Hagel and Company Human Resources Blog - California, Idaho, Washington State HR News

Do you ever wonder why it is that with all the advances in technology, many businesses still have difficulty controlling time and attendance issues? There are many causes for overtime overruns including such issues as employee absence, family medical leave absences, staffing limitations, and turnover. But the real cost of overtime can be less obvious. Long hours of work for prolonged periods can be a significant factor in overtime costs.

When employees are put on scheduled overtime there can be a resulting reduction in worker productivity. A study of the construction industry as far back as 1981 demonstrated that regularly scheduled overtime could result in a delay in the construction completion date beyond what could have been realized with the same crew working a 40 hour week (Construction Dimensions, July 1981). This can be a real money loser in a cost plus contract. And it’s not just work slow-downs that affect deadlines.

Employees working long hours for protracted periods of time are at much greater risk for injury and illness. Being on the job in a fatigued state can result in unnecessary on-the-job accidents. The longer the overtime continues, the more likely the rate of incidents will increase. This has an immediate negative impact on your labor and insurance costs. Replacement staffing or utilizing temporary labor makes a direct hit to the bottom line. If employees are moved from one department to another to fill in the gaps, the secondary impact on the “loaning” department may also impact labor costs.

A time and attendance program could help. Every company has different needs, so businesses want a product that is flexible enough to meet their organizations’ particular needs. Whatever the payroll requirements, a system capable of flexibility for meeting rules related to breaks, meals, rounding, time-off, managing holidays, and work week designation provides the best solution. Businesses will want a centralized management system that is accessible by line managers, payroll, HR and finance. Tracking individual employee hours can allow managers to identify potential hazardous or risky situations. Being able to track exceptions, review employee hours in real time, and calculate costs, all at individual workstations, can be an added cost-savings advantage.

Empower Software has a powerful, scalable calculation engine capable of handling complex pay policies, union contract arrangements, exceptions, and benefits management. Empower offers employee self-service for timely input of hours, review of PTO balances, and leave requests. Managers can access data from their desktop, sorting employee information to include important data on overtime and calculating associated costs. The revolutionary calculation engine allows for unlimited work rules. So no matter the size or complexity of your pay rules, Empower can handle your needs.

Empowerment is one of the critical buzzwords in HR circles these days. With a time and attendance software package, employees, managers, payroll and HR are all empowered. Employees can track their hours worked, view timecards, check past, current, and future schedules, view time off balances and make and track leave requests. Managers can use the program to identify time and attendance exceptions that may require action. In addition, they can communicate valuable information to their employees in an automatically recorded format on overtime and project costs. Payroll and HR can provide valuable tracking data not only to line management but to the C-suite as well. Accurate tracking and trending of wage information provides invaluable information on people expenditures by product line. In addition, no matter how complex your pay and policy structures may be, e-solutions restore integrity and validity to critical business data.

Time and attendance software can enable your organization to have one central location for data management available to line management, payroll, accounting and finance as well as Human Resources for accessing data for reporting and fiscal management. A good solution is designed to handle the simplest to most complex pay policies related to leave, union and work rules, breaks, overtime, shift pay, holiday pay and PTO time, all while reducing data entry and the potential for typographical errors. Besides the benefits of improving data integrity, and controlling organizational cost through effective and efficient time and attendance management, there are other, more subtle benefits to an automated system.

Worries about preferential application of policies keep HR professionals up at night. Payroll worries about compliance, rounding rules and accurate calculations of hours based on various pay codes and work schedules. Employees have their own concerns. They worry if their management is applying policies and procedures consistently to all employees. In some businesses, workers may have no knowledge of what happens to their paper timesheet once it’s submitted, until they see their paycheck. With an e-system, costly employee relations issues and potential legal actions can be monitored and avoided. Although never 100% avoidable, these issues can be substantially mitigated with a centralized, comprehensive, flexible, time and attendance tool.

With every new piece of legislation, businesses find themselves scrambling to update and revise their internal systems to meet the latest in regulatory statutes. Costly and precious man hours can be spent updating systems and spreadsheets, training management on new processes and keeping an ever-vigilant eye on data as the new processes are implemented into your manual systems and procedures. A robust, highly flexible time and attendance system can be your answer. But do your due diligence!

