Is This Your Situation: Concerned About Time and Attendance Tracking

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What do you do to keep track of your employees: a program, old-fashioned time cards or just a yellow legal pad and a pen? No matter what you use, do you really take the time to study the results and consider whether you’re losing money due to inefficiency? Did you ever bother to calculate how much money you may be losing just in one month? It may be time to think more strategically.

First of all, you have to become more sophisticated. An automated time and attendance system isn’t a guarantee of perfect efficiency, but it’s a start. If your employees are still filling out time cards, it could be costing your business a lot more than just the cards themselves. Are you thinking a new system might be expensive? Just think about how much such a system could save you, and you might be surprised at how it might actually more than pay for itself.

Meanwhile, no matter what method you use, consider the following headaches you may be giving yourself:

Headache #1: Too much time spent by supervisors approving time sheets. Is there a way to create a more automated system?

Headache #2: Employees who don’t always write down their true time worked. How can you fix this?

Headache #3: Hand-keying issues that lead to errors and fraud. Again, automation may be the key.

Headache #4: Managing overtime. How can you keep employees from going into overtime hours before you even know about it?

Headache #5: Perhaps the worst of all, exposure from an audit or employee complaint.

A better scenario evolves when you convert to an automated time and attendance management system — and learn how to interpret the data. Consider the benefits:

  1. Classifications, labor contracts and policies are automatically applied when processing each employee’s paycheck
  2. Easier determination of benefit eligibility under the Affordable Care Act.
  3. You’ll pay employees for their actual time worked, avoiding lawsuits and back wages.
  4. Payroll errors from manual data entry are virtually eliminated.

How much less stressful would it be to run your business knowing that you are not only saving a considerable amount of money by automating, but you are also protecting your assets from potential employee lawsuits and maybe, even worse, an IRS audit?

Give us a call. We’ll show you how to choose the right system for your particular needs and how easy it is to integrate that new system into your business. Even more, we can teach you how to interpret the results.

Source: Industry Newsletters A Division of Home Actions LLC

Bracket Changes and More From the IRS

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You haven’t even filed your 2017 taxes yet, but the IRS has already announced changes that will affect your 2018 taxes, which you’ll be filing in 2019. The changes were announced in Revenue Procedure 2017-58, which runs 28 pages, but below are some key points. How do these changes impact you? Give us a call, and we’ll explain how they change your tax situation. Read more

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Providing Real Management for a Virtual Office

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The virtual office model means employees aren’t housed in one site — they’re probably working out of their own homes or in rented office spaces across the country or even all over the world. Thanks to conferencing technology, including programs like Skype, and screen-sharing technologies like Joine.me, virtual offices can approximate traditional setups. And the cost of this equipment is more than offset by the savings realized by not having to pay travel expenses, site rentals or office space rent. Read more