Why Time Tracking and Offering PTO is Important For Small Businesses

Many small businesses offer PTO to their employees and use time clock software to assist. While owners are working on the guarantees, salaries, and working conditions, the employees are hard at work helping to build the business. But not all business owners think about using time clock software in their company to help track paid time off. 

There are two main reasons for it:

First of all, not every entrepreneur knows what time clock software is and why it should be used in a small business. 

The second reason is more common. The owners underestimate the significance of the system and ignore using it. In this article, we will cover the importance of tracking hours worked and offering paid time off. Therefore, you will understand why tracking employee PTO - paid time off is crucial for effective business management. 

What is Time Clock Software?

Modern time clock software is a solution to easily track employee hours worked for accurate timesheets. These timesheets are used for the payroll process. In addition, most time clock software offers excellent features such as GPS tracking, payroll integration, timesheet calculations, time theft prevention, PTO tracking, and much more. 

Reliable time clocks allow employers to hold employees accountable and prevent buddy punching.

PTO: How Should We Define It?

PTO is simply an acronym for paid time off. Employees take time off for vacations, holidays, sick, personal reasons, etc., and receive payment for it. At times, employees often need additional days off and rely on PTO as a benefit. 

How Does PTO Help Your Business?  

Why do some avoid offering PTO? It could be that they don’t understand the value of such a benefit to their employees. Let’s explain why PTO is so valuable for small businesses. 

• Small businesses usually can’t offer impressive salaries. People enter a startup or a small company to gain experience, meet with people and receive reasonable remuneration. If you can’t provide your employees a competitive salary, you need to find other benefits. And using PTO can become a great advantage for the employees. 
• Paid time off ensures comfortable and safe guarantees for the workers. When a person wants to land a job, it is necessary for them to feel comfortable and cared for. Being able to receive money while still being sick or having some rest is a great feature that a small business can offer. Do you want to obtain a high-quality and persistent employee? Did you know that 63% of them consider PTO as one of the best benefits?
• Do you want to inspire your employees to be scheduling workers? If you ensure PTO, they will be absent less since there’s no point in missing the job. Using time clock software will help a company track the working hours, too. 
• Using time clock software can make the whole process a lot easier. Being either an employer or an employee, you don’t need to use paper timesheets. The software tool will calculate time and hours automatically. No more manually adding timesheets is required. Implementing brand new time clock software for PTO management will ensure your employees are given paid time off appropriately. 

It is estimated that 73% of small business owners offer their employees PTO. Offering paid time off can help your company obtain top talent. 

Recommendations For a Simple PTO Policy

If you are new to developing a PTO policy, then chances are you may need recommendations. You are free to choose if you want employees to accrue PTO, have a set amount per year, or have unlimited paid time off. But it would be best if you never forgot your company's goals, the limitations of your budget, and current laws and regulations.

There are 3 basic strategies that you can choose. Let’s discuss them in more detail. 

• The first one is simple. When the year starts, you should develop a plan for each employee or group of employees. First, they will receive the number of days to be their PTO days. Then, they can use them on their own.
• Another option is more intricate. Here it would help if you defined how efficient each worker is. Another option is to allow each employee a definite number of hours per pay period that he or she will accrue.  
• The last one is said to be the most beneficial. Here the employer can’t introduce significant limitations. The number of days off is unlimited. There are no rigid rules for days off as long as they abide by the company policy. 

A time clock software will automatically calculate an employee’s PTO bank to accurately reflect when they have used paid time off, how much they have remaining, and how many hours they have accrued. 

These are the strategies for small business owners. Using these methods, small companies can attract more talented people to work with them. 

But these strategies aren’t the only aspects to consider offering a PTO policy for a particular company. There are lots of things for consideration. 

For example, as the owner of the company, you should define who is eligible for paid time off and the amount they must receive. In most cases, employers enable full-time workers with PTO. And part-time employees are left with none or partial PTO benefits.

Another aspect relates to the days which are considered to be a part of the PTO policy. For example, there should be specific days to be free for everyone. These could be company holidays, for example. Also, the company has to provide detailed information about sick days off and other regulations. 

Another thing to remember is the laws of your region or state. You can't manage the PTO policy according to your company's preferences if they do not abide by the law. You can also ask for expert assistance from an HR resource such as hr360 by Zywave

How to Manage PTO With Time Clock Software

Paid time off can be challenging to track when performing manually. Issues such as breaking compliance regulations, inaccurate payroll, unhappy employees, overpaying, and underpaying are just a few of many problems if not tracked accordingly. Allowing time clock software to manage your PTO for you is a great way to ensure error-free timesheet data. Time tracking software improves PTO tracking and streamlines payroll to represent accurate pay. 

If you already have a PTO policy in place, then great, you will update the time clock software accordingly to track employee time off. However, if you do not have a paid time off policy, then you may need help from proficient writers from a reliable source such as DoMyWriting to create a draft for you.