The Dark, Ghastly World of Manual Scheduling and Attendance

time-theft-payrollhero

Psst! Are you still using punch cards, time clocks, or any other form of manual scheduling to track employee attendance and schedule? If you are, we have bad news.

Sit down for a minute and consider the following statistics:

  • A full 95 percent of employees steal from their employers through time theft. More than 30 percent of these employees perform time theft by writing in earlier arrivals or later departures, or having a co-worker clock them in or out,  – 2013 survey, Kessler International
  • Buddy punching accounts for 2.2 percent of gross payroll losses – Nucleus Research
  • Businesses lose an average of 4.5 hours per week per employee in time theft – that’s more than half the amount you pay for a regular employee in a day. – American Payroll Association
  • Each year it costs companies an average of $65 per employee to collect, calculate and enter payroll data. Unauthorized overtime adds yet another $292 per employee, and mistakes in time calculation and employee fraud combined cost an additional $430 per employee. Therefore, manual timekeeping methods cost companies an average of $787 per employee annually. – G&A Partners

The aforementioned figures are worth pondering, right?

Now let’s dig further into the dark, ghastly world of manual scheduling and attendance.

Behold the TERRIBLE TRIO!

The Deceitful Paper-Based Time Sheet

Paper-based scheduling and attendance can be as simple as jotting down everyone’s name in one column and putting in the number of hours they’ve done in a week on another column. Often, login and logout times are jotted down too. It sounds uncomplicated but here’s why this method is outdated:

  • Reconciling time sheets, accounting for vacation leaves and overtime, and adjusting schedules takes a lot of time! What if the staff doubles in number for the next six months? The horror!
  • There’s a lot of room for error, whether intentional or not. Garbled handwriting, anyone?
  • Since it’s taking you forever to go over the time sheets, pay is most likely going to be delayed. Delayed pay means unhappy employees which, of course, leads to a decline in productivity.
  • It’s not shareable. Sure, you can have neat photocopies of the time sheets but at the end of the month, most of them are lost or mangled into pieces.

The Abominable Manual Time Clock

Many businesses still stick to the manual time clock because of its low cost. In comparison to time scheduling software, it’s obviously less expensive. But really, how certain are you that the time clock is saving your business money?

It could take a few seconds for an employee to punch in and out, yet much time is required to record and compile the raw data. In short, you need to hire an extra pair of hands to do all these things. The funds that you supposedly save goes into the daily wage of the employee who collects and processes the data.

Next, you could be paying for work that isn’t done in the first place! Enter buddy punching. It’s not common for one of your employees to text a co-worker to kindly clock in for him because he may be running late for work. Or worse, someone from production got a nasty hangover last night, can’t get to work, yet one of the team members clocked in for the absentee today because they’re BFFs.

And there’s the costs of time cards. It may look insignificant at first but the monthly costs could quickly add up, particularly if you’re adding more employees.

Lastly, like it’s deceitful sister – the paper-based time sheet, the manual time clock is a vast magnetic field for errors.

The Sinister Spreadsheet

What’s so sinister about the humble Excel spreadsheet?

Let’s talk about dueling spreadsheets. While there’s no princess to be saved nor kingdoms to be claimed, dueling spreadsheets can be a waste of time, money, and effort in the long run. This occurs when multiple versions of the same spreadsheet do not reconcile with each other.

This Smart Data Collective post explains dueling spreadsheets well:

It happens because the data in a desktop spreadsheet is not bound to a single source that everyone is working from. It may be a single source, but the data may be collected at different times. There may be changes to formulas or additions or deletions that take place, and not everyone is on the same version. This is what happens when spreadsheets are used in repetitive, collaborative enterprise processes.

Research by Ventana on the dueling spreadsheets scenario revealed that 43 percent of their respondents reported that it happens frequently or all of the time, and one-third (31%) find it happening for the most important process that utilizes spreadsheets.

Despite these findings, organizations continue to embrace spreadsheets because “they seem to believe that, like the weather, you can complain about these issues but you can’t do much to change the situation.”

Put an End to the Terrible Trio of Manual Scheduling and Attendance!

