Timekeeping by Telephone (#39)
/In this podcast, we discuss the benefits of entering time data through employee phones. Key points made are:
Time cards, time clocks, and time entry through a website are the traditional time collection methods.
A telephone time clock allows employees to enter their time into a central system via any phone, including their cell phones.
A telephone time clock works well when employees are engaged in field service, construction, or agricultural activities, or when a business has many locations but few people in each one (which makes the investment in local time clocks too expensive).
Basic process is to call an 800 number, enter the employee ID, enter the clock code for the type of activity, and either enter a time stamp, start/stop time, or elapsed time. There is also a provision for answering a series of yes/no questions. The entire process takes 20-30 seconds.
Benefits of timekeeping by telephone include the elimination of time cards, no data entry work, immediate data validation, immediate visibility into the hours being worked on projects, and the immediate availability of hours worked for clients that can then be billed to those clients.
The underlying time database should be integrated into the company’s payroll processing system.