Inaccurate time entries, whether intentional or not, can tie up time and resources—ultimately affecting your bottom line. Creating and managing schedules that provide employees with good work/life balance while also meeting your business needs can be challenging.
There is a better way!
Empower your HR team with CommPayHR’s Time & Labor Management, an adaptive and scalable cloud-based Human Capital Management software product that will:
- Reduce inefficiency and errors
- Enable flexible time tracking and end-to-end visibility
- Improve and simplify scheduling – for employees and managers
- Approve time off requests, monitor attendance/punches, track paid time off, manage overtime and compensatory time, and receive notifications
- Eliminate time clock errors with geofencing which allows employees to clock in and out within set map boundaries
Learn first-hand how your team can benefit from these advantages.
This webinar was recorded live on July 16, 2024
Session Transcript:
Jeff Plakans (00:04):
Good afternoon, everybody. Happy lunch hour. Thanks for joining us during your lunch hour to talk a little bit about time and attendance. I’m Jeff Plakans, I’m the founder and president of Commonwealth Payroll & HR. As always, in many of our product-based sessions, I’m joined by David Braby and Shaun Fowler from our partner, isolved. And we’re going to talk about time and attendance today.
(00:33):
And before he jumps into the agenda, I just wanted to talk about why this is important. So we’ll get constant feedback from employers about having issues around dealing with non-exempt employees. Now, those are often referred to as wage and hour issues, but it’s really at first, understanding what a non-exempt employee is and what an exempt employee is. And more specifically knowing that you have to keep very, very accurate time records on your non-exempt employees because what happens later is you get audited and you have to prove what’s happened.
(01:17):
So what we’re going to go over today is not only the tools that will help you do that, but the tools that will help you do that effortlessly. And in doing it effortlessly, not only can you do it correctly, but do it without thinking about it and being able to focus on what it is that you do and what you’re good at in your business. So David, Shaun, thanks for joining us today.
Shaun Fowler (01:42):
All right, thank you, Jeff.
David Braby (01:42):
Thank you.
Shaun Fowler (01:43):
Thanks for that lead in. And yeah, today just want to go over today’s agenda real quick. We’ll talk about the presenters, myself and David real quick. Then we’ll get into the meat of the webinar today, talking about the features and functionality around time and labor management. I’ll give you some situation as we see it out there in the field and the solution itself and why we came up with this and what we hope to accomplish with it. And then we will take a step into the demonstration. David will walk us through that so you’ll be able to see the user interface, the functionality, and a lot of the bells and whistles that come with this time and labor management solution. And of course we’ll have time at the end to answer any questions that you have. So if you do have questions, go ahead and put them in the Q&A section of the webinar and we will address those in that section as well.
(02:41):
All right. So as promised, I just wanted to go over the presenters today. Jeff Plakans, Founder & President of Commonwealth Payroll & HR. He’s our fearless leader here. And my name again is Shaun Fowler. I’m Account Manager here at isolved and I help Commonwealth out with solutions, bringing these types of solutions to their clients and providing some educational means around that as well. And we’re joined today by David Braby, who is a Solution Consultant here. He really dives into a lot of these solutions, knows the solutions really well. So as we go along, if you do have questions, just put them in that Q&A section and we’ll get to them at the end.
(03:27):
Okay, so the situation as we see it out there in the field is that it’s becoming a challenge to ensure accurate payroll and effective scheduling. There’s a lot of intricacies, especially if you have employees in different states and as Jeff had mentioned, exempt verses non-exempt, and there’s a lot of regulation that goes along with it. And so keeping that accurate time, that payroll, is very important for your bottom line and having an effecting scheduling solution will help ease any tensions with your employees because they’ll know exactly what their schedule looks like and in some cases be able to swap different schedules. We’ll get into that in a little bit here. But I wanted to talk a little bit about the situation and how the employers would see it and how employees would see it. Obviously employees, they work, they do their job and they expect to be paid correctly. And we want to make it simple for them to be able to punch in, punch out, add their lunch breaks if they possibly missed the punch, be able to enter that punch relatively quickly and get on with their day.
(04:43):
So we have come up with a simple solution that’s integrated within the payroll that employees will be able to punch in at a clock or workstation. We’ll talk about some of those options here in a minute. But just be able to get them punched in and onto their daily activities. From an employer standpoint, it’s important to have this time inaccuracies limited. As an employer, you want to protect your bottom line and protect against time theft or buddy punching. So we have solutions that will address those concerns. And from an employer standpoint, there’s a lot of differences in the marketplace since we’ve had COVID and the work-from-home situation that most of us have experienced. You have distributed workforces and it creates a challenge to accurately manage that time and attendance in the scheduling piece. So with it being integrated within the solution and have access via your mobile or desktop device or a time clock, you can ensure that your employees will be punching in and the time punches will be accurate.