Now that we’ve revealed the evil ways of the terrible trio, the PayrollHero team would love to help you prevent the above mentioned pitfalls!

Our ridiculously client-focused approach guarantee that we’ll be with you as you battle your way out of the dark, ghastly world of manual scheduling and attendance. Isn’t it about time that you seek an automated time and attendance system that provides real value for what you’re paying for?

Get in touch with us today and we’ll help your business transition quickly to a seamless time and attendance management system!

 

Watch Our Singapore Payroll In Action

Would you like to see our Singapore payroll platform run a payroll? Rohit in our Singapore office put together a quick video to show you how easy it is to run a payroll for your Singapore based business. Check it out below:

Want to learn more about our Singapore payroll platform? Reach out and one of our team would be pleased to get on a call with you to discuss your needs.

Quickbooks Philippines

quickbooks philippines manilaWe have added a new tool to PayrollHero that enables companies in the Philippines to export a QuickBooks journal entry for easy use within your Quickbooks account. This is a formatted QuickBooks Journal Entry report for a specified period that can be imported into the QuickBooks accounting software.

The end result looks like this:

quickbooks philippines

Check out the complete details on how PayrollHero and Quickbooks can work together.

If you are interesting in learning more about PayrollHero’s Philippine product, visit us at PayrollHero.ph. One of our team would be pleased to speak one on one to learn more about your needs.

Do you use Xero? Let us know how we can help with your Xero integration.

How do I open a restaurant in the Philippines? Presenting the PayrollHero Knowledge Kit!

The PayrollHero blog aims to be the knowledge repository for any restaurant owner or retailer in Southeast Asia. We have built our database with things you need to know while doing business in the Philippines.

With that in mind, we have been working on a little project. Presenting the PayrollHero Knowledge Kit for opening a restaurant in the Philippines!

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Download it now – free! 
This starter kit was put together to give you high level information about the Philippines, share some thoughts from restaurant owners, and present relevant statistics from our market research.

The information here includes research that will help you open a restaurant in the Philippines or expand into the country.

  • We talk about what BIR, SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG are all about.The pages are linked to relevant tax forms and websites that offer more detailed information if you want it.
  • There is an industry overview and analysis on the latest consumption trends in the country. For example, did you know that the Home delivery and takeaway sector grew at a staggering 10.3%. It’s closest competitor was the fast food industry at 8.1%.

But we don’t want to give you simple hard facts that you could just Google anyway. The Knowledge Kit has a wealth of information in the form of personal stories and experiences in these countries. We interviewed the owner of the Advent Manila Hospitality Group, Mr. Andrew Masigan, and asked him about how he runs his business in this part of the world. We see it as a way to help the community because there is no better way to learn than from people who have gone through the same roadblocks as your are facing right now.

We hope this information is useful to you. We would love to hear back from you with what you think about the Knowledge Kit, how we can make things better and how you use this Kit for your own research into the restaurant industry.

Lastly, we are releasing more of these for the retail and BPO industry. Watch out for more information about these industries and countries.

So go ahead and click on the image above to access the Knowledge Kit. Let us know what you think. And good luck with your new business!

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PayrollHero Certification: Hands on Experience with the App

badge-payroll-certificationLast week, Kieran our Head of Client Success, conducted training sessions for the new PayrollHero team members in Singapore as well as a few clients. We got some hands on experience with the app, which helped us gain a deeper understanding of how the product works. As an intern who has been here for a few weeks, my knowledge about the product came from speaking with team members, listening to sales pitches and reading about the product online. So it was an interesting experience to use the product on a demo account and view it from the perspective of a payroll administrator. All new PayrollHero team members get certified on the platform so that they know exactly what the platform can do.

Kieran took us through every aspect of the product. My first thought when I was told about the training was, “Wow, a two and a half day training session? But I already know everything about it!” Which, as you may have guessed, turned out to be highly overstated. Within the first two hours of training, I came to the conclusion that the product was far more powerful than I had expected.

The first day was about Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS). The next day was spent on generating payroll and the final day was dedicated to understanding time, attendance and scheduling using the app.

