$1,500 per employee. That’s how much you could pay extra if you’re not on top of employee overtime.
Additionally, whether you offer hourly services or deliver projects to customers based on agreed time estimates, it helps you become more efficient if you know your overtime. Overtime is a common problem in projects-based work, and you cannot tackle it heads-on without accurate reporting and timesheets.
You can, for example, find out if you’re under-resourced, make sure employees are properly compensated, and better support those who aren’t at full capacity.
One average, we’ve heard from Timely customers, that more thn 10% of the time is under-reported in a business. That can be caused by guesswork when completing timesheets or poor adoption of timetracking in teams.
Repeat under-reporting means you don’t know where time is spent and if it’s spent as efficiently as it could. Often, no amount of planning makes it any better. On the flipside, the solution is to simplify and support the process with automatic timetracking. In Timely, timesheets are connected to individual capacity, such that overtime or undertime calculations are also automated.
At a glance, you can see where teams are spending their time on projects within expected work capacity. Automated timesheets combined with real-time calculations of overtime and undertime are not only good HR practice, but they will also help your business get ahead and become much more productive with limited time and respurnces.
The benefits of regular overtime and undertime audits
By auditing overtime, undertime and leave regularly, you’re sure to keep costs low and manage resources efficiently, while complying with local employment regulations.
In a nutshell, here’s what overtime and audits help you uncover:
- If work was completed on time and within an employee’s planned capacity.
- When and why employees experience burnout.
- Where you’re overspending on staff costs.
- How to be help your teams become more efficient.
- Making better decisions about resource allocation.
So how do you do it well? Let’s find out.
Save time on overtime and undertime audits
If you’re a HR or people manager who needs to report on overtime, we’ve got your back. With our new built-in overtime and undertime calculations, you’ll finish your overtime reports in no time (pun intended).
Timely is built to automate time tracking, yes, but it also simplifies how you get the right insights for effectively managing time and resources profitably.
“Time is money,” goes the old saying. But time is also data. It's essential data for managing your agency and optimizing its profitability. It's vital for business planning and monitoring the performance of both your clients and people.
If you don't track time, how will you know whether you're over-servicing clients or overloading your team?” - Gareth Healey, CEO of Beyond Noise and award-winning author of “Standout or die”
In order to get to an accurate overtime calculation, you need to have the right tools in place:
First, you need to be able to account for all of employees’s time.
In agencies and consultancies, your employees may be spending 80% on client-facing work and 20% on internal and admin work. We recommend that you make time tracking the easiest for your teams in order to get that accurate breakdown for your business.
Luckily, Timely completely automates time tracking. And, with AI at the helm, you can even get your timesheets drafted automatically, every day.
Second, you need to set a variable employee capacity.
It’s not a required step unless you hire temporary staff and contractors. While most of your employees need to work approximately 40 hours every day, other resources need to be managed on a limited capacity. Additionally, you want to ensure that leave and time off are also accounted for in your monthly or yearly capacity.
In Timely, you can set every employee’s capacity as they log time against it on a daily basis.
As an added bonus, you’ll also be able to monitor in real time whether the workload assigned to your teams aligns reasonably with their available capacity.
Because efficient resource management is one of the keys to profitability, Timely combines time tracking with resource and capacity management into one.
Third, get your overtime and undertime reports faster.
Accurate overtime and undertime calculations are only possible with accurate time tracking in place, especially if work capacity varies or if your workforce is remote.
We’ve simplified the entire process in Timely. Next to each employee you can easily see their respective overtime and undertime… all in real time.
In a nutshell, undertime and overtime is calculated for you. All you need to do is choose a time period and export your custom reports for your chosen employees. Easy, accurate, and fast!
Why do you need to get overtime and undertime audits right?
Overall, managing capacity and auditing overtime are important business practices, not just payroll necessities. And with Timely regular audits don’t need to be hard nor time-consuming; the opposite. Take the opportunity to manage resources more efficiently with the right insights at hand.
Here are some of the benefits of conducting undertime and overtime audits:
- Lower costs: Employees who are paid fairly and who are not overworked stay longer in their jobs. Reduce your attrition costs and make sure you’re not overservicing your clients either as employee put in overtime to meet goals.
- Reduced legal liability: By complying with employment laws, you’ll protect your reputation and build trust with employees.
- Improved decision-making: Undertime and overtime audits help you manage resources better. Used the insights you get in timely to make better decisions about staffing, scheduling, and time budgeting.
And that’s a wrap. If you have more questions about resource management or overtime and undertime calculations, we’d love to show you around.