(06:00):
A lot of you on this call are probably looking at this solution because you may have an outdated time tracking hardware or software or maybe you’re using Excel spreadsheets or some other method. It’s important to take a look at your overall solution so that you know that any kind of outdated solution is going to be addressed. You’ll have some efficiencies within the solution where you’ll be able to automate some of those manual tasks and most importantly, it’s a direct line within the system. It’s integrated into the payroll so you’ll be able to see those punches and easily correct any if you need to in the payroll grid or just push them over to get everybody paid. So looking at this solution, we want to make sure that we’re in line with the industry. And speaking of the solution, we came up with the time and labor management to create a feature-rich solution that enhances your time and attendance. And the idea behind this is to reduce inefficiencies and errors. It’s to enable flexible time tracking, ensure end-to-end visibility, and simplify and improve your scheduling needs.
(07:23):
So we’ll talk about capturing time. There’s four different ways that we really look at capturing time in the isolved system. One is time clocks. We have two different versions of time clocks and they range from everything from non-biometric to biometric to card readers. So if you want to supply your employees with barcode or magnetic or proxy cards, we have readers on our clocks that are able to capture those punches. Again, ensuring that buddy punching is reduced to a minimum. And of course there’s facial recognition. So this year we came out with our new clock that has facial recognition software loaded into it, which takes not a picture, but just gathers some information on the different levels in your face, and it records that so that that is a saved profile within that clock. Now the clocks are generally used for a commonplace where most employees will come in, if you need to buzz people into a door, they have buzz relays as well, as well as alarm relays on some of the clocks.
(08:39):
But if you don’t want to look at any clocks in a common area, you can have your employees punch in via web, so straight from their desktop in the people cloud, ESS, Employee Self-Service, they can do a detailed punch or a quick punch. David will show us what that looks like during the demonstration, but they can punch in straight from their desktop. Same with their mobile phone. So you could do a mobile punch, again, doing a quick or detailed punch, and that also has duo tracking capabilities within the software itself.
(09:16):
On the slides shown here it says, “Geofencing capabilities.” Of course you are able to create a fence around a clock in area so that you know that they’re clocking in on the job and not down the street at the red light. So those capabilities are in the solution as well. And of course we have virtual clocks, which are sort of a kiosk style if you have an old tablet. You can set up a user interface where your employees can punch in with a pin and again, do a detailed punch or a quick punch and you have that availability as well.
(09:56):
Now talking about some of the scheduling options, we have scheduling options that are going to meet any employer’s needs, right? It comes with a basic attendance where you can create shifts and you can apply those default shifts and schedules on the fly as well as it comes with a calendar. Now if your needs are a little bit more enhanced, you want a little bit more out of your scheduling solution such as allowing employees to request or swap shifts, you can go with the advanced scheduling solution where you can view employees unavailability, they can get alerts when schedules are available to view, so a couple of more options available in there as well as establishing certain schedule permission rules.
(10:49):
If you have more needs outside of that, maybe your needs are a little bit more advanced and you want some predictive measures in your scheduling capability such as, “We know that we’re going to be busy during this time. What type of staffing requirement are we going to need?” So the solution will build out and tell you based on your variables how many employees should be on the schedule for that time. And so you’ll be able to build out different staffing rules with that workforce scheduling as well. And so giving you full control over that scheduling solution in your hands there. And so now we’re going to take a step back. I’m going to hand it over to Dave and he’s going to walk us through the demonstration.
David Braby (11:44):
All right, very good. Thanks, Shaun. All right, so really excited to show you the time in labor management within the isolved platform. Shaun’s given us a really great overview of what the current situation looks like out there in the marketplace. This solution is, as Jeff mentioned, meant to make this easy. There’s a lot of configuration that can go on behind the scenes, but the end product is built and designed to be easily accessible and managed by your employees and your supervisors.
(12:24):
So we’re going to start off with the adaptive view, the view that your supervisors and your employees are going to be able to take advantage of within this solution. So I’m in the solution right now, logged in as Tom. Tom is both a supervisor as well as an employee. So Tom has the ability to come into the time and attendance section here to see his time card, to see a calendar that’s going to show him the schedule that he’s been assigned to work and we’re going to go into all of these in a bit, and also request time off.
(12:58):
He also has the ability to punch in and out. So if he’s using his desktop to punch in and out, this little clock button is going to be in the upper section, upper left-hand corner. So all he has to do is come here, select this button here, that’s a quick punch button that will punch him in and out. Shaun mentioned there is a detailed punch as well. This enables Tom to be able to move from job to job or department to department, whatever your labor fields are, we’ll configure those within the solution. So this is my demo company. I’ve got a lot of different things built out. This’ll be built out specific to your company. So as Tom comes in, maybe he’s changing departments, he just selects from a dropdown that new department that he’s going to be working in and click save. That will enable those hours then to start being allocated to that specific labor field.
