Your business has grown to the point that scheduling your
employees on white board or using spreadsheet has become a
real nightmare. You are spending countless hours, trying to
figure out the scheduling puzzle, reconciling employee timesheets,
generating invoices for your clients and payroll for employees.
The solution to problem is clear - you need employee scheduling
software! But how do you choose one? Where do you start?
There are two types of employee scheduling and two types of employee scheduling
software:
Static (shift-based) scheduling
Dynamic scheduling
Static (often called shift-based) is a type of scheduling that deals with work
shifts that practically never change. Businesses that do static scheduling
typically have two or more shifts in a 24 hour period that need to be covered by
employees. Employees are rotated through those shifts with some pre-defined
periodicity. An example of shift-based scheduling business would be 24 hour
restaurants where waitresses are covering three 8 hour shifts.
Another important aspect of static scheduling is that any given shift is typically
permanently attached to specific location or client. For example: cash register
1, 2 and 3 in retail store, need to be covered by employees from 8am - 8pm.
Dynamic scheduling deals with work shifts and locations/clients that constantly change.
Home Care and Employment agencies, Pet Sitting services and HVAC technicians would be
an example of businesses that deal with dynamic scheduling. Employees are typically
scheduled to service different locations/clients at different times.
Any given employee scheduling software would cater to one type of scheduling or another.
So, the first important question that you need to ask yourself is what type of scheduling
do you do? Static or dynamic?
About 70% of employee scheduling software on the market today is geared towards
static shift-based scheduling and only 30% including TimeCurve Scheduler were
developed to tackle dynamic scheduling.
To keep your business running, you need to pay your employees and to get paid
by your clients. This means that you need to generate invoices for clients and
paychecks for employees. To accomplish this, majority of small businesses use
bookkeeping software, such as QuickBooks. However, even with the help of
QuickBooks manual data entry is still necessary. Generating 60-70 invoices and
40-50 paychecks manually is very laborious and time consuming task. Look for employee scheduling software that will integrate with your favorite
bookkeeping software and will fully automate invoicing and payroll processes.
Only a handful of employee scheduling software on the market today, including
TimeCurve Scheduler will offer this capability.
Before invoices and paychecks can be automatically generated by your scheduling
software, you will need to reconcile employee timesheets. Service type businesses
typically require that their employees keep track of their work hours. At the end
of billing cycle employees submit their timesheets (time cards).
Timesheets or time cards are vital piece of information because clients are billed and employees
are paid according to the hours recorded on the timesheets. But before invoices and
paychecks can be created, scheduling hours needs to be reconciled with hours
recorded on time cards. This process can be very time consuming and will require
a lot of manual data entry.
You can eliminate this bottleneck by using stationary or telephony punch clock.
Telephony Punch clock will allow your employees to punch in and punch out from
their place of work by placing a phone call. Punch Clock or Time Card software records actual
hours that employee worked. These hours are then automatically reconciled with
scheduling hours, thereby fully automating reconciliation process.
Employee Time Clock software is typically offered by software companies as a service with
monthly fee. The fee depends on number of employees that will be using the system.
The average cost of using such system is 1$ per employee per month. Not every punch
clock service will offer integration with your favorite bookkeeping software. Instead
you will be receiving a daily email with punch in/out data or you will be able to login
to service company web site to view punch clock information.
A much better alternative to punch clock service is employee scheduling software that
offers integrated Telephony Punch Clock/Time Clock. Integrated Telephony Punch Clock will monitor
incoming telephone calls through the phone line attached to computer's modem. Since this
type of Punch Clock is integrated into scheduling software it can fully automate
timesheet reconciliation. Integrated Telephony Punch Clock is also more economical than
punch clock service. Only very few employee scheduling solutions on the market
today offer integrated punch clock feature. TimeCurve Scheduler is one of them.
Another important choice you will have to make when choosing staff scheduling
software is: Internet or PC based software?
With the advent of internet and ever increasing internet connection speeds many
software vendors began developing and now offering internet based software.
Employee scheduling software is not an exception.
Both Internet and PC based software have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Internet Based Software
Internet based software is almost always sold as a service for a monthly or yearly fee.
Essentially, it is a rental program where you will always have to pay a monthly or yearly
fee for as long as you use the software. Typically the monthly fee depends on the
number of employees being scheduled and it is roughly $1 per employee per month.
The software and database that it uses reside on the servers of the company that
owns it. You access the software through the Internet Browser from your computer.
With Internet based software, you do not own the software or scheduling data that
you enter into the system. If the company you renting software from goes out of
business, or if the server is infected by a virus, you risking loosing all your
information. There is also a privacy concern since you never know who is
accessing your data files residing on remote server. You need to have high speed
internet connection to use Internet based software. Internet platform is
technically inferior to powerful Personal Computers. Don't expect Internet based
software to offer as many features and capabilities as PC based software.
The advantage of Internet based scheduling software is the fact that your
information can be accessed from any computer in the world that has internet
access.
PC Based Software
PC based software can almost always be purchased. The software and its database
that it uses to store information are installed on a local computer. You own a
software license and all of the data entered into the system. If the company that
you purchased software from goes out of business you still keep the software and
data that it generated. There are no privacy concerns since you have full control
over who is accessing your information. You do not need internet access to run
the software. PC based platform is superior to Internet platform, so you can
expect PC based software to have a lot more powerful features and capabilities.
Disadvantage of PC based scheduling software is that it can only be used on the
computer it is installed on. However, there are internet services available
www.gotomypc.com that allow remote access
from any computer to any computer in the world, as long as both computers have
internet access.
Whenever possible take full advantage of evaluation or demo version of the
software. Be sure that differences between evaluation and full version are
minimal to avoid unpleasant surprises after the purchase. Evaluate as many
features as you can, and try to apply them to specifics of your business.
Try to get a feel as to what it would be like to use the software on a daily
basis.