The basic idea is that their service displays your data via the web while they mold it into nice looking graphs, tables, or charts. This type of dashboard could be useful for managing everything from customer service calls to a manufacturing schedule, and all in real time.

I noticed they have an API, which is another way of saying that perhaps someday we’ll integrate with their service. That opens the door to all kinds of cool improvements like, for instance, a real-time overtime report you check on your smartphone.

Many mandatory State changes have occurred for the 2012 year:

• 2012 Minimum Wage Changes: Arizona, Colorado , Florida, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, and Vermont
• New Jersey – Updated and added a new Record keeping Requirement Poster
• Connecticut – is mandating a new Paid Sick Leave Poster available within a week.
• California – Updated its Notice A, Notice B, and Discrimination Poster
• Louisiana – Earned Income Tax Credit, but the poster isn’t ready yet.
• Nevada – Discrimination Notice
• Oklahoma – Workers’ Compensation

For these States, we can ship the posters without the NLRA and then can ship a separate NLRA piece to post in the event it gets approved.

Posters are out of compliance w/out getting the updates mentioned!

IF YOU DO NOT ALREADY HAVE THIS YEAR’S POSTER, FILL OUT A CONTACT FORM WITH THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION:

• The number of posters needed
• Language: English or Spanish available
• The state(s) where you will use the poster(s)
• Your shipping address

ONCE RECEIVING YOUR REQUEST, WE WILL BILL YOUR CARD ON FILE FOR A ONE-TIME CHARGE OF $30 PER POSTER PLUS $8 FOR IMMEDIATE SHIPPING.

If you are in the restaurant industry – or any highly dynamic field where schedules change quickly and constantly – you need a scheduling system that can match those demands.

We discovered HotSchedules after they started using our software for their own company’s time tracking needs. Obviously, we don’t have to worry about the dynamic schedules of the restaurant business here at Timesheets.com, but I wanted to check out their software anyway because a lot of our customers do. And boy, I’m glad I did. It is awesome software!

HotSchedules isn’t just a spreadsheet of simple schedules, the sophisticated software helps prevent overtime by keeping track of employee’s accumulated hours each week. It accommodates last minute schedule changes by checking up to date availability instead of sorting through sticky notes, emails, phone messages, etc. Messages for requests and confirmation of changes are automatically sent to managers and employees. The software also helps to keep the restaurant on budget by not over-scheduling.

The price is good too. It costs only $35 for a team of up to 25 – pretty reasonable for all you get.

I can only imagine how useful this kind of software could be for a restaurant. Too bad it wasn’t around back when I was in college. Maybe more of my time off requests would have been accepted because the poor manager would have been less confused!

There are a lot of nice features about our software, but one of my personal favorites is the overall way it’s organized.

The first page an administrator or supervisor sees when they first log in, is an easily navigable page to all of their employee’s relevant data – if you want to check out the hourly timecards, you click on the hourly timecard links for the desired employee; if you want to see their settings, you click on their names.

We don’t start you off on timesheets, or expense sheets, or settings, assuming that one or the other is the most important. We know that managing your employees is what’s important, so the list of your employees and links to their respective pages comprises the home page.

We’ve just made the home page even better!

First, we changed the colors of the supervisor and admin icons so that they don’t compete with other colors on the page. And we’ve changed the name of the home page. It’s now called Employee Links, instead of just Employees. We thought that made more sense since the page contains links to all of your employee’s relevant pages.

We hope you like the changes!

Cases against employers are on the rise in this country and it’s just not wise to assume that “it will never happen to me”. From time to time tenured employees turn on employers. Sometimes brand new employees quit and file complaints. And sometimes even potential employees file discrimination charges.

Keeping time records and human resources records can help protect employers in these cases.

While paper records can be useful, courts trust online records with digital date stamps because neither employer nor employee can tamper with them. An online time clock such as our Timesheets.com software contains just such an audit trail. The records themselves can be edited and archived but the events associated with each timestamp is cannot.

• Overtime A time clock with a complete audit trail can prove an employer’s innocence in a case against overtime violations. Our software keeps record of every single punch, edit, and archived entry. The system records when these adjustments were made and who made them.
• Discrimination The Timesheets.com software also includes human resources documents which can record commendation, disciplinary action, and other complaints or successes noted by an employee or the employer. This way the employee and employer are always clear on where they stand, what the issues were, and when they occurred.
• Wrongful Termination By keeping records each time there is an issue, if termination does result, there will be no mistaking the reasons as well as the length of time that the issue went unresolved.

Even if a case is groundless or fraudulent and if a company has all the records they need to save them from a guilty verdict, the legal process is still going to be costly.  Employment practices liability insurance will offer financial coverage for a firm in the case of lawsuits made by an employee. While record keeping will help a firm win the case, insurance can help a firm afford the inevitable court and lawyer costs.

Insurance and stringent record keeping can both be useful tools for a business owner.

The recent Groupon overtime lawsuit is a good example of the care companies must take to follow FLSA regulations.

Groupon has quickly grown their sizable company to almost 10,000 employees. But because they were careless in their payroll practices, their future is bleak.