(13:53):
Now Tom can also transfer departments. So say he’s working in the medical department right now and he’s going to move to the service department. All he has to do is come in here to the mode, click on transfer and then change that department. And what that allows him to do is to be able to punch out a medical and into service with just one punch. So he is not having to punch out and then punch back in with that transfer. It’s one transaction for both of those. So it makes it very convenient for Tom to be able to do that when you’re doing those types of labor allocations. Now one of the advantages of the isolved solution is there is an app that can also be downloaded. So if Tom has the ability to punch in and out on his mobile device, then that clock button is now going to move down here.
(14:50):
Now when I click on the clock button, all kinds of different options open up. When we build this out specific for your group, you’re going to determine what buttons you want the employees to have access to. So we’ve already talked about the quick punch and the detailed punch, but this button right here, and I’m going to expand this back out, is a group punch. So imagine you’ve got workers out on a site and you’ve got that foreman that’s punching everyone in all at once. They can do that with the group punch, just having the ability to come in here. They can create the groups of employees and then they just choose those employees that are onsite, save that and that’s going to punch everyone in all at once. So again, facilitating, getting everyone in, punched in at one time. You also notice that there is a button here that’s a missing punch.
(15:48):
We’ll talk about that in a few minutes. And then there’s also an adjustment that we’ll talk about a little bit later as well. But again, it’s configured based off of your specifications, so your employees are only going to see those options that you design.
(16:05):
All right, now regardless of the collection device, whether that’s a phone, whether that’s a computer, a time clock, virtual clock, whatever that is, this is a real-time time and attendance solution. So what that means to you is whenever the employee punches, those punches then are immediately recorded on the employee timecard. So as an employee, Tom can come in here and he can see the accumulation of hours right here in the left-hand side in this summary box. You also come in and see the details. Now supervisors are going to have a very similar view where they can see in and out punches. Now if Tom has recorded a punch say on a mobile device, then there’s going to be a little indicator right next to that punch. In this case it’s an arrow. When he punches or clicks on that arrow, pulls up a Google Map, and it basically drops the pin where Tom was when he applied that punch. Now it’s not going to track Tom, it’s just going to drop those pins whenever he punches.
(17:15):
That view is also available of course for administrators as well as for supervisors. So if you are allowing your employees to punch in and out on their mobile devices, then the system’s going to locate them when they apply that punch. Shaun mentioned earlier with regards to mobile punching, we can build what we call geofences. So what that is, is an imaginary fence around, say, a facility. You build a fence around that facility so the employee has to be within the facility before they can punch on their mobile device. That way, it restricts them from punching down the road at that red light that Shaun referenced. So all kinds of different ways to make sure that the employee is punching and then also where they are when they are actually physically punching. Now you notice within this summary box right here, not only is it recording the different hours, it’s summarizing those.
(18:18):
So Tom’s requested a PTO, he’s accumulated so far, 31.75 hours so far in this pay period. But then it’s also breaking out those hours based off of the labor as well that he’s applied. Now in addition to being able to track labor and also adjustments, and again, we’ll talk about that in just a minute, we can build out what we call alerts in the system. Now what the alerts can do for you is it can help you manage the attendance and also alert your supervisors to different types of events that happen. Like if an employee is approaching overtime, an alert can be sent out to the supervisor so that they know that, “Hey, this employee is getting close to going into overtime. Maybe I don’t schedule them for the next day.” It helps manage in real time those types of situations. But it can also help with attendance as well. So with schedules in the system, the system can then track if the employee is punching in late.
(19:25):
So this right here for me is an in-late punch, the employee was one to 30 minutes late when they punched in. You have the ability to designate what late is for your company. It could be after 10 minutes the employee is considered late, or after 15. You determine that when we build out the rules for your specific company. You also notice that I’ve got a missing punch on here. So again, these types of alerts can go out to the supervisors in addition to the employees. So if the employee misses a punch, employee gets a missing punch alert along with that supervisor. As I mentioned earlier, we can give the employee the ability to come in and select or to enter in their own missing punch. So they could put in the date, they can put in the time. If there’s labor allocation associated with it, they can select the labor group, and even write a note. Once they save that, that routes that missing punch to the supervisor to review and then approve. Once it’s approved it adds that punch to the employee’s timecard, but there’s always that approval process with this.
