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 PowerTrack^® Construction

Sophisticated Time Tracking Takes the “Fudge” out of Payroll

January 31, 2011:  Construction Informer

If you haven’t taken the time to check into the new efficient ways to record and track employee time then you could be leaving a lot of cash on the table.

Since late 2009, electrical contractor Gaylor, Inc. has been using Spectrum Mobile, part of Dexter+Chaney’s Spectrum^® Construction Software and reports eliminating about 200 hours per month in processing time previously spent on paperwork collection, data entry and related tasks. The field and office staffs each save approximately 100 hours monthly. Nearly 170 of Gaylor’s job-site supervisors use the solution to submit their time reporting data on a daily basis.  They use the product on rugged mobile smart phones equipped with Windows Mobile software. Jim Savage, Gaylor, Inc.’s long-time chief information officer said:

That equals about $10,000 per month in labor savings for the company. Spectrum Mobile helps us keep the same size back-office staff and spend less time on the fire drill of getting all the paper processed every week.  It also has clearly benefited the operations side of the business. That’s the key:  if you want to sell a streamlined process that helps both operations and accounting, you have to make the effort to convince the operations people that they’re going to benefit.

The company tracks the time of more than 90 percent of its field employees with Spectrum Mobile. Job-site supervisors use the product to replace paper time sheets;  they collect job number, phase code, cost type, pay type, overtime and other variables. Information flows from Spectrum Mobile to the Spectrum payroll module in the office for processing. Gaylor operates in 38 states with branch offices in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Arizona and the Carolinas.

At most job sites, supervisors enter check-in/check-out information at the end of the day. At larger job sites—with more than 50 employees on a single crew, for example—each employee is assigned a bar code that goes on their employee ID card.  Handheld units scan the employees in and out and calculate the duration of their time at the site.

Bar-code scanning ensures that labor tracking at larger sites is completely accurate. If, for example, an employee arrives at a job site at 8:05 a.m. and leaves at 3:50 p.m., he’s paid for that time—not the hours that might otherwise be “rounded up” to an 8 a.m. arrival and 4 p.m. departure.  The combination of bar-code scanning at larger job sites along with supervisors entering employee check-in/check-out information on other jobs at the end of each day—rather than weekly—saves the company approximately one percent ($270,000) in annual labor costs.

© 2011 Construction Informer

Reprinted from Construction Informer: Click here for the original article

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