Time & Attendance

Enterprise time tracking solutions address tracking and accounting for employee hours and wages by cost center, employment function or department while giving management the ability to measure and track labor efficiency metrics. Here are the metrics you should be using to evaluate a comprehensive time & attendance software package:

Overtime and time off
One of the most fundamental aspects to the creation and implementation of an effective leave time and overtime tracking system involves the ability to effectively reduce costs through the reduced amount of time calculation required of managers and supervisors throughout the company. In other words, while it is easy for overtime and leave time benefits accrual to be misreported in a system that does not utilize advanced time and attendance tracking software, the right solutions will provide automation which can tangibly reduce management’s time spent monitoring by hours every day. This way, time and attendance software automatically monitors employees’ accordance with pre-established rules for time off and overtime limits.

Worforce analytics
Reigning in the labor expenses incurred by operations requires the development of a real-time view of how these operations actually unfold, which parts of the available workforce are really needed and when they are needed. With the right time and attendance tracking software, both the hours of work involved as well as the number of employees and independent consultants that are needed, can be dramatically reduced. This cost saving measure is provided by the efficiency of calculation that would be otherwise virtually impossible without the right software.

Payroll Export Function
One highly necessary feature to the right time tracking software should be the inclusion of an module that will export the time data to the appropriate system that handles payroll, benefits tracking, and most importantly, to those modules that handle efficiency analytics. Mapping the organization by payroll will open up a vast world of understanding how the cost of labor is benefitting the company, and help see areas for improvement.

Vacation and holiday time
While managing the vacation schedules for an extensive workforce is a complex task that can be managed only by the right time and attendance software, the automation of vacation schedules for an international workforce should also be a key metric that the software buyer looks for. That’s because the different customs of globally based employees and their respective vacation time requirements should be accurately accounted for in the software that is selected.

Reports
While key metrics to be delivered by the chosen time and attendance software should include tracking, the collection of data and the assurance of approval facilitation and compliance with rules, there is also another feature that must be sought after by those responsible for choosing this type of software.

This is found in the reporting and analysis of all the created data. This function is highly necessary for setting short-term and long-term goals based on past performance metrics as applied to the time and attendance decisions that were carried out. For instance, when one team spends a certain amount of time on a given project, the measured productivity can be compared to that of another team given a different project. Factored into the analysis should be the time taken off by each team member as well as the overtime used.

Such a report should be able to produce the advanced charting metrics with which a management team can interactively plan ahead by dealing with areas of concern before they arise.

Tracking projects
Key features for enterprises which seek to track their employee's time and attendance include the following:

Automated assignment of work
Team member collaboration
Manager-level dashboards
Executive-level dashboards
Indicators of project health
Integration between various project tracking applications
Automatic timesheet data coordinated to project schedule updates
employee scheduling
Worforce analytics
Labor distribution metrics
Automation of attendance policy rules
Employee benefit tracking
Easy export to external payroll systems


Article by : http://www.hrvillage.com/human-resources