(20:42):
All right, so let’s come back into the timecard spend just a little time on here. So I’ve already shown you that you can see the detail information, the in and out punches. Up here in the upper right-hand corner, you notice there’s an ad record. So if your employees, maybe they’re not punching in and out on a timecard, maybe you just want them to record their time. With the system, we can accommodate that. In this case, the employee would just come in, they would select that they’re doing hours and not a punch. They’d put in the date, they put in a start time, and then they would just put in the duration, maybe it’s four hours. System fills out the rest of this. They can select labor if that’s part of that and they save that, that just applies four hours to that labor group or four hours in general to that employee’s timecard without having them have to punch in and punch out.
(21:44):
Now in addition, we can set up what we call adjustments. An adjustment could be something like piecework. So maybe you having the employees enter in the number of units that they built on a manufacturing line or what have you. They can come in, they can enter in the number of pieces right within the system and then that’s going to record on their timecard, “Can be verified by the supervisor,” and then that feeds directly in for payroll purposes.
(22:21):
Now adjustments, like I said, don’t have to be time-related if you will. It could be an expense reimbursement, it could be mileage, it could be tips. Anything that’s not a punch could be added in here to the timecard so you’re not having to track that outside of the system. And then as I mentioned, that information feeds into payroll, calculations can be built within the system to automatically apply different rates to these different types of adjustments.
(22:56):
So very configurable with the solution in the time and attendance. Now one last thing I want to point out here on the timecard is the verification process. You can have up to three levels of sign-offs or verifications within this solution. Employee can sign off on their timecard, supervisor can sign off on the timecard, as well as the manager. Again, that’s going to be built around whatever your verification or sign off process looks like. You also notice that there is an objection box that we can place out here. This allows the employee to be able to review their timecard and if they see something that’s not right, they can add a note that’s going to go right to the supervisor. So when the supervisor’s reviewing that timecard, they see that note and then they can make adjustments when they need to. Also, from an employee perspective, I mentioned that calendar.
(23:53):
So as schedules are placed out here from the employee, they’re going to be able to see that on a monthly view as well as a weekly view. I like the weekly view a little bit better because they’re able to see the sign ‘shifts’ out here and the naming convention, but they also can see this on a daily basis. The employees also have the ability to do time-off requests through the system. So this is a valuable piece to the time and attendance because now you’re giving the employee the ability to see the information so that they’re not having to come to say your payroll person and ask them how much time off they have left. Or if they’ve taken time off previously, they have a record of all that previous time off right here on this dashboard. So balance information can be seen for whatever accrual policies we build out, again, specific to your group.
(24:50):
And then we can also build out holiday schedules in here too, and employees can automatically be paid holiday pay based off of whatever your rules are. So for example, if you have a rule that the employee has to work the day before and the day after a holiday in order to receive that holiday pay, we can build those types of rules within the system. To request time off, the employee simply clicks on time off. They select that policy and this dropdown will be built out specific to your company. And as they come in, they’re able to see their available hours, they can put in a date, they can put in a date range and then they can submit that, even add notes. Once that’s submitted, again, an alert goes to whomever needs to approve that time-off request and they can come into the system and do this.
(25:42):
And because they have access to this information on their phones, it gives that employee and it empowers that employee to be able to manage their time off, to be able to see the accumulation of time. And one other thing that I wanted to point out that we can make available to your employees is the ability to be able to preview their check before it’s actually processed. So at any time, they can come in here, the system’s going to pick up whatever’s on their timecard as well as any automatic pace. Like if you’ve got, say, an auto allowance or something that is paying out automatically, it’s going to pick up that information and it’s going to be able to calculate out the information for the employee.
(26:31):
All right, so let’s change gears a little bit. Let’s go into this Manage tile. This is where your supervisors and managers are going to have access to the information that they need in order to manage the business a day-to-day basis. Because this is a real-time, time and attendance as I mentioned, dashboard here showing who’s punched in, who’s punched out in real time. We can build out those alerts for your company and we can also assign different severity levels. So for Mike, I’ve got all my missing punches as high alerts. So supervisor not only gets an alert that the employee has a missing punch, but now they have a dashboard view of that information as well and they can proactively then go in and they can add those missing punches or get the employee to submit those missing punches. I’ve got additional alerts here, but again, alerts like approaching overtime or punched in late or left early.
(27:35):
Those types of attendance alerts can actually have a point value assigned to them. And then as the employees accumulate the points as they hit at certain thresholds, automatic corrective actions can then go out to the supervisors to issue things like verbal warnings and written warnings. But it’s the way the system is intelligently connected that helps facilitate that whole process. You also notice on this transaction or on this dashboard, there’s pending transactions. So if the employee has submitted missing punches, this is where the supervisor can come in, expand this, see if there’s any notes, and then approve it right from here. Same for the time off request. A dashboard view, very convenient if they’re doing this on their phone on the go. Same menu, it just scales down to that screen so they can easily come in, see that available balance that the employee has, and in this case the employee is going into the negative within the system.
