How an Established Staffing Agency Tracks Employee Hours

Tracking payroll hours for a single company is one thing, but tracking hours across multiple companies with multiple locations is an entirely different game. Staffing agencies manage this complexity daily; each agency must track its employees' hours regardless of location.

One of our customers is a staffing agency in Ohio established in 2003 that provides seasonal, part-time, and full-time employees for a wide variety of industries. They fill gaps for companies needing packers, assembly workers, material handlers, logistics staff, and skilled laborers.

The value for their clients is avoiding recruiting costs, payroll administration (including time and attendance), workers' compensation, and turnover expenses. If a client needs someone, they can provide an employee sometimes as soon as the same day.

The problem

Previously, the staffing agency collected hours using physical time clocks connected to PC-based software at each client location. Although this method worked, the problems were the logistics of retrieving those hours, the requirement to install a Windows PC, and having someone physically maintain the software at each location. Further, new and updated PC-software for time attendance is less available than in the past.

However, any consideration of using "the cloud" was generally dismissed due to the appearance of higher expenses. After all, if they owned their own software and their own physical time clocks, why add another monthly cost?

Their aha moment finally arrived when they tried Webtimeclock and compared it to their actual costs.

The solution

Instead of PC-based software, the staffing agency now maintains one Webtimeclock account to access time records for each of their clients.

One feature they use is our Companies list, which allows their HR team to create a company profile for each one of their clients. A company profile is a sub-account in Webtimeclock, functioning as a separate entity. This feature makes it much easier to report based on the client, not just a simple department or job. It also helps with their billing.

For collecting time, the agency uses at least one physical time clock mounted at each client location. Their primary type of time clock is PIN entry. Employees clock in/out by entering a PIN which can be set from 1 to 6 digits.

As an added bonus, at least for them, the clocks they already owned were compatible with Webtimeclock. All they needed was a configuration change.

The final go ahead

Perhaps it was the support we provided them and how we answered their questions. But it could also be because our system is very easy to use.

In either case, we are happy to have them onboard. As of today, they are tracking over 200 employees.