The interesting part about the app is its customization capabilities. A human resources (HR) administrator can record the company’s organizational chart. The hierarchy allows you to identify employee types and positions. Thresholds allow you to set rules on what kinds of notifications you get based on the activities of employees under you in the hierarchy. The thresholds have multiple permutations and combinations that, once customized, help you prioritize information that you need instantly versus information that can wait till a more suitable time.

badge-tas-certificationIt didn’t stop there. Customization extended to how you segment payroll: employer contributions (CPF, SDL, FWL), bonuses, vacation payments, advance payments, claims that need to be redeemed. Any kind of payment outside of the basic calculation of an employee’s hourly wages can be segmented and customized so that all a payroll administrator has to do, is enter which segment the payment should go into. The app can take care of debiting/crediting the amount to the required account. It will notify you when the account is hitting a pre-recorded limit. The flexibility of the app went as far as allowing you to import data from a spreadsheet, allowing the app to automatically fill in employee details.

While all of this might seem like a rather dry topic to train on for nearly three days, Kieran managed to make the whole session more interesting by throwing in quizzes and having interactive sessions. Every demo account had characters from Kieran’s favourite fiction series. Homer Simpson got a bonus for his outstanding work (let’s pretend like that is EVER going to happen), Sherlock Holmes got promoted to the next level on the org chart, Buffy Summers asked for a change in her schedule for the next 3 weeks and Harry Potter recorded coming in early to work consistently. All these characters were a part of the certification exercises, which made the entire process not only informative but also engaging.

The time, attendance and scheduling part of the course was done through an online training portal on the PayrollHero website. Again, I was pleasantly surprised by how detailed the app was and how customizable the entire process of scheduling was. It was impressive that the app was user friendly and flexible with creating, adjusting or removing schedules based on timing, location and type of work: whether it was a routine desk job or a part time job that required changing schedules often. The app, as was intended, was perfectly designed for retailers and restaurant owners who deal with employees who have erratic schedules which require constant adjustments.

The exercises and quizzes were effective in understanding how much we grasped from the lessons. It was clear that working with app required you to be consistent and methodological with the processes for entering data, giving system permissions, organizing the company’s hierarchy and setting customized options especially since the data that the system works with is sensitive. Finally, the certification undoubtedly served its purpose: it gave us a complete picture of how the app works and how a payroll administrator can benefit by using all its features for time, attendance, scheduling and payroll.

Learn more about PayrollHero Certification in the Philippines and Singapore.

#MyClock iOS App Updated

PayrollHero MyClock DTR Time Device

The PayrollHero #MyClock iOS app has been updated in the Apple app store. There are quite a few changes to the app, most noticeably is the design. The overall look has been updated as well as some new functionality.

Screen Shot 2015-06-23 at 11.19.31 AMThe #MyClock iOS app is designed for individual employee use. The app shows an employee their upcoming and past schedules, their clock in and out data, the clock photos as well as lets them require a change to their schedule or notify of an absent.

Interested to know more about how PayrollHero works? Check out our website or reach out to our team and we would be pleased to give you a free one on one demo of the platform as well as the features and benefits.

Visit the Apple app store for the #MyClock app

Customer Happiness Tools – Being Ridiculously Client Focused

Customer happiness is essential to everything we do at PayrollHero. One of our favourite catchphrases is “ridiculously client focused”, which means that we want to devote our resources towards making our clients happy. Everything else is secondary. And we aren’t the only ones with that perspective.

Over the last week, the PayrollHero team has been traveling all over the world. While spending an unnatural amount of your time in airports, you can’t help but notice the little things that pique your interest. The pictures that you see are from the London and Dublin airports, where customer feedback stations have been installed. Whether the feedback is about security, bathroom cleanliness (as in the case of Singapore’s Changi airport) or customer service, the idea behind these tools is to ensure that the customer experiences the best that we have to offer.

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Dublin Airport Security Feedback

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London Airport Security Feedback

The customer feedback tool can be extended to any service. Restaurants, retail stores, bathrooms, anything that involves customer interaction. With data analytics, you can do more than just find out how your outlet is performing. You can reward those who make it happen.

