Tracking employees' time and attendance efficiently is a crucial aspect of payroll accounting. Today's businesses use many systems to track employee hours and approve timecards, though some systems work better than others. The best employers strive to find or develop the best solutions for their team.

Why Is the Approval Process Important?

Maintaining an accurate payroll — which involves recording time worked, personal time off, and sick days — ensures that you pay your organization's valuable employees on time, every time.

Your organization should have a reliable and precise time management process that involves timecard review as a pivotal step.

Here are some key things you should know for optimal timecard approval every pay period: 

• To build and maintain trust, it is vital to ensure that each employee can verify that your payroll team is executing payroll and billing tasks timely, efficiently and accurately.
  
  
• Maintaining proper timecard practices is important for record-keeping and compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
  
  
• Keeping thorough timecard records allows you to remain alert to possible payroll fraud, which can become a larger problem if it takes too long to notice.
  
  
• Practicing regular timecard accuracy can also help control costs and identify performance inefficiencies, thanks to tracking factors such as late arrivals and excessive requests for sick leave.
  
  
• Reviewing timecards is essential for employees to allow them to catch any possible errors and ensure the hours they worked have been accurately recorded in time for their next paycheck.
  
  
• Tracking timecards helps your payroll team determine how long to keep payroll records.

 

Whether you work for a startup that is building its workforce from the ground up or you want to streamline your long-standing organization's timecard approval practices, the above tips are important to keep in mind.

Develop a Timecard Policy Using Best Practices

Developing a robust and comprehensive timecard policy should help keep everyone on track, including payroll staff, managers and employees. Ensure that everyone understands what they should add to their timesheets; when their timesheets are due for submission; how to handle leave requests; and how to adjust submission times during holiday weeks.

Offer Mobile Options

As more organizations offer remote and hybrid work options, it's important to provide full-featured mobile timesheet tracking solutions. Such solutions offer employees easy access to their timesheets and ensure benefits such as:

• Reduced errors
• Multi-platform support
• Streamlined communications
• Automated tracking

Invest in Minute7 Online Time and Expense Tracking

At Minute7, our team has developed a full menu of web-based timesheet solutions to support your payroll team, employees and organization. With our suite of online time-tracking tools, everyone can take the guesswork and stress out of timecard submissions and approvals. 

Contact us to learn more about our platform and start your free trial to enjoy streamlined timekeeping and payroll practices.