(28:41):
We can build out your accruals to your specifications. So if you allow the employees to go into the negative, we can set a threshold or limit. So maybe they can go into the negative up to 16 hours, we can build that into the system. It’s that configurable. And then this is where they would also come in to review those timecards and make any adjustments that they need to. Dashboard view, giving them a summary of the hours with the individual timecards down below where they can approve right from the dashboard because they’re able to see the total hours. But if there is a warning with the red alert here, that’s something that needs to be corrected. Like a missing punch. In that case, they can go right into the employee timecard, go right to that day. In this case the employee punched in but they didn’t punch out, they just create a new punch and add that punch right on the fly.
(29:38):
Summary of the hours here again for the supervisor, same as the employee had. So giving the supervisors, again, visibility and all the information that they need to manage their employees on a day-to-day basis. Now with regards to scheduling three levels of scheduling, as Shaun mentioned. The attendance that comes with the time solution is part of the adaptive employee experience, where supervisors can come in, they can see schedules on a daily or weekly basis and as they expand an individual employee, they’re able to see those shifts that they’ve been assigned to work. They can adjust those shifts on the fly. So they can come in, change a shift or override a shift. Maybe they need the employee to come in at 10 o’clock instead of eight o’clock. They can change that and save that and make that part of that employee schedule. And then they can also assign shifts just by clicking a sign ‘shift’, selecting the day, putting in the shift, and we’ll build out these shifts for you.
(30:42):
So whatever your shifts are, and you can label these whatever you want as well, we’ll build those in a dropdown. So very convenient and easy to manage. And even copy these so the supervisor can build out that schedule maybe for a week and then they can copy that schedule week over week when they need to. Again, that’s part of the attendance piece. The other two components of the scheduler, the scheduling and the workforce scheduling need to be accessed through the administrative view or the classic view. So we’re going to transition, I’m going to go into that administrative view so you can see what that looks like. Give me just a second here to log in as the admin.
Jeff Plakans (31:33):
Hey, I just wanted to hop in, David, while you’re making that transition. Please, if anyone has any questions on anything, please drop them in the questions section of the dialogue box. We’ll be doing some questions at the end of the session and so I failed to mention at the beginning that those would be there. So David, I know covered a lot. He’s going to cover a lot more, but drop those questions in, we’ll be answering them at the end. Thank you.
David Braby (31:59):
Okay, thanks, Jeff. All right, so in the administrative view, and your supervisors can also change to this view if they like it better for scheduling, that’s going to be in the employee admin tool section under administration and employee scheduling. Now you notice there are default schedules that can be applied. So if you’ve got those employees that work the same shift day over day, maybe it’s eight to five every Monday through Friday, we can build that and default that in so you’re not having to go in for those particular employees and adjust their shifts or add the shifts. The scheduler itself is in here and you’ll notice that there are different filters. These were also in the attendance in the adaptive view. So if you want to filter by a specific supervisor or manager, you can do that.
(32:52):
And I’m going to do that right now, I’m going to come in as Tom. And what this is going to do is going to pull up a more calendar view of those schedules. And this is why a lot of people prefer this classic view than the adaptive view, but the adaptive view for attendance gives you that mobility. So now you can see calendar view of employees. These are all Toms employees who’s assigned what shifts. The shifts can be color coded, so just by the shift or the color, you could know what shift has been assigned.
(33:30):
We mentioned unavailability. So part of scheduling, you can give the employees the ability to go in and indicate when they’re not available to work. And then that’s going to show on the scheduler like this. Scheduler is also going to show if anyone is scheduled to be off. So any absences, sick days, PTO, vacation, whatever that is, will show on here.
(33:57):
Additionally, with the scheduler or with the scheduling component. So we talked about attendance. This is the scheduling component. You can give your employees the ability to do shift swaps. So a shift swap is where the employee can go out, they can request shift coverage. So when I hover over this, you see the Aldo sent out a note to his coworkers that said, “Can somebody cover this shift for me please?” One of his coworkers went in and they’re elected to cover that shift. And so what that did is they can also add in notes. This says that Hampton says, “I can cover this shift for you, Aldo.” But what that does is it creates a link between those shifts. Now this is going to go to the supervisor to review and approve. So once that has been linked together, the supervisor then can come in and they can click anywhere on the scheduler and actually put this into edit mode and then approve that shift swap right from here.
