Zippia recently reported that Americans left 768 million days of paid time off (PTO) on the table in 2018. Though people have a variety of reasons for not taking leave, it’s almost certainly the case that not every worker who left PTO on the table did so intentionally.
Your employees not getting the time they need to rest can lead to dire consequences in their lives. Your business’s productivity could also suffer and you may even have legal ramifications. Have a look at some critical timesheet management mistakes that could lead to bad outcomes and find out how you can avoid them.
Overlapping Time Errors
Double counting the time an employee spends working often crops up as a timesheet-related mistake. This happens in instances where employees on paid leave have to log in to sort out a crucial matter.
Double counting can also happen in reverse. Perhaps the records say your employee was on leave on days when they were really at work. Both events can take time to figure out, but the real risk is that these kinds of errors often go undetected until the mistake snowballs.
You can avoid both types of double-counting errors by having a smart timesheet that does PTO tracking, scheduling, and processing time off requests. This way, all your time-related entries are kept in one place. Sorting through double-counting issues is then made easier.
Time Theft
Friends clocking in absent friends is an old and still relevant problem. Many employees (especially new ones) don’t see how much of a problem “covering” for their buddies causes. Companies lose an average of 4.5 hours per employee each week to this practice.
Biometric time-clocking is the answer to this problem. This reduces the risk of buddy punching and simple human error to your time-tracking admin. A fingerprint or facial recognition system is usually the best way to implement this into your timesheet management architecture.
Bad Record Keeping
Human error or sub-par time-tracking solutions put you at big legal risk. If you don’t have excellent people doing your filing admin and records then you could end up with disorganized or incomplete information in your records.
Each employee’s time off, hours worked, pay, and overtime needs to be meticulously recorded and ready for the IRS at all times. Your system should also be capable of keeping records for long after the employee leaves (many companies even keep records permanently just to be safe). The compliance risk you face could result in fines, penalties, and lengthy audits.
Upgrade to Online Timesheet Management
Keeping an accurate account of the hours worked by your employees is a big deal! The information is vital to many aspects of running your company, from productivity analytics to legal compliance.
There are many things that can derail your efforts to be as accurate as possible. Double counting on the administrator’s side and dishonest reporting on the employee’s side can result in errors that are difficult to resolve. Bad quality record-keeping itself can also be a costly mistake in the end.
You can avoid all these mistakes by upgrading to a trusty online timesheet management system. Find out more by viewing our product’s features for yourself.
