What are the Features of QuickBooks?

QuickBooks is one of the most popular accounting software programs for businesses and offers robust features at an affordable price including:

• Cloud Accounting – Allows owners to manage their business from anywhere in the world on any device including smartphones and tablets.
• Automatic Backups – There is no need to worry about losing information with QuickBooks automatic backup feature.
• Track Expenses – Record, organize, and save every expense so that you are prepared when tax season rolls around.
• Custom Reports – Create your own custom accounting reports that offer valuable insight into the financial performance of your business.
• Cash Flow – Manage your cash flow by paying vendors only when they are due and keeping as much cash in the company’s accounts as possible.

QuickBooks offers bank-level security and free unlimited support when you need it most. To obtain scheduling capabilities, you will need to integrate a compatible online scheduling software.

What is scheduling software?

Scheduling software is a specialized computer application crafted to streamline the creation and organization of schedules across diverse domains. Its applications span from arranging employee shifts in businesses to orchestrating project timelines in construction and coordinating event plans in hospitality.

The Importance of Online Employee Scheduling

Staff scheduling is one of the most important aspects of running any business. Scheduling too few employees leads to scheduled staff who are overworked and lower quality customer service. Schedule too many employees and you might as well be throwing money down the drain. Fail to account for individual needs and you have a disgruntled team that leads to lower productivity. It’s easy to see why scheduling is so important. However, it can take several hours per week to make a schedule via traditional methods such as Excel spreadsheets, calendars, and whiteboards. This doesn’t even consider the time it takes to adjust and update it. Business owners and managers need a way to easily create online schedules that can be created within minutes, not hours and updated within seconds.

How to Choose the Best Staff Scheduling Software for Your Business

Choosing the best staff scheduling software for your business involves evaluating several key factors to ensure it meets your specific needs including:

• Identify your business’s unique scheduling requirements, such as the number of employees, the complexity of shifts, and the need for compliance with labor laws.
• Ensuring it offers an intuitive user interface and robust features like automated scheduling, time tracking, and shift swapping.
• Integration capabilities with other business systems, such as payroll and HR software, as these are crucial for seamless operations.
• Review the software’s scalability to accommodate future growth and its ability to provide real-time updates and mobile access for on-the-go management.

Reading user reviews and requesting demos can also provide valuable insights into the software’s performance and customer support. By thoroughly assessing these aspects, you can select a scheduling solution that enhances productivity and streamlines workforce management.

Some of the Most Popular Online Employee Scheduling Apps Available to Businesses

Several popular online employee scheduling apps are available to businesses, each offering a range of features to streamline workforce management:

1. When I Work: Known for its user-friendly interface, When I Work simplifies scheduling, shift swapping, and communication among team members. It also offers time tracking and attendance features.

2. Deputy: This app provides robust scheduling, time tracking, and task management capabilities. Deputy also includes compliance tools to ensure adherence to labor laws and regulations.

3. Homebase: Homebase focuses on small to medium-sized businesses, providing easy-to-use scheduling, time tracking, and team communication tools. It also integrates with payroll systems.

4. ZoomShift: ZoomShift offers drag-and-drop scheduling, time tracking, and employee communication tools, making it a great choice for businesses looking for simplicity and efficiency.

5. Sling: Sling combines scheduling, time tracking, and internal messaging in one platform, helping businesses improve communication and reduce scheduling conflicts.

6. 7shifts: Tailored for the restaurant industry, 7shifts offers scheduling, time tracking, and labor compliance features, along with integration options for various POS systems.

7. Time Tracker: Is a robust, comprehensive and affordable scheduling software that integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks. This software allows owners to reduce their administrative costs while increasing profitability.

These time, billing and scheduling apps provide various functionalities to help businesses manage their workforce more effectively, improve communication, and ensure compliance with labor laws. 

Why You Should Try Time Tracker by eBillity for Scheduling

Time Tracker allows managers to create schedules more easily than ever with features including:

• Creating daily, weekly, and monthly schedules within minutes
• Save multiple schedule templates for future use
• Use a drag and drop interface to quickly fill shifts
• Create overtime parameters and set alerts to let you know before overtime happens
• Share schedules with all employees and update as needed from anywhere in the world on any device

While Time Tracker offers affordable state-of-the-art scheduling capabilities, this intuitive platform also gives managers the ability to track employees’ time, capture breaks, approve time, keep track of vacation time, invoice clients, and utilize GPS tracking for employees in the field. Try Time Tracker free for 14 days to see if it is right for your business.

The post Can QuickBooks Accommodate Employee Scheduling? appeared first on eBillity.

