Time and Attendance Software for Payroll, Costing and Billing

"If you are unable to quantify something, chances are that you will be unable to manage it." This tried and true mantra of business management has never been more accurate than in the case of employee time tracking. Increasing competition and escalating labor costs are forcing businesses to employ the latest means of tracking employee work hours. One of the most popular and efficient means to attain this objective is using time and attendance software.

Although payroll is one of the obvious reasons for utilizing time clocks and cloud-based software, different businesses have different reasons for using them. Following are three major reasons businesses opt to benefit from time tracking devices equipped with attendance tracking software.

Payroll Purposes
The most common reason organizations use time and attendance software is for payroll purposes. Employee wages make up a big portion of the operating expenses of any organization, especially service-oriented businesses that do not manufacture or sell inventory.

Attendance software is proficient in creating detailed work hour reports that clearly define each aspect of employee time and attendance. Unlike traditional punch time clocks, these time recording devices track employee hours in an accurate, real-time fashion that can be accessed from anywhere at any time through online accounts.

In addition, time attendance software automatically takes unpaid time such as meal breaks, leaves of absence and paid sick days into account when preparing time and attendance data. It also calculates and incorporates employee payroll functions like benefits, payroll taxes, etc. These features are increasingly useful at the time of payroll processing and save Human Resource departments valuable time that can be spent on other tasks.

Billing Purposes
Another reason for using time clocks is for billing, specifically when the hours worked are a direct cost to the clients and need to be billed accordingly. One example might be a business that provides off-site services and needs to bill each client separately for their time. Some cloud-based time clocks allow employees to punch in and out from remote devices like smart phones allowing accurate, to-the-minute time recording making off-site work easy to track.

The software used in these devices exports employee data to accounting departments to be used for billing purposes. The software can also be customized to integrate with an organization's current accounting software and create invoices to bill clients.

Costing Purposes
Product costing is also a major reason manufacturing companies use time and attendance software. The manufacturing industry needs to track employee work hours when employee time is a direct cost to the product. This data is helpful in determining the cost of new or existing products. The reliable information recorded by the software helps to determine product costs more accurately.