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Product Conundrum: What Is The Best Solution For The Customer?

November 30th, 2011 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Cloud Based Time Management Solution | Hosted Time and Attendance System | Time and Attendance On-Demand | Web-Based Time and Attendance Software - (0 Comments)

In our weekly blogs, we provide information that describes the benefit of a time and attendance solution in an organization. One of our recent interactions was with a prospect customer that reviewed 10 separate products over several months and had yet to find one that met their needs. During the conversation our account executive asked a series of questions with the hopes of understanding their specific requirements.

It turned out that this prospective customer had gone through a series of flashy demonstrations all espousing the virtues of a hosted time and attendance solution. While the ATS workforce management software suite includes a hosted option, the customer they felt that their company’s corporate culture did not subscribe to that model. All they wanted was software that could be installed on their network for time capture purposes.

The moral of the story is that despite the huge advantages of a cloud based time management solution, some businesses are not ready to take the plunge. Educating a customer is one thing, offering them a solution that’s congruent to their need is another. Invariably, when customer’s needs are placed first it becomes a win-win. In the end, our account executive recommended a networked time and attendance system to the customer.

To read more about ATS time and attendance solutions, go to our website. You can also contact us or download our workforce management software brochures.

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Overtime Hours: Managing, Tracking and Paying

November 28th, 2011 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Benefit Accruals | Collective Bargaining | Labour cost | Labour Forecasting | Overtime | Premium pay - (0 Comments)

We came across a wonderful article by Frances Burks titled “Disadvantage of Overtime Work” and the issues associated with this phenomenon including: health problems, employee performance and the financial drawback.

In recent years, a wave of lawsuits have uncovered the fact that some employers did not have an effective tool to track and control employee overtime and other pay premiums. While there are some similarities with how overtime is paid in some jurisdictions, others vary significantly. These overtime class action suits demonstrate the need for workplace compliance. 

The easiest way to improve compliance and protect your organization from wage and hour lawsuits is to implement the ATS time and attendance system. The ATS time and attendance will help your organization:

  • Apply multijurisdictional pay and work policies
  • Track, manage and pay daily, weekly and bi-weekly overtime, premiums, call- ins and collective bargaining agreement overtime pay
  • Provide accurate audit trails and records of hours worked in the event of wage and hour disputes
  • Automate employee pay and rate changes mandated by complex collective bargaining agreements
  • Ensure compliance with provincial, federal and state regulations such as FMLA and FLSA
  • Generate reports for wage and hour claims, wrongful termination litigation, and other legal inquiries
  • Provide audit trails and accurate records of hours worked in the event of a wage and hour audit

 The ATS time and attendance system rules engine has enhanced flexibility that can determine specific types of pay. The system optimizes employee resources and reduces labour costs with employee scheduling, labour forecasting and benefit accruals. Our system helps you gain insight into the labour activities and achieve bottom-line results.

To learn more you can follow us on Twitter or download our brochures from our website. Our workforce management software user group is open for registration to current and potential customers.

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Why Automate?

November 24th, 2011 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Payroll | Time and Attendance | Time and Attendance On-Demand - (0 Comments)

 Whether you’re running a small business with 70 employees or an organization with 15,000 employees, a time and attendance system can make your life easier. But how can you choose a solution that meets your organization’s needs?

Organizations that have always used paper time sheets might be worried about transitioning from a manual system to a time and attendance solution. Once a company discovers how beneficial such a solution can be, they will wonder why their company did not automate this process before.

Here are some of the benefits that businesses gain after transitioning from a manual time tracking process to ATS workforce management software:  

Immediate Efficiency

The processing of manual time sheets is fraught with human error. Studies by the Arbeeden Group and the American Payroll Association show that human error typically accounts for 1 to 7% of payroll costs. An ATS workforce management solution automates the tracking of employee attendance and provides information in real-time. At the end of the payroll cycle, employee hours can be sent seamlessly to your payroll application.

Reduce Unproductive Time
When a company’s time capture is being handled manually, payroll professionals, supervisors and HR managers have to verify the following: overtime, long breaks, early arrivals and late departures.

Absence/Vacation Request

The web-based absence request module automates employee time off requests, eliminates paperwork and enhances communication that’s essential between HR department and the employees. The absence/vacation request module enables employees to request personal time off and vacation related information. Employees can request multiple absences and view them in a summary format. Supervisors can approve or deny time-off requests based on availability.

The ATS workforce management software is a complete time and attendance suite with employee scheduling and data export integration capabilities. Payroll is most often the largest expense of any company. Streamlining labour costs with a time and attendance software can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line.  

To learn more, go to our website or log on to join our weekly user group.

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Healthcare User Group Time and Attendance Session

November 23rd, 2011 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Hospitality Industry - (0 Comments)

Earlier this month, we hosted our first time and attendance user group session and navigated through various areas of the software. Our market focus was the retail and hospitality industry. This was due, in large part, to the high labour costs that these industries face during the busy holiday season. We had a lively session with a wonderful group of attendees representing the following sectors: hotels, banquet halls, convention & conference facilities, quick serve, hardware and department stores. We plan to continue these each month featuring a different industry.

Our next session is right around the corner (Tuesday, December 6that 10:00 am EST) and will cover Workforce Management Software for the healthcare industry. We will discuss how the ATS web-based time and attendance software helps the healthcare industry keep track of wage changes and collective agreements. Space is limited so register now so, you can have the opportunity to sit in and participate with ATS software engineers and other attendees.

ATS web-based time and attendance software can be accessed anytime, on-demand and from any web browser. The solution gives healthcare operations, an efficient, centralized system with the power, flexibility, and scalability needed to improve productivity, control labour costs and enhance patient service and satisfaction.

To learn more follow Apex Time Solutions on Twitter. View online shows on SlideShare or follow us on LinkedIn.

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‘Tis the Season to Monitor Productivity and Labour Costs

November 21st, 2011 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Retail | Scheduling | Time and Attendance Solution - (0 Comments)

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, retailers are both hopeful and excited. Most retail operations increase their staffing levels in anticipation of business volume. The ATS time and attendance solution helps retail operations keep track of employee attendance, absenteeism and monitors productivity for optimal profitability.

This robust time and attendance solution supports an unlimited number of schedules, as well as, fixed, open and flexible shifts. Employee tracking options include: Online Time Sheets, Web-Time Clocks, Biometric Terminals, Barcode Time Clocks, Magnetic Swipe Clocks, Smart Phones and Tablet PCs which monitor employee time and compile a range of labour analytics reports. Retail operations utilizing the ATS time and attendance solution will easily avoid payroll errors and the inflationary costs associated with mistakes made through manual processes.

Solution Benefits:

Employee Scheduling

ATS integrated time and attendance scheduling application ensures your levels are aligned to business volume. The software helps supervisors schedule the right people in the right place at the right time. The application allows supervisors to schedule by: seniority, skills, certifications, preferences and availability. 

 Budgeting

The budgeting module provides supervisors with the tools to review projected vs. actual labour expenses in each department. A variety of intuitive reports help supervisors adjust staffing to align with budgeted hours.

 Forecasting

The ATS forecasting module helps retailers track the history of business volume and produce accurate forecasts of future business cycles while simultaneously providing detailed calculations of workforce management requirements. Departments can track data by defining forecast drivers to achieve a set of requirements specifically to that department. The ATS forecasting module provides businesses with technology to develop work schedules that meet business demands.

The ATS integrated time and attendance scheduling application can be set up in less than a week depending on the complexity of the business requirements. The solution is web-based and does not require a company to buy licenses and install software. Instead, companies pay an “as-needed” subscription fee and then access the software from a computer using any web browser.

To learn more, go to our website or REGISTER on to join our weekly time and attendance user group.

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7 FAQ about ATS SaaS Time and Attendance System

November 15th, 2011 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Hosted Time and Attendance Solution | Time and Attendance On-Demand - (0 Comments)

The ATS Software-as-a-Service Time and Attendance is a powerful workforce management software application that provides real-time labour analytics. Deployment of this web-based solution is fast and does not require costly servers on which to host the application. Your IT department will be happy since they can focus on areas of the organization that need their attention. Since the product is web-based it is available 24/5, 365 days a year on any web browser including: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera.

Over the last several months we have received numerous requests about our Hosted Time and Attendance. Below are the top 7 Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Which browsers will ATS time and attendance run on?
ATS time and attendance runs on any web browser, including: Google Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera.  

2. What choice of time clocks do I have with your system?
ATS employee time clocks include: biometric facescan, proximity readers, magnetic readers, barcode readers, biometric fingerprint terminals, hand punch terminals, mobile phones and online time sheets.

3. How fast can the system be implemented?

The software’s configuration is simple, yet robust enough to adapt to most complex environment. Faster implementation means you’re productive sooner.