While scheduling conflicts are inevitable, don’t settle for them being the norm. Besides disrupting operations, they also affect employee morale and productivity. According to research, poor scheduling affects employee work-life balance, causing a good number to quit.

Instead of putting out fires, you can transform business outcomes with a more proactive approach to addressing scheduling conflicts. This begins by understanding the cause of scheduling issues to prevent them from arising and having effective mitigation strategies for when they occur.

What are Employee Schedule Conflicts? 

A scheduling conflict occurs when there’s an oversight in scheduling, making it challenging or improbable for an employee to carry out assigned duties productively or even at all.

While overlapping allocations are the most common conflicts, there are different types of schedule conflicts. They include:

• Overlapping allocations – Occurs when an employee is scheduled to work on various projects or at different locations in the same shift without factoring in commuting time.

• Allocations of off days – Employees may be assigned shifts on public holidays or days they’re supposed to be off.

• Overtime – Factors such as shift swapping, staff shortage, and lack of people with certain skills may result in employees being allocated extra hours.

Scheduling conflicts have a variety of origins, from last-minute meetings and miscommunication to a lack of visibility. One common scenario is assigning tasks to a team member without checking their availability on other projects. This can lead to overloaded schedules and inevitable conflicts.

Strategies to Avoid Scheduling Conflicts

As mentioned, you’re not powerless to employee schedule conflicts. Here are some strategies you can implement immediately to ensure employees can enjoy a morale boost from a better work-life balance.

1. Plan Projects with Realistic Estimates 

Scheduling problems often start during project planning. It’s crucial to ensure that your project estimates are grounded in reality. Instead of relying solely on job descriptions, engage in conversations with your team members who perform the work.

This approach provides insights into the mechanics of their tasks and leads to more accurate estimates.

2. Use a Resource Calendar 

Consider implementing a resource calendar to enhance your task scheduling. There are numerous tools you can use to log hours against planned work, helping you compare estimated versus actual time for tasks, including Time Tracker. This data empowers you to forecast and plan projects more accurately.

A resource calendar also improves visibility into your team members’ schedules. With a central view of projects and assigned resources, you can identify team member availability and actual capacity before task allocation. Plus, you can see indicators like overtime, ensuring balanced workloads.

3. Communicate with Other Project Managers and Team Members 

Effective communication is pivotal in preventing scheduling conflicts. If a team member works across multiple projects, stay in touch with other project managers or team leaders to monitor resource demands. Open channels of communication can help identify potential conflicts before they escalate.

Encourage your team members to communicate if they foresee any scheduling conflicts arising due to task complexities or time constraints. Fostering a culture of psychological safety enables team members to speak up when they need more time for a task or spot a potential scheduling issue.

4. Add Buffers When Planning Timelines 

When creating project timelines, don’t forget to include buffers for unforeseen circumstances. Overestimating project durations can be a wise strategy. It ensures that you have ample time to accommodate delays caused by unexpected events or complexities in tasks.

Consider employing the critical chain method—a resource leveling technique that utilizes available slack in your project. This approach allows for flexibility in your schedule without jeopardizing the project’s overall timeline.

Handling Scheduling Conflicts

Although you can significantly reduce employee schedule conflicts, they may occur on rare occasions. When this happens, acting swiftly and effectively will ensure business operations can proceed smoothly.

1. Communicate Before Acting 

When a scheduling conflict arises, the first step should always be open communication. Engage in conversations with all involved parties before making decisions. Collaborative problem-solving often leads to smoother conflict resolution and reduced pushback.

If you’re concerned about obtaining input from your team, brainstorm potential solutions and present them for discussion. The key is ensuring alignment among all stakeholders on the chosen solution.

2. Make Changes to the Schedule 

Sometimes, the only viable solution is to adjust the schedule. Depending on the situation, you can consider various options, including task splitting, scope reduction, start time delays, or task rescheduling. Always communicate these changes to all team members affected.

3. Have Extra Help Ready 

In scenarios where there’s no room for schedule adjustments, having backup plans in place is crucial. Maintain relationships with freelancers or contractors who can step in when needed. While this might incur additional costs, it ensures project continuity.

4. Change the Project Duration 

Changing the project duration should be a last resort. If no other solutions are feasible, communicate with stakeholders about the necessity of altering the project timeline. Provide them with a new completion date and maintain transparent communication throughout the process.

Unlocking Organizational Success: Your Guide to Conquering Scheduling Conflicts

As a business leader, growing your company is not always about developing new products, getting more talent, or having more resources. You’ll be surprised by how much you can achieve with effective resource utilization and keeping employees motivated.

