Everyone in the workforce knows that they get paid for time spent working. Time is recorded, at the end of the week its then sent to payroll for processing. Without doing a timesheet, no one gets paid.

The method in which we do our timesheets, have been slowly changing to more efficient and effective methods. Where most businesses had staff fill in a time card as they walk through the door, now digital timesheet systems are taking over.

There are some key issues with conventional methods that many businesses still rely, relating to paper timesheets.

One of the main issues is falsified time. People unfortunately like to come in late, but note down that they arrived on time. Perhaps their clock is off a bit? Or perhaps they’re just careless when it comes to arriving on time. While us business owners don’t want to nit-pick every minute that a staff is late, its frightening how even just being 5 minutes late every day over a month can add-up in relation to cost. If you pay someone $25 an hour, and they’re 5 minutes late each morning, that’s 25 minutes a week (Monday-Friday). That’s $45 a month or over $500 a year in expense incurred for a staff member not actually at their desk working. Imagine if you have a team of say 20 people and even half of them did that? Thats thousands of dollars a year.

Another issue many businesses run into is not having the actual specifics on what a team member has been working on during the day. Thats why digital timesheet systems are great for logging not only payroll time, but also time spent on tasks throughout the day. Many business owners don’t realise the amount of time that staff spend on non-profitable / non-chargeable tasks… Such as browsing websites, talking to colleagues in the lunchroom or getting caught-up explaining an invoice to a client on the phone… Digital timesheet tools are a great way to identify these types of occurrences so you can firstly become aware of them, then implement ways of mitigating wasted time.

  • Digital payroll and timesheet softwares have the ability to offer unique, powerful features including:
  • Geo-location clock-in: Ability to restrict access to clocking in, only to a certain area. So staff can’t clock “on their way to work”.
  • PIN restricted clock-in: Give each staff member a unique PIN code that gives them access to their timesheet without the risk of other staff members tampering with their login.
  • Camera clock-in: A tamper-proof way to get prevent falsified time and clock-ins, some timesheet tools including Zulu have a ‘photo’ snapshot feature that takes a photo of the person clocking in and records it against that user.

Implementing a timesheet software in your business is critical in 2020. Even if you only have one or two employees, this technology is a brilliant way to give you more accurate time tracking and insight into the performance of your staff members - meaning you can better manage and identify who on your team is performing, and who needs improvement.