(35:10):
They also have the ability just to come up here to approvals and then approve all the requests that are out there on the scheduler or these other options too. Now with the scheduler and edit mode, to assign shifts here is really drag and drop. So I can drag, I can drop, and for this particular employee say, “Okay, they’re going to work this same shift the next two days.” I can apply that. With the schedule component, you can put this into draft mode or you can post it immediately. Draft mode means you can build out all the shifts for all the employees and then post them all at once. And with the schedule component or module, the employees get notified when those schedules have been posted.
(36:03):
They can also just drag. So if this employee is scheduled to work on Tuesday, maybe Hampton needs to work or they want Hampton to work that shift, they can come in and they can just move that and post it. So that’ll just move it from one employee to the next. So very functional, easy to do. Again, you have the ability to come in and copy schedules. So if these employees are going to work the same schedule over the next few months, you can just copy that out to whatever date range that you want. Now the other component to the scheduling, so we’ve covered attendance, which is basic scheduling you can puts out there for your employees. Scheduling, which allows to get the employee more involved by allowing them to post if they’re not available or to request additional shifts or to do shift swaps.
(37:07):
So that’s part of the scheduling component. The third component is workforce scheduling. Workforce scheduling opens up these two columns up here at the top of the scheduler. So instead of being able to just schedule shifts to employees, you can now go in and you can build out all your shifts and then assign employees to those shifts just by clicking add. With both the scheduler and the workforce scheduler, you have the ability to set eligibility rules. So when you come into a specific shift, only those employees who are eligible for that shift are going to show up here. So a lot of businesses like this because they like to have all their shifts built out and then just add employees to those shifts. This is what it looks like for employees that have been added.
(38:13):
And then the other component to the workforce scheduling are the rules that can be created, the staffing rules. So when we come into the staffing summary, you might have, say, a restaurant that you know that your busy days are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and you need a full staff there. You can base that off of, say, occupancy. So when you come in you can say, “Okay, Monday’s a slow day, usually only 25% occupied. Tuesday’s 50%, Wednesday is 75%. And then when you get to Friday it’s a hundred percent.” You can put those percentages in and the system’s going to come down here to those shifts that are assigned to the staffing rules and let you know how many employees you need to assign for each of those shifts. So this can be a valuable resource to make sure that you’re not overstaffed or understaffed based off of, in this case, percent occupancy, but it can also be based off of project hours or widgets, whatever that looks like, total amount.
(39:32):
So it’s very dynamic and flexible with those staffing rules that can be built within the solution. So that just takes it to the next level to be able to help you predict how many employees you need on any given day for any given shift.
(39:51):
So there’s a lot to the scheduler. We could talk about scheduling probably for an hour in a deep dive, but I hope you’ve seen that it’s very dynamic and flexible. And then of course one of the biggest reasons to go with a time and attendance solution built into a payroll solution is that all the information all the time information feeds directly into payroll. So when you come down to process your payroll, instead of just previewing and processing, you’re going to lock the time cards, you’re going to click commit, that’s going to move the information from the timecards into the time entry grid. So you’re not having to manually key, you’re not having to import. It moves all that time information in here and displays it.
(40:41):
So it cuts down on the manual entry and then you would just go about and preview and process your payroll as normal. Now as an administrator, you also have access to all kinds of dashboards and tools. You have the ability to go in and look at timecard information for any of your employees on the fly. And this is what that admin view looks like.
(41:10):
So the information is the same. Basic layout is a little bit different where everything is now in vertical rather than horizontal columns. But it gives you all the detailed information. You’ve got dashboards here at the admin level. So at the company level, you’re able to come in and do alert monitoring. So you could come in at any time and see how many in-lates there are for a given time period or how many missing punches there’s been over the last month. So you can build that into the system, come in, put any date range that you want. And then for monitoring information on the fly, you’ve got an earning summary of hours. This allows you to come in, and I’ve got multiple pay groups, I’m just going to select one and go into the current pay period. But you can come into the current pay period and the system’s going to summarize all the hours on the time card for you.
(42:08):
So again, if you’re monitoring that overtime, you’re going to be able to see exactly how much overtime you have so far in the pay period, PTO, regular, whatever’s on that hours are on that timecard. So very flexible and dynamic and giving you the information that you need in order to manage your business on a day-to-day basis.
(42:33):
So I think you’ve seen that with isolved time, it gives your employees and your supervisors the ability to manage their information very easily, especially when it comes to requesting time off and having that flow through a workflow process. But at the end of the day, all that information is feeding into the system, can be reported on, and then processed very easily through the system.
(43:00):
So with that, I’m going to turn the time back over to Shaun to wrap up and to see if we’ve got any questions.
Shaun Fowler (43:10):
All right, perfect. Thank you, Dave. Yeah, I really love seeing the demonstration in action because you really get a sense for the accuracy that you get from a solution like this, the userability and just the overall configurability of this solution as well. So thank you again for walking us through that.