One of the best ways to achieve this is proactively working to identify potential schedule conflicts and addressing them swiftly. As you implement the strategies outlined in this article, invest in a time-tracking tool that will streamline scheduling.

Time Tracker will help you eliminate scheduling issues as it sends notifications about changes to personnel. Moreover, it has a feature that prevents anyone on approved leave from being rostered. In turn, the seamless functionality ensures team leaders have more time to focus on core business functions as scheduling is fast, easy, and effective.

Book a 14-day free trial to gain firsthand experience of how Time Tracker can elevate your business.

The post Effective Strategies for Handling and Preventing Scheduling Conflicts appeared first on eBillity.

Fortunately, retail managers can optimize their scheduling by leveraging retail employee scheduling software. These solutions streamline scheduling to ensure every shift is covered while considering employee availability, requested time off, and overtime compliance. They do all this while making your job easier, allowing you to focus on the important things, such as improving your productivity and profitability.

This post will discuss all you need to know about using retail scheduling software to manage your retail employees.

What is Retail Scheduling Software 

Retail scheduling software is a digital solution that enables retail managers to coordinate schedules for retail staff. They also enable retail managers to track the number of hours employees work and use this information to prepare payroll.

A good platform should keep things organized across the entire team and streamline the process of shift allocation and increase the productivity of employees,

What Should You Look for in a Retail Scheduling Software 

If you are looking to invest in retail scheduling software, there are several features to consider. A suitable retail workforce management software should have the following features:

• Shift scheduling features: Drag-and-drop features, templates, PTO requests, open shift, and shift swapping, among other features, are essential for making retail scheduling software easy to use.
• Time tracking: After you’ve designed and published the schedules, there needs to be a way to track how many hours an employee worked and to export this information to create payroll easily. The time tracking solution can help you do this, however, to achieve this feat, you need to avoid common employee time tracking mistakes, such as not using time cards and timers properly.
• Ease of Use: The retail scheduling software should be relatively intuitive and easy to use for both management and employees.
• Geofencing: Merely tracking hours isn’t enough; you also need to ensure that employees are clocking in and out of their workstations, as is stipulated in their shift. This will help prevent time theft and buddy punching.
• Communication: It’s important that the software promotes open communication. This way, you can speak directly to anyone, whether employees, different departments, or entire teams at specific locations.
• Affordability: Invest in a scheduling solution that is within your budget constraints. But more importantly, the retail scheduling solution should give you value for your money.

What are the Benefits of Using Retail Employee Scheduling Software to Manage Your Employees 

More and more businesses are adopting employee scheduling software. In fact, according to a recent study, the global employee scheduling software market is expected to reach $820.1 million by 2027. The growing popularity of these solutions is due to the benefits businesses get from using them including the following.

Retail Scheduling Software Improves Efficiency

Shift scheduling is incredibly important in the retail industry, especially if you are a major restaurant or grocer. Proper scheduling ensures that you distribute shifts among various employees appropriately, so your business runs smoothly.

Retail scheduling software can streamline your shift scheduling, so you always have enough employees at any given time to ensure your business runs smoothly. By improving your operations, these solutions save you both money and time.

They Enable Centralized Scheduling, Making Life Easier for Your Employees 

Employees usually have an interest in efficient scheduling. Centralized scheduling of shifts makes things much easier for your employees. For starters, these solutions enable employees to easily swap shifts—if an employee needs time away from work, they can trade shifts with other employees willing to work at those times. All they have to do is simply log in to the platform and search for someone they can trade shifts with.

The centralized nature of retail scheduling software is also beneficial to managers since they can perform their management tasks remotely. This means that as a retail manager, you can oversee your staffing role even if you are not physically present in the store.

They Ensure that Your Business is Always Appropriately Staffed 

One of the greatest benefits of retail scheduling software is ensuring you have the employees you need when you need them. These solutions identify any gaps that may exist in your workforce schedule ahead of time, more so if you’ve integrated your labor and sales.

Retail employee scheduling software can also facilitate your planning of busier times and days of the year when you are pressed to have all hands-on deck. These solutions ensure that your floor is fully staffed and has the necessary staff to support your operations.

Time Tracker by eBillity Can Improve Your Productivity and Profitability

Time tracking refers to the process of recording the time spent on work, a certain task, or a project. Time tracking can show how productive your employees are. It tracks the hours employees work and shows whether employees receive fair compensation for the work they do and whether the work is worth investing in, more so if you’re working with payroll. The insights from time tracking make it easier to determine which tasks take the most time, after which you can decide if they bring enough value.