Tips for evaluating time and attendance solutions

1. Choose a system that:
   • Provides federal and state updates in a timely manner
   • Enables you to make minor rule changes based on local requirements
   • Has enough options and settings for future business needs is a good start
2. Evaluate the implementation costs and return on investment for the first three years. Software license costs are usually front-loaded but longer term maintenance and update costs also need to be evaluated when determining the investment return.
3. Contrast and compare at least three different systems. There are a myriad of packages on the market and it’s easy to fall in love with the first package you see if you’re using manual systems. Evaluating the pluses and minuses will improve your knowledge, provide valuable insight into key components, and help make the proposal for the system you finally choose.
4. No one system is perfect, so focus on flexibility and integration with your current financial and HR systems.

Let us know if we can help you find the products that might work for your company!

With all the legislative changes in 2010, it is often difficult to keep up.  Here are updates on some of the legal issues that will affect day-to-day HR and payroll operations going into 2011.

• First on the list is classification of positions, particularly with regard to contract labor.  Time is getting short for avoiding fines and penalties for misclassifying employees as contractors particularly if it appears your company is doing so for purely financial reasons.  Failure to evaluate and make appropriate changes may result in paying the piper – and he’s very expensive.
• Second is about storing I9 forms.  If you are attempting to keep these records in an electronic repository, be aware of federal and any state regulations regarding storage and access.  Seyfarth Shaw (attorneys) reported in their ‘One Minute Memos’ for October 2010 that although the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office failed to find any indication that Abercrombie & Fitch had hired unauthorized workers, the company and ICE reached an agreement on a million dollar fine settlement because the clothier’s  electronic verification system had numerous deficiencies.   As enforcement measures continue to pound away at companies, their processes and their actions, it is imperative to ensure compliance with not only the requirements for collecting information but ensuring your processes for maintenance meet regulatory standards.  For information regarding completion and storage of I9 forms check out http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-9.pdf
• Number three is especially important as we head into tax season.  W4’s have been getting increased scrutiny from the IRS; with added agency investigators, companies are likely to see an even greater IRS involvement in employer tax collection responsibilities in the next year.  Employees who are claiming excessive deductions on their W4’s can spell trouble for unobservant HR and Payroll departments.  The IRS sends out “lock-in” letters requiring employers to adjust the wayward employee’s deductions to only those allowed in the letter.  Compliance failure on the company’s part can (and most likely will) result in the tax liability being transferred from the employee to the employer.  Making employees aware of potential issues is the first step in preventing employee relations issues later.  Watch those forms.
• A big number four is reminding employees to use their Flexible Spending Account (FSA) dollars this year to put in a supply of over-the-counter (OTC) medications.  Beginning January 2011, OTC medications will no longer qualify as an eligible expense under FSAs.  As employees make elections for FSA dollars for 2011, educate them in plan changes that may affect the amount of money they wish to make available through FSAs.
• Finally, five: the mandatory requirement for showing the value of healthcare benefits on W-2s has been delayed for one year.  If employers choose, they may voluntarily report this non-taxable information on W-2s in 2011 but implementation has been delayed until 2012.

With so many regulatory changes coming and going, it is wise to have help keeping you current with the changes.  Professional newsletters, memberships in professional organizations, and peer group meetings all can be helpful in keeping your business running smoothly while you navigate the legislative twists and turns.  With increased governmental emphasis on compliance, companies can no longer afford to try to squeak by; non-compliance is much too costly.

The Benefit of Automating Time and Attendance Tracking

Time collection and payroll is a critically important part of any business since labor, for many companies, represents the single biggest expense. But for companies that track time and attendance manually, the process can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and costly. In fact, there are a multitude of errors that can occur when time and attendance data is collected manually, keyed into a spreadsheet, and re-entered into a payroll system. If this all sounds painfully familiar, then read on because in this article we’ll discuss some common and costly payroll mistakes and take a look at the benefit of automating your time and attendance tracking and payroll processing.

Humans Aren’t Perfect

Before we talk about the benefit of automation, it’s helpful to examine the pitfalls of a manual process. Take, for instance, the cost of purchasing and storing paper time cards and the labor involved in distributing and collecting those cards. If you’re using an old punch clock, it’s not uncommon to spend hours reconciling information from missed or duplicate punches and illegible cards. Then there’s “time creep” that can cost a business money … those are the bits and pieces of time lost from late arrivals, early departures, and extra long lunches that are rarely accounted for in a manual system.

And that’s just the beginning. Now it’s time for the payroll clerk to add up the time cards and manually calculate pay rates, taxes, and benefits which opens things up for calculation errors and mistyped data. In fact, managing payroll for 50 to 60 employees typically requires a full-time payroll clerk.