(43:32):
I just have a few extra things that I wanted to touch on and then we’ll get Jeff back on here for any questions and to close us out. But just wanted to talk a little bit about the future proofing of these solutions that we do. So we understand that this is not a decision that you want to make year-over-year. So with these updates, we look at the industry and figure out what kind of market or compliance updates are out there so that we’re in line with any kind of regulations for the states that you have employees and just overall using the technology that is available, and adding some of these additional features such as AI or as new technology comes out, looking to add some of those different features within the solution as well. So there’s always continuous product development and goes along with looking at a modern and responsive web design and biweekly release cycle. So we’re always looking to upgrade and update the solution so that it fits your client’s needs and your needs as well. And so with that, I will ask Jeff if we have any questions.
Jeff Plakans (44:49):
So just one note on that. So for those who don’t know, Commonwealth has partnered with isolved on technology and technology solutions since 2010. We’ve seen a lot of things change from then until now. We’ve watched all of isolve’s time solutions evolve, and to some degree helped them evolve. And I can say that every single time I look at this, there’s something new that pops up that either I wasn’t aware that was there or that I say, “Ah, they finally listened to us.” So when we’re talking about future-proofing the product, that’s really, really what we’re talking about.
(45:34):
So we got a bunch of questions here, hopefully we’re not going to rattle anybody, but I would say because we’ve done this before, David, this might just need you to bring up your screen again to show something, but we’ll see how we do.
David Braby (45:51):
Okay.
Jeff Plakans (45:52):
The first question was, “How can I set up or eliminate the review of time cards?” In other words, how flexible is that?
David Braby (46:08):
Yeah, so as you saw in the demonstration, you can have up to three levels of verification or sign off, or none. You don’t have to have any. So it’s completely configurable that way. Hopefully that answers your question because you don’t have to have approvals on anything if you don’t want.
Jeff Plakans (46:30):
Okay. So the next question here is, “I’ve heard there’s new regulations for the use of biometrics and fingerprints. Are you compliant?”
David Braby (46:45):
Yes, we are. So we’ve taken that into consideration and that’s one of the reasons why we were a little bit delayed with the facial recognition because we were going through a compliance, making sure that we were in compliance with those new regulations that came out I think maybe two years ago, it was last year or the year before, I think.
Jeff Plakans (47:12):
Okay, all right.
Shaun Fowler (47:13):
Yeah, just to add on that, there’s a consent form that goes along with that, the Biometric Information Protection Act, BIPA. Yeah, employees can consent directly on the NXG time clocks, so it makes it easier and accessible to be able to consent to that.
Jeff Plakans (47:35):
That’s an electronic consent.
Shaun Fowler (47:37):
Correct.
Jeff Plakans (47:38):
Awesome. Okay, great. Can you explain the use of piece rates on the time card? And in parentheses it says, “Adjustments, I think.”
David Braby (47:49):
Yeah, yeah. So let’s go back to the adjustments on the timecard and I’ll come back in.
(48:07):
Now this is if, say, your employees, again, are adding these on a desktop or their mobile device, we also have the ability to have the employees enter these in at the time clock too. So if they’re doing some type of piece rate work, then this is where we’ll build out whatever that… we call it an adjustment just to kind of encompass anything that it could be. What we see most of the time are like a piece work. So mine says, “Piece Rate,” it should say, “Piece Work,” where they come in and they say, “Okay, for this particular date.” This can default to hours or units as you can see, and then they just enter in the number of units here.
(49:03):
So what this does on the backend and the way we configure this is we say, “Okay, when the employee enters in this many pieces, there’s going to be a rate associated to that.” And that could be a general rate, it could be $2 for every piece that they put together or whatever that was. Or it could be an employee specific rate. So it could vary by employee if we needed to, but on the backend is where all that calculation happens and where we hook up the number of pieces to an amount to calculate on their pay stub. Hopefully that made sense.
Jeff Plakans (49:47):
It does, it does. We actually have seen a number of this application and a number of other similar things, which is actually piecework, but we’ve seen it applied in, for example, you might have a gym or some kind of a clinic or something where somebody’s treating X number of patients or customers or whatever throughout the day and they get paid on a per customer basis. And that’s where this comes into play and it solves a lot of calculation headaches that occur in those types of scenarios. So thank you for showing that, David. Appreciate that.
(50:25):
Do you charge per geofence and can we build them ourselves or do we need you to do it?
(50:32):
So on the charging, we do not charge per geofence. We charge whether or not you use it, meaning you’re using it or it’s not turned on at all, in which case there’s no charge. But that’s the Commonwealth answer to that. But what about, can they build them their selves or do they need us to do it?
David Braby (50:54):
No, they can build them their selves. So they just come down here to the time section, go into time management, and we would open up the geofencing. Now I’m struggling to find where it is. Fence rules. So this is where you can come in and you would just click here. And I’ve got several here. So you can see these could be multiple pins that are dropped around. But you can come in here, you can enter in an address, and I have one defaulted in here. And then when you click on it, you can just drop that pin there or you can expand that out. So you can expand that to be however large a area that you want. So this can really get very specific down to around a specific building or it could be a block or whatever you need it to be. So you do have the ability to come in here and set those fence rules themselves and then even delete those or inactivate them when you’re not using those anymore.
Jeff Plakans (52:03):
Okay. All right. Excellent. “When employees punch, if I want them to choose the store field, can I name it that and eliminate all the other fields you showed us?” Oh, I think that maybe they’re talking about labor.
David Braby (52:30):
Yeah. Yeah. So when we build out the labor fields for you, we’ll label those whatever you want. So these are just samples. So if you just want store, I think they’re asking for maybe a particular group of employees, maybe they just want certain stores to show up, then yes, we can set those rules for those specific groups of employees. The other thing is that, you might be referencing the person in question, you can default a store to an employee, so they don’t have to select that store. So if they’re going to work in the same store all the time, you just default that in and then they don’t have to come in and do that labor selection.
Jeff Plakans (53:24):
Okay, that’s helpful. Hopefully Mike will think that that’s helpful. That one’s the same. “How flexible are the alerts? Can we use them to stop processes or stop approvals?”
David Braby (53:46):
So yes, we can set what’s called critical alerts. So let me just go back to the dashboard here. So I didn’t have any critical alerts, but if they’re labeled as critical, it can stop, say, the payroll process. So if there’s a critical alert, it gets to payroll and hasn’t been resolved. When payroll goes to process payroll, they’re going to get a message that pops up and says, “You have, maybe it’s a missing punch that hasn’t been resolved yet.” So it can stop payroll with the use of these critical alerts.
Jeff Plakans (54:26):
All right. And then the last one is, “How do we make people eligible for shifts?” And eligible was in quotations.
David Braby (54:44):
And I’ve seen this based off of location. It could be based off of a certification that they have. Just an example I always like to use, maybe there’s home healthcare and there’s CNAs and there’s RNs and you need a certain number of CNAs. So when you go into the scheduler, you don’t want to see CNAs and RNs and everybody else. You just want to see CNAs. So you set up an eligibility rule that says, “They have to have that CNA certification.” And then that limits the number of employees that can actually be eligible for that shift. That’s an example. But there’s a lot of different ways to set those eligibility rules.
Jeff Plakans (55:33):
All right. I think that’s all the questions that we have. David, thank you again. Shaun, thank you again for diving deep and answering lots of questions that our folks had.
(55:45):
Again, remember, what we’re trying to do here with this solution is make it so with your time policies for your non-exempt employees, no matter whether you’re in California or whether you’re in Massachusetts, or whether you’re in Florida or wherever, that the policies are set in place to interpret the punches properly so you don’t have to. What this product is very, very good at is putting those rules into place and then applying those rules to different employees as required to make sure that it’s always right. So it’s not up to you as the individual to be interpreting the rules yourself. And also, of course not to be doing math around the time and having to transfer it by hand into payroll.
(56:37):
So all of those things together, it’s a huge time saver. It’s also going to help you be consistent and enforce things. That’s why I think for our clients, if you have non-exempt employees, this is critical as far as a tool is concerned. Even if you don’t have a ton of non-exempt employees, it’s still good because it keeps things consistent.
(56:59):
So again, thank you, gentlemen, for hopping on with us today and for being able to share with our clients and our attendees here, all the benefits and what we can do with isolved time and with the isolved at attendants.
(57:13):
Shaun, David, anything else?
Shaun Fowler (57:14):
[inaudible 00:57:19].
David Braby (57:19):
Yeah, thanks everyone.
Shaun Fowler (57:21):
Yeah.
Jeff Plakans (57:21):
Okay.
Shaun Fowler (57:22):
I appreciate it, Jeff. Thank you for letting us present to your clients. Always a pleasure. And yeah, let us know if there are any questions.
Jeff Plakans (57:31):
For everybody who was here, there’s a recording coming. For everyone who wasn’t here, the recording will be coming if you’re registered, so you’ll be able to watch it. Also, if you need more information, certainly have a word or ask, our customer service and support specialist or your account manager, either one, feel free to give me a call directly. Usually my slide is up here, but if it’s not, most of you know how to get ahold of me. Or I’m not hard to get ahold of, I can be got too from the website or from LinkedIn. Either way, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for giving us your lunch hour, and we’ll talk to all of you soon. Goodbye.
Shaun Fowler (58:13):
Thank you everyone.
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