It is estimated that most mobile businesses lose an average of 6.1% in payroll “slippage” (inaccurate and fraudulent claims) every year. You’re trying to plug the leak by putting in place a GPS-based time and attendance solution. You expect the software/app to record the hours your employees are “on the job” and provide you with means to validate the hours against the job site. While there are many apps in the market that claim to do the job, they all are fundamentally flawed in the way they work and can be easily “spoofed”.
Over the years, while speaking with customers who currently use or have used GPS timesheets apps (including some of the leading ones in the market), we have often heard them say “It’s a good service but still my employees are able to spoof the system and it just hasn’t worked for me.”
So, we thought we’d write about this, and hopefully, this article helps you with your evaluation and save you time by letting you know what to look for in a GPS time clock solution.
The customers always mention the following major turn-offs with the popular GPS timesheet apps:
No GPS tracking Capability (employee clock-in and leave)
Regular GPS timesheet apps allow your employees to record the start time and stop time. The apps also record the location where they clock in/out. But with these apps, there’s no way for you to validate if employees were present at the site for the hours they claim to have been. It’s easy for any worker to clock-in from their worksite and simply leave, and come back later to clock-out and you won’t notice a thing!
The core problem is that these apps lack geofencing capability. Geofences, also known as geozones, are virtual perimeters around a predefined area on the map. They can be customer sites, warehouses, construction sites, or any place of interest. With geofencing, you’ll know that the employee was ‘in’ that work site at all times and not just where he clocked in/out from. This is a huge advantage when it comes to mitigating payroll slippage (fraudulent claims). Many of our customers have lost money due to this problem, and have moved away from leading timesheet apps!
Geofencing is a key feature that you want when you’re managing a team of mobile workers. Geofencing not only helps monitor and validate on-site presence, but also provides some additional powerful functions.
Here are some amazing things that you can do with the help of geofencing:
Dispatch jobs, send alerts/reminders
Geofences are tied to a specific place and adds context. You can automatically dispatch jobs, send contextual reminders as soon as employees arrive and/or depart from the job-site.
IFTTT (if-this-then-that) Rules triggered Workflow automation
You can set up rules and workflow that are specific to your business and automate actions based on real world events tied to people, place & time. Example: If any worker running late, send a notification to the manager (or customer). If an asset overstays at a place send a notification out to the interested parties etc.
Lack of Geofence Time Clock (automatic)
Over the years, we found that employees forget to use the app to “manually” clock in and clock out. This was a real problem for many of our customers and many times defeated the purpose of using a time and attendance system. So we introduced ”geofencing” technology to the mobile time clock functions.
Here’s how it works: the job-site can be easily set up and in the system with a geofence around it. Employees get auto clocked in/out when they enter and exit job-sites. The system computes the time spent on the site (along with other information as needed such as mileage, etc.) to generate payroll-friendly reports. Our customers love geofence time clock – it just works automatically with zero-touch experience!
Spotty GPS Tracking
Here’s another common complaint we hear a lot regarding timesheet apps: poor GPS tracking capabilities. Though the leading timesheet apps claim to do GPS tracking, they fail when it comes to delivering on their claim. This is because these apps aren’t designed to do that. It seems most of them have added the tracking feature just for marketability. With these apps, any employee can simply download and “sign in” from any phone. This means that they can simply leave the phone at the job-site (any phone) and go about doing what they do. This is based on one our recent customers that just moved away from a leading “TimeSheet” app after he caught an employee “ghost” his phone by leaving the phone on the job-site to pretend he was there.
Multi-mode Approach to Time Clock
Unlike allGeo, all timesheets software in the market are limited to smartphones and mobile apps. allGeo is built with a multi-mode approach for time and attendance with support for IVR, text, app and geofence for time clock functions. This approach puts you in the driver’s seat by letting you determine the best time clock solution for your business and offers great freedom for your employees (you can even customize the language for IVR and text commands based on your employees with (say) Spanish etc.)
The IVR and text-based time clock allow employees to clock in/out simply using their phones’ text/voice call capabilities. The system then automatically tags the location to provide you with the time and attendance report. This simple, easy-to-use feature requires no training or learning curve for employees – an effective means for clocking in/out if you have a contingent workforce.
So, unlike other timekeeping apps, allGeo is a powerful mobile workforce management tool, offering you a dependable solution when it comes to tracking time, attendance, hours, job costing and more. And because the GPS tracking is robust, you can even set it up to do more: mileage estimation, field operations management with a complete suite of activity alerts, automation and more.
As a result, our customer report productivity gains at an average of 30 minutes per workday per employee using allGeo.
To sum things up, if you have a mobile workforce to manage, don’t just settle for timesheet apps that do (or claims to do) GPS tracking. Use a full-fledged workforce management solution that actually saves you money on payroll.
