauthorized overtime repeatedly.

• Preventing Time Theft

While you might assume that as a small business, you are exempt from time theft, the truth is, as a small business without an updated time tracking system, you are leaving yourself wide open for time theft, regardless of how honest you think your employees may be. The truth is that no company, regardless of its size, is exempt. In fact, the American Payroll Association has reported that more than 75 percent of all companies have lost money due to buddy punching. Common forms of time theft include arriving late but signing in on-time, exaggerating hours worked, or taking longer than authorized lunch breaks. In fact, it’s estimated that 64 percent of small businesses have experienced employee theft. An updated time card system can help to prevent time theft, regardless of what form it takes.

• Improving Employee Health and Safety

Another lesser-known reason for an updated time card system is the improvement your employees will have on their health and safety. An updated system to track employee time and attendance can help to improve the health and wellness of your employees by alerting those who are prone to overworking that it is time for a break or that their maximum number of hours for the week has been reached. By making your employees aware of these things, they can better manage their time, not push themselves too hard, helping to reduce workplace accidents that can easily occur when there are overworked, distracted, and stressed employees on the job.

Regardless of the size of your company, having a better understanding of your team and the hours they work can help you to be a better employer, manager, and business owner. By being able to properly manage your employees’ time and attendance, you’ll also be one step closer to growing your business.