However, time tracking isn’t just about the task value calls and the quality of payrolls. It also gives you the data you need to make sound decisions in your operations and improve your team’s productivity.

eBillity’s time tracking solution can improve the productivity and profitability of your business. Time Tracker allows you to track time for payroll, billing, and productivity. Some of the excellent features you can expect include:

• Payroll: It allows you to monitor employee time, attendance, and scheduling
• Project tracking: It allows you to monitor budget overrun without ending in a loss
• Syncing: Employee time automatically syncs with payroll and accounting software
• Approvals: This feature allows managers to approve employee timesheets easily and conveniently
• Notifications: This allows you to send notifications to employees to submit time

Time Tracker not only provides flexible time tracking options it also has a robust scheduling system for your retail business. Find out how easy and quickly you can schedule your team and have them clock-in and out to track their time. Try Time Tracker for 14 days for free and reduce your administration time today.

The post Managing Your Retail Employees with Scheduling Software appeared first on eBillity.

What is resource allocation?

Resource allocation is a critical piece of successful project management. If you have a task to get done, you have to distribute your resources properly to get it done well, on time and on budget. 

Most resources fall into these 3 buckets:

1. People (employees, managers, vendors)
2. Tools (software, hardware, budget) 
3. Time (your time, your clients’ time)

Balancing all 3 resources is a challenge, which is why many managers succeed with one at the expense of the other. In order to ace resource allocation, you have to work your way through each challenge, one by one. 

Resource allocation challenge #1: People

As a manager, you know your most important asset is people, from the employees who do the work to the stakeholders who’ll sign off on the finished product. Allocating time for the right people with the right skills to get things done is priority #1, whether you’re managing accountants, construction workers or delivery drivers. 

The solution: Scheduling

Scheduling is crucial for any manager, and spreadsheets and email attachments no longer cut it. Not only do you need a global view of employee schedules before you begin resource allocation, you need to be able to see where everything stands as a project progresses. 

With a solution like Time Tracker, you can:

• Create daily, weekly or monthly schedules in minutes.
• Automate employee rostering using templates. 
• Easily share schedules with your whole team from one centralized location.
• Keep track of which employees have passed the overtime threshold and which are short on hours.
• Evenly distribute the workload for maximum efficiency and minimum cost.

Simple scheduling is crucial, and the keyword there is simple. If you’re still spending hours on manual employee scheduling, the first resource you need to worry about is your time. 

Resource allocation challenge #2: Tools

Now that you’ve created an optimal schedule, you need to give your employees the tools they need to get their jobs done. Those vary by industry, of course, with contract management tools looking very different from legal tools. The one thing, though, that every employee needs is a way to track what they’re doing. 

If people are concerned that they don’t appear to be working when they should, or if they get sidetracked every time they need to request a schedule change, productivity suffers, and even the best resource allocation can’t get a project back on track. 

The solution: Time tracking software

The one skill that’s crucial to every industry is time management. By giving your employees a tool that will help them easily track their time, you’ll free them up to focus on the task at hand, not to mention boost morale and productivity. 

Time Tracker allows managers to:

• Standardize the way everyone at a company tracks time. 
• Streamline paid and unpaid time-off requests.
• See where employees stand with regard to hours in order to make schedule adjustments.
• Edit or approve time for one or all employees in seconds. 
• Get people paid faster.

With a time tracking solution, managers get the ability to see every metric they need and employees get an increased sense of control. It’s a win-win, and one that will have a trickle-down effect into every other aspect of your business. 

Resource allocation challenge #3: Time

How many hours, days, months or years will it take you to finish a project? Which people have the time to complete each task? And whose time do you need most in order to get your project done fast and done well? 

Time is key to resource allocation, but many managers rely on instinct and general expertise to estimate how much time a given task will take. It’s an antiquated approach, and one that often leads to blown budgets and last-minute scrambling. 

The solution: Reporting

Business reports have been shown to boost productivity, reduce unnecessary expenses and help you ensure each milestone of a project is met. From a managerial perspective, they also give you insight into your most important resource: your employees. 

Reporting features like those included with Time Tracker:

• Allow managers to better understand current business needs, such as when peak times occur, and when staffing shortages are usually encountered.
• Make data compilation and visualization much more intuitive and actionable.
• Enables managers to gain insight into employee behavioral patterns:
  • Which employees are chronically late or absent? 
  • Which ones consistently come in early? 
  • What effect do longer shifts have on employee productivity?

Without detailed reporting, there’s no way to know what’s going on with your business day-to-day. And if you don’t know that, proper resource allocation isn’t a realistic goal. