Thousands of staffing agencies each and every week put out the request for their employees to turn in their complete and accurate timesheets. The common headaches soon follow. A recent survey of customers resulted in our compiling this list of the 5 reasons why paper timesheets require Aspirin.
5. They can be hard to read
How excited you are to see that you’ve received all of this week’s timesheets on time! Maybe you’ll get out of the office by 7:00PM tonight. Then you discover that a nearly a half dozen of them are unreadable. The hand writing is worse than a graffiti artist’s tag on a bridge overpass. “Is that an 8 or a 6?” Looks like a late night of interpreting and fact checking. Sound familiar?
4. They are not easily accessible
Someone calls with a question about a timesheet from two weeks ago. You quickly get the answer from your handy spreadsheet. Oh yes, now they want a copy of the actual timesheet. Now it’s off to dig through the filing cabinet to locate it. Next stop…the fax machine or scanner.
3. Rarely are they all submitted on time
Timesheets are due at the same time every week. That never changes. Most of the timesheets make it on time as requested. But there is always a handful that get stuffed under the door or faxed to your office sometime over the weekend. It’s not technically late, right? It’s only 6:00 PM somewhere.
2. They contain incomplete information
We all forget things. But signing your name to your timesheet? If I’m getting paid I sign wherever they tell me to.
1. They include costly incorrect math
Sometimes you might wonder if 1 + 1 is in fact 3. If the numbers don’t add up, what a hassle. The employee just wants to get paid. You really want to pay them and bill your client. The weekly run around begins again.
In this digital age that we live in it’s amazing how we’re still connected to such an ancient process. As the newer generation of employees hits the job market and as companies adapt to the web and mobile communications, it’s easy to see the handwriting on the wall for the paper timesheet process. The ability to accurately capture employee data and report it to all that need it in your organization, including your clients, is critical. Save your Aspirin for the other headaches that come along and consider these problems solved by adopting a web based timesheet solution.