4. What about data back up and security?

ATS time and attendance hosted environment is secure and readily available. Backups are maintained on a continuous basis, which means you are covered in the unlikely event of data loss.

5. Which payroll, HR and ERP applications can your system interface to?
ATS can interface to virtually any payroll, ERP and HR software. You can download a list from our website. Many third party software applications can import data. We have pre-built interfaces for many major software applications, and we can customize one for any application that you need.

6. Can your system handle shift premiums differentials?
Yes! ATS Software-as-a-Service system can handle multiple premiums and the calculation of shift differentials.

7. Can the software manage time costing? Accommodate job costing?
Yes! ATS hosted time and attendance allows you to track and attribute time and labour department, job, operation, task and employee.

Here is the crux of our argument. Instead of investing in a traditional on-premises time and attendance system there is a better way. ATS Hosted Time and Attendance solution is ideal for small businesses that do not have a full time IT person. Large companies will benefit from the flexibility of the application because of its ability to capture the most rigorous work rule policies.

To learn more go to our website. You can also follow us on Twitter or view and download our brochures through Slide Share. Log on to the ATS portal to join our workforce management software user group conference.

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Endless Possibilities: Celebrating the Containment of Labour Costs

November 9th, 2011 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Absence Management | Employee Self Service | Employee Time Tracking | Time and Attendance Software - (0 Comments)

We are honoured to work with some of North America’s leading companies, and have them as customers, in industries such as: retail, manufacturing, oil and gas, hospitality, distribution, health care, consumer goods and construction. A few months ago, one of our newest customers migrated from a paper-based time sheet to our On-Demand Time and Attendance Solution. Our team received a pleasant surprise when this health care customer told us they would be sending us a testimonial two weeks after the system was installed.  What did not surprise us was how fast this customer realized their return on investment.

Helping customers realize their return on investment is what we have been doing for years with our powerful business automation software. The ATS Time and Attendance Solution delivers real time activity based costing and helps to govern and automate the entire process.

The flexible pay rules library allows for 100% automation of rules without costly changes to core code. Hours and wage rule compliance are consistent and automated with alerts when a threshold for violation is approached – providing proactive reconciliation. The employee self-service capability of an ATS Time and Attendance Solution increases productivity as employees and managers spend less time managing administrative tasks and more time focusing on customers. Our business automation software tracks, performance and automatically adjust operations as business and market conditions change. And you can do all of this regardless of the size of your enterprise.

Let’s face it, manual time sheets are a thing of the past.  We also know that whenever data is keyed into a computer from paper time sheets, errors will be made.

Not sure if a Time and Attendance Solution will work for your organization? Connect with us for more information and read customer testimonials on our website. You can also reach us by phone at 1.866.294.2467.

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Who Has The Time to Track All That Stuff Manually?

November 8th, 2011 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Absence Management | Hosted Time and Attendance Software | Overtime Equalization | Payroll - (0 Comments)

Overtime, premium hours, statutory holidays, vacations, shift rotation and tracking employee time spent on different jobs. These are just a few of the things that payroll professionals and HR managers have to handle in an organization. In many cases, the larger the organization, the more complex these work rule policies tend to be.

Business executives are stretched for time, and cost containment heads the list of their priorities. Controlling labour costs and improving productivity is paramount to most organizations. A reliable Workforce Management Software will help companies with the following:

Accurate Record Keeping
ATS Workforce Management Software automates the calculation and reporting of hours worked and provides a full range of tools to help deploy and track employees and their performance using real-time labour analytics. The result is enhanced productivity, increased profitability and better short, and long-term decision making.

Labour Analytics
ATS Workforce Management Software helps you to accurately manage attendance and leave policies more consistently. The ATS Time and Attendance Solution provides organizations with a suite of management reports that include: Time Costing, Forecasting, Schedule versus Actual, Overtime Equalization, Payroll, Absenteeism and Summary Detail Reports to name a few. Our system contains an inherent flexibility that is configured to the needs of organizations of every size in virtually any industry.

Return on Investment
The ATS Workforce Management Software helps you lower labour expenses, anticipate workforce demands and comply with provincial, federal and state labour laws. Another huge cost saver is the elimination of paper time sheets. A growing body of evidence has shown that using a time and attendance solution has historically decreased the time it takes to prepare your time cards and payroll by about 80% and has saved companies 1-5% on their net payroll costs.

To learn more, follow us on Twitter and SlideShare for updates. You can also download brochures from our website.

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