In that vein, PayrollHero created the TeamClock customer feedback tool. Imagine this: the sports apparel retail store you own is visited by a customer five minutes before it is time to shut down. While any other employee would request the customer to return the next day, this employee – let’s name him Bob – decided to let the customer in. Over the next 30 minutes, the customer went through your store and made the biggest purchase of the week, while Bob patiently helped him. While walking out, the customer spent a few seconds on the iPad sitting on your counter, typing out comments about the best customer service he has ever received.

Using the Xray Insights app, you noticed that a particular outlet received excellent customer feedback. With a closer look, you realized that the same employee – Bob – has been consistent with winning awesome feedback from customers. Not only do you have information about how well that outlet is doing, you also know who has contributed towards that outlet’s success.

This makes for an easy and efficient way to reward reliable employees. With data to back you up on how capable your employees are, you can make decisions on whom to promote, to manage other staff or simply reward at the end of the week. This approach allows your employees to be ridiculously client focused as well.

So this is what we have been working on at PayrollHero. The customer feedback tool is currently in beta stage. We will keep you posted with updates and changes that we introduce to the app. Till then, we hope the feedback you are receiving helps you identify the Bobs that make your outlet ridiculously client focused.

Want to get the PayrollHero Customer Feedback tool for your business? Reach out to us today and we would be pleased to speak further about how we can get your establishment setup to gather real time data.

Apple Announces the Release of iOS 9 for September 2015!

The World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) last week saw a host of announcements by Apple, including the introduction of Apple Pay in UK, a new trackpad feature for the iPad and (what is now becoming) the customary announcement on iOS upgrades. iOS 9 is scheduled to roll out in September, with the public beta starting out in July.

What does this mean for PayrollHero?Singapore Payroll

There are currently 3 PayrollHero iOS apps: TeamClock#MyClock and Xray Insights. The launch of iOS 9 means that we will stop supporting iOS 7. PayrollHero supports the most recent version of Apple’s iOS and the one prior. (which is the same support Apple provides for their iOS)

The new versions of the iOS PayrollHero apps will have:

  • Full compatibility with iOS 9.
  • Performance tweaks – faster and smoother operation.
  • Improvements on the face detection system.
  • Enhanced security and data privacy.
  • Multiple code optimizations and bug fixes.

The announced list of compatible devices with iOS 9 is:

  • iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, iPad Air, iPad Air 2
  • iPad mini, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3
  • iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus
  • iPod touch (fifth generation)
  • Newer devices than these above should be supported, please contact us at support first to confirm.

If you are using a 5th generation iPod, an iPad 2 or iPhone 4s or any newer models and you haven’t already upgraded to at least iOS 8, make sure you get on that as soon as possible. As of September, we will not be able to fix any bugs that surface on the iOS 7.1.2 or lower.

 

Certified Profile: Clare Matchett, ServiceSeeking Manila

As part of a new series on this blog we will be profiling certified PayrollHero users to learn more about them, their business, where they go to learn and best practices. 

First up is Clare Matchett, General Manager for ServiceSeeking Manila.
Clare Matchett, SeekingService Manila, General Manager

1. How would you describe your business? 
ServiceSeeking Manila is the Manila arm of ServiceSeeking.com.au, Australia’s best way to get free quotes from local businesses. Our team handles customer service, sales, data analysis, web development, SEO and a whole lot more.


2. What tools do you use to recruit?
We use traditional recruiting tools like job websites, forums and events. One of the most successful recruitment channels is actually referrals from existing team members. Some of our best staff were encouraged to apply by friends and family who worked with us and loved the company culture and office atmosphere.

3. What is your hiring philosophy? 
We look closely at applicants’ personality and general aptitude and tend to place more emphasis on this than skills, education and past experience in our industry. If someone is the right fit, they’ll have the curiosity, bubbliness and problem solving ability that helps them thrive in a company that moves quickly and believes in collaboration, openness and fun.

4. What blogs / newsletters do you read to stay up to date in your industry?
My favourite newsletter is from Sandler Training, a sales training company with a no nonsense approach to prospecting and winning and keeping clients.

