So you're looking for a time clock, most likely to track your employee time and hours. You may have been looking for a traditional wall-mounted time clock; these do work great. They are reliable, and the initial investment is cheap (usually less than $200) and easy to implement.
Before you decide to buy a standard punch clock, let’s look at the actual pricing. We’re going to run some numbers, assuming a 15 employee company (roughly $500,000 in gross payroll). The statistics come from the APA (American Payroll Association), the nation's leading authority in payroll education, publications, and training. Get ready, these numbers will be staggering.
Wasted Time and Money - Up to $1,200 per year
How about your time, it is very precious, right? Or if someone else calculates hours, they need to get paid, correct? The APA (American Payroll Association) estimates that it takes about 6 minutes to calculate one weekly time card per employee. If you have 15 employees, that is a minimum of 1 ½ hours of your time each week. You may want to double-check your math, and now it’s 3 hours of your time. If you have multiple locations, someone has to drive around and collect the time cards; there are hourly wage & fuel components to this.
Time Card Calculation Errors - Up To $10,000 per year
It's the end of the week and time for your employees to get paid. You grab a handful of time cards and get to work. If you are really old school, a pencil and paper are your tools of choice. Some people have searched the web and found an online time card calculator, which they use to help with math. Either way, you manually copy the punch in and punch out times from the timesheet onto paper or into a timesheet calculator. With manual transcription of employee punch times, there is an estimated 1-2% error rate. If overpaid, your company is shorted. This is bad enough. However, it is worse if your employees are underpaid. First, they deserve to be paid for their work; second, you could face lawsuits or DOL investigations.
Time Theft - Up to $35,000 per year
Traditional time clocks have a built-in flaw, buddy punching. If an unscrupulous employee is running late getting into work, he simply messages his “buddy” at work and asks to be punched in. Buddy punching is estimated to cost companies more the $373 million per year in overpayment due to buddy punching and possibly more than $400 billion per year in lost productivity (exercise, socializing, slacking off, etc.). This translates to roughly translates to up to 7 percent of overpayment in gross payroll. So if you have $500,000 in gross payroll, this could cost a business up to $35,000.
Why Not Opt For A Modern Time Clock
The days of wall-mounted time clocks are over. All businesses should be taking advantage of new employee time tracking solutions. Time theft, calculation errors, and wasted time/money are eliminated. Modern online time clock systems such as OnTheClock have controls to stop buddy punching using GPS location punch sites. There are no more transcribing punches and manually calculating time cards. The system does it for you automatically. Multiple locations are not a problem either, it is web-based, and phone apps are available.
The numbers come from the APA (American Payroll Association), the nation's leading authority in payroll education, publications, and training.