Technology to the Rescue

For a long time now, companies have embraced technology and automation in the warehouse, on the shop floor, and in the accounting department. But in many cases, time and attendance tracking and payroll is still a very manually-intensive, paper-based process. But to the pleasant surprise of companies that implement payroll technology, the benefits reach beyond just the payroll department. With access to real-time labor data, manufacturing companies can identify production issues and make necessary adjustments before a job is complete. Those benefits also spill over into Accounting who can now invoice more quickly (with real-time data), collect customer payments earlier, and significantly improve cash flow.

Automated Workforce Management

It’s time to put technology to work for you with an automated workforce management system that consists of a digital time clock and sophisticated time and attendance software. The digital time clock replaces time sheets and time cards with ID badges that employees simply swipe through the reader to record their in/out time automatically. The software connected to the digital clock is programmed with employee information and automatically performs payroll calculations, benefit accruals, tax liabilities, and much more. That information is then easily transferred to your payroll system or outside service provider. No more tedious calculations, numerous errors, and hours of reconciliation. In fact, employees that formerly spent much of their time manually calculating payroll are reallocated to other areas of the business … and in many cases, a full-time payroll clerk is no longer necessary. Studies have shown that automation can cut payroll preparation time by up to 80%.

It Makes Good Business “Cents”

A workforce management system provides a wealth of information and reports at your fingertips. As we mentioned earlier, that real-time data will not only help you make better payroll decisions, it will also help you make better overall operational decisions. For instance, you might use information from the time management system for job costing. By accurately capturing and analyzing the time it takes to complete a specific task, you’ll have a better picture of your true costs and can make better management decisions.

Contact us to learn more about controlling your payroll processing costs and improving your business through an automated workforce management system.

The Benefits of Electronic Payroll Paycards

In recent years, businesses have enjoyed tremendous savings in payroll costs by offering direct deposit programs and encouraging employees to participate. In fact, the employee adoption rate of direct deposit is very high. However one challenge remains – extending the convenience and cost savings of electronic payroll to employees who do not have a bank account (“unbanked”) and thus cannot accept direct deposits. In this article, we’ll discuss the value of Electronic Payroll Cards as an alternative to issuing paper paychecks to your “unbanked” employees.

What is a Payroll Card?

A payroll card holds a stored value and functions just like a debit card. An employee who receives payroll on a paycard is able to access cash at an ATM, pay bills, buy groceries, make online purchases, and use the card just about anywhere a debit card is accepted. In fact, they’re often branded with Visa or Mastercard and are widely accepted by merchants, banks, and other institutions.

For employers, payroll paycards work in exactly the same way that direct deposit does. A paycard program blends into your existing payroll process without additional hardware or software required.

The Benefit to Employers

The primary benefit of offering paycards is to eliminate the processing costs of issuing paper paychecks to unbanked employees. According to research, there are about 28 million people that are unbanked in the US with another 44 million that have very little access to financial services. The cost of issuing paper paychecks to these employees is estimated to be about $1 to $2 per employee per pay period including the cost of paper stock, security features, envelopes, check handling, and printing supplies. There is also a replacement cost and potential bank fees for lost or stolen paychecks.

The Benefit to Employees

Unbanked employees often use a check cashing service that charges a fee in the neighborhood of 5%. With a payroll paycard program, those fees are eliminated putting more money in your employees’ pockets. Plus, they’ll gain the convenience of using a debit card while eliminating the risk of carrying cash. In fact, the convenience of paycards also extends to employees currently using direct deposit who sometimes opt to receive a portion of their pay on a paycard as a means of providing funds to relatives or to track and budget spending on nonessential items.

Introducing Sage Payroll Paycards

Sage offers a Payroll Paycard program that will save you money while offering your employees the convenience of a safe and secure method of payment. It works the same way as direct deposit and requires no additional systems, hardware, or software.

Contact us if you’d like to learn more about the Sage Payroll Paycard program.

December and January are the months to end the year and start a new year with your HR and Payroll software.  There is no better time to make sure you are ready for the year ahead.

Hagel & Company has the expertise to help you accomplish your goals.

We have designed two discount packages that will give you flexibility to have one of our expert consultants assist you in the following areas: 

• Package A:  10% Discount on a Half Day (4 hours) of Consulting 
• Package B:  15% discount on a Full Day (8 hours) of Consulting  

Take advantage of these special discounts when booking your consulting days by January 22^nd 

Please call Aaron Simon at (253)572-2439 x 301 or click HERE to book your time now.

*Any additional time will be billed at our regular rate

**Travel expenses may be in addition to package rate

We are proud to announce that we’ve been named to the Sage America President’s Circle again!  This is awarded to the leading sales producers among SBS business partners representing a host of segment-leading brands, including Sage Accpac ERP, Sage Timberline, Sage MAS 90 ERP, Sage SalesLogix, Sage Abra HRMS (human resource management system), Sage FAS Fixed Assets and others.