5. How do you build company culture at ServiceSeeking? 
We emphasise our company values and make these a core part of recruitment, training and annual reviews. Weekly wrap ups with the entire office also let everyone know what others are working on, celebrate the small “wins” and help team members see the importance of their own role in our big picture success.

6. I saw on Linkedin you were “Streamlining HR policies and the recruitment process” can you explain more about that?  
We’ve learned over the years that being different to the average big BPO company is a key factor in our success in Manila. We’ve worked hard to cut out policies and processes that are not in line with our values and can hold our team back from delivering great quality service.

7. Is speaking Tagalog an advantage to you in running the business? 
My tagalog has a long way to go, but I do think employees appreciate when a foreigner takes the time to learn! It has certainly helped me understand more about Philippine culture, and it always gets a smile when I drop a word into the conversation, even with the wrong pronunciation.

8. Regarding the PayrollHero Certifications, what did you think of the certification courses? 
I was very impressed with the certification courses PayrollHero and its training partners provide. We were helped along every step of the way and the support made the transition from outsourced payroll provider to running this in-house much more smooth.

9. Was the certifications helpful in getting the most out of PayrollHero?

Much of the software is intuitive and just “makes sense”, but payroll in the Philippines is notoriously complicated. We’ve been able to transition to using PayrollHero without adding any new team members and this is mostly because of the great communication with the PayrollHero staff. Discrepancy checks were particularly helpful in letting us know where we’re at with the transition and how to set up loans, advances, bonuses, allowances and government contributions correctly.


PayrollHero has a deliberate onboarding process that is designed to understand every customer’s unique needs so that we can quickly and effectively transition your business onto PayrollHero. Reach out today for a free, 30 min. one on one conversation about how PayrollHero can work within your organization.

Payroll in APAC: The Philippines

The Payroll in APAC blog posts are (as you might have guessed), a series of blog posts on tax and employer contribution laws in APAC nations. This gives payroll and human resource administrators a high level understanding on what you should know in these countries. Our first post is on the Philippines.

Creditable and Final Withholding Taxes:

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is the Philippine equivalent of the IRS in the United States. Companies are required to withhold taxes from employees who are subject to income tax. They are then required to remit these taxes to the BIR.

There are two broad classifications of withholding taxes: Creditable withholding taxes and final withholding taxes. Creditable withholding taxes apply for certain income payments and are creditable against income tax. On the other hand, Final Withholding Taxes are not creditable against withholding taxes. Unlike the former, final withholding taxes are prescribed on royalties and interest incomes.

Social Security Service (SSS)

The SSS is the social security net for Filipinos. It covers a list of contingencies: from disabilities to maternity. All private companies are required to register with the SSS and deduct contributions for their employees. Around 70% of the contribution comes from the employer and 30% from the employee.

Deductions are made from the employee’s salary and remitted to the SSS. Payments are done monthly or quarterly, based on the type of employee. The summary on benefits and schedule on payments is posted here.

PhilHealth

The health insurance institution in the Philippines is called PhilHealth. All private and government institutions are required to register and deduct contributions from their employees’ salaries. PhilHealth covers a number of benefits. The share of the contribution is split between the employer and the employee. The payment dates and contribution schedule are available here.

Pag-IBIG – Home Development Mutual Fund

The final contribution that employers need to be aware of is Pag-IBIG. This institution provides housing finance for Filipinos. Contributions by the employer are equal to 2% of the employee’s salary. The dates for payment are in this link.

These are the 4 major tax and employer contribution laws that Payroll and Human Resource administrators should be aware of. At PayrollHero, we deduct the required contributions and generate payroll for our clients. Here are examples of how we compute BIR taxes, SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG contributions.

For more information on BIR, SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG with respect to what forms need to be filled and filing deadlines, make sure to click on the links!

Disclaimer: As always, consult your lawyer or accountant for advice! We are here to help, but your specific situation should be reviewed by a professional with complete knowledge of your situation.

If you are in need of a payroll provider in the Philippines that can provide an end to end solution, then let us know. PayrollHero’s Philippine cloud based payroll platform incorporates, time, attendance, scheduling, HRIS, business intelligence and Philippine payroll in one, easy to use solution.
Cloud Payroll Software for Philippines