About 1,050 past employees are now in the process of a couple of class action overtime lawsuits. If the lawsuits prove valid, this could cost the company big. Depending on individual awards, the payouts themselves could exceed $2 million.

How Could a Company Let This Happen?
There are a couple of factors which often get businesses into trouble.

1. A company may classify employees incorrectly for two reasons
   1. to avoid paying overtime (exempt vs non-exempt employees)
   2. to avoid paying payroll taxes (contractor vs employee).
2. The company may not understand record keeping laws.
   1. Employees must record their hours
   2. Companies must retain all wage computation records for at least two years.

Timekeeping Fraud Protection
Familiarity with FLSA guidelines and the use of a time clock is a company’s best insurance against these kinds of lawsuits.

Making sure the employee is classified correctly and then keeping stringent records complete with an audit trail can help protect a company if they ever are taken to court.

Time keeping software like Timesheets.com will calculate the hours and overtime so that so that even if a company does payroll in-house, calculation errors will never arise. Additionally, all clock punches, edits, and requests will be saved alongside the record.

These days in our sue happy world, employers need to take greater care to protect themselves against lawsuits. Digital, third party records take the slant off of either party’s claim, making the whole process much simpler and safer.

The blog post is about the art of writing articles on not so glamorous topics and the usefulness of maintaining a business blog.

It’s all about helping out the customer. When your customers succeed so does your business!

Offering knowledge in the form of blog posts and articles helps business!

Occasionally, life outside of work comes between an employee and their arrival at the office. Employees have families, rough days, broken things they need to fix, breakfast spilled on clean clothes, and a hundred other things which might go wrong on any given morning. It’s easy to be understanding with employees who are occasionally late but what do you do about the ones who are late all the time? Start by trying to sympathize with their issues and then consider some strategies to help get them on track.

Causes of Chronic Tardiness
There are many reasons other than plain irresponsibility that might lead to chronic tardiness and absenteeism. Some of these may include:

• Schedule conflicts If your employee is a part time worker and has a second job realize that scheduling for both can be challenging. An employee needs to work full time to pay the bills so realize that this job is just as important to the employee as the other one. Try adjusting the schedule to resolve conflict.
• Child care issues When family members care for children, schedules can conflict. Maybe allowing for a slightly later or earlier schedule would solve the problem.
• Commuting problems Some employees live a long way from work and run into all kinds of unforeseen traffic situations. Giving these employees a later schedule might just make them happy and on time.
• Lack of motivation or interest If the job is not interesting or challenging enough, an employee may drag his feet getting through the door. Discuss this with the employee and see if there are any additional assignments or tasks which may be more fitting for this particular employee.
• Health problems Physical or mental conditions can make it very hard to get moving. Find out if there are any medical issues preventing the employee from getting out the door on time and make sure that they are addressed by a doctor.

First Step: Positive Reinforcement
Being a manager means dealing with peoples strengths AND their weaknesses. For some, punctuality is a problem, for others it might be friendliness or distractions. Dealing with personality differences can be challenging. Probably the best way to deal with the negatives is by focusing on the positives and reinforcing good behavior when it is done. If employees like you, they will generally want to please you, so rather than starting with strict discipline, try positive reinforcement.

Second Step: Discipline
However, if you’ve tried everything and you still have employees who abuse time off and attendance, some discipline may be in order. Once you’ve decided that you need to take the route of discipline be sure that it is issued to all employees at this point and is well documented in event of any legal processions. Start with an informal warning and then progress to a more formal verbal warning. If that still doesn’t work you can give a written warning, a suspension, and finally termination.

Additional resources:

Well, because some of them are simply not well designed. But even well-designed software Timesheets.com, the rich feature set can still be a little confusing at first.

The reason is because there are extras for people who need them but, since everyone has different needs, relevant features for some will be irrelevant to others.

I want to make the software easy to grasp from the get-go so I’m organizing the features into categories. Hopefully this will give you a better feel for the availability of features and which of them you need for your business specifically.

• The Home Screen
• Links to Settings and Timesheets
• Links to Clock In/Out Employees
• The Setup Wizard
• Company Wide (global) Settings
• Hourly Time Tracking
• The Timecard – Clocking In and Manual Entry
• Account/Department Codes
• The Audit Trail
• Time Change Requests (alerts)
• Close of Payroll
• Project Time Tracking
• The Timecard – Manual Entry, Timers, and the Week View
• Account/Department Codes
• Customers
• Time Change Requests (alerts)
• Expense Tracking
• Vendors
• Events
• Reconcile Process
• Settings
• Employee Settings and Options
• Supervisor Settings
• Reports
• Hours Reporting
• Payroll Reports
• Customizable Reports
• Expense Reporting
• Analysis Reports
• Tardy Reports
• Location Reports
• The Company Calendar
• Employee Communication
• Memos
• Announcements
• Status Updates
• Accruals and Time Off
• Security: Location restrictions
• Directory
• Active and Inactive Employees

For even more detailed information about our features and how the site is organized, check out our YouTube channel!