I attribute the company’s success to the dedication and hard work of all the employees of the company and to the loyalty of its 500+ customers across the Western and Southern United States.

Thank you to everyone who helped us achieve this goal!

Frank Hagel has been elected chair of the 9 member Sage Software Employer Solutions Business Partner Advisory Council for 2009-2010. The ES Group publishes Sage Abra HRMS, including HR, payroll, training management and recruiting software.

Johnny Laurent, Vice President and General Manager of the Employer Solutions Group said, “The council was established to provide a vital communication link between Sage and the Employer Solutions Business Partner channel. It will advise Sage management on matters impacting and of mutual interest and concern to the client community and the Business Partner channel within the North American market. The ES BPAC addresses issues dealing with sales effectiveness, product issues and needs, market conditions and the competitive landscape surrounding the business.”

Congratulations Frank!

The purpose of this communication is to provide important information to
Sage Abra Payroll customers who use Custom Payment Forms.

In the v7.8 release shipped 9/2/2009, Sage has changed the format of all printed checks in Sage Abra Suite to comply with the new Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) specifications defined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

The changes to MICR specifications require that customers currently using Custom Payment Forms who upgrade to v7.8 perform the following steps after the upgrade but before processing Trial Payroll, in order to properly apply the new MICR specifications to their Custom Payment Forms:

1. Go to Payroll, Rules, and Custom Payment Forms.

2. Select and open each Custom Payment Form.

3. Select Form Layout.

4. Right-click the MICR line field to display properties; make no changes in the dialogue that comes up. Select OK.

5. Save the changes when closing.

After completion of these steps, the MICR line will print correctly for the Custom Payment Form.

►If multiple Custom Payment Forms are used, the above steps should be performed for each Custom Payment Form that existed prior to upgrading.

►Adding a new Custom Payment Form after the upgrade will incorporate the new MICR without need for these steps.

►All Standard check forms (such as Long Form Blank Laser) print as expected after upgrade. No action is required.

Customers with additional questions about this should contact Abra Customer Support at
800-829-0170 or via email at Abratechsupport@sage.com.

PRESS RELEASE
Hall Web Services, Inc.
Hagel & Company Announces Second Annual User Group Meeting at Safeco Field

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Puyallup, Washington – Hagel & Company (http://www.hagel.net), a leading provider of Sage North America’s award-winning Sage Abra HRMS (human resource management system) since 1993, today announced their second-annual Sage Abra users group conference to be held August 13, 2009, at Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington.

Part of Hagel and Company’s ongoing commitment to fostering a community of Sage Abra users, the event features information sessions on Sage Abra, free time for users to exchange information with other users, dinner, and the opportunity to watch the Seattle Mariners play against the New York Yankees. The event starts with pre-conference classes from 8:30-11 a.m. PST, and continues with conference sessions in the afternoon. An optional QA, dinner, and attendance of the baseball game are available for interested users.

“We were very pleased with the attendance and results of last year’s event,” said Frank Hagel, President of Hagel and Company. “We found the user conference to be a great way to allow our customers to meet each other, learn, and have an enjoyable time. Given the state of the economy, efficient HR has never been more important and we know that Abra users are looking for more ways to save time and money using their HRMS.”

Similar to last year, the conference will have three 45 minute or hour-long learning sessions, with two options available for each time slot. In addition to these main conference sessions are two pre-conference classes on Crystal Reports and benefits planning for Sage Abra.

Sessions cover timely issues key to modern HR departments, including Cobra Provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, talent management, employment law updates, and discussions of third-party products and modules available for Sage Abra. Sessions will be led by experts in the field, including Hagel and Company staff members Aaron Simon, Jeff Moan, Terri Greshem, and Kelly Jo Drllevich.

Full conference registration, including all sessions, dinner, and the baseball game, is $85 for the first attendee of a company, and $75 for each additional attendee from the same organization. Registrants interested in the afternoon sessions only, and not dinner or the game, can attend for $50 as the first individual in a company, or $40 as additional individuals. Online registration and additional information is available at Hagel and Company’s website: http://www.hagel.net/abra-user-group.asp.

About Hagel & Company
Hagel and Company, a Sage Certified Business Partner, is the source for Sage Abra HRMS, timekeeping systems and talent management applications in the Northwest, Southwest and Northern California areas of the United States. Hagel and Company’s Sage Certified Trainers bring decades of human resources (HR) and payroll systems experience to assist with software implementations, as well as hands-on, on-site, personalized software training and support services. For more information, please visit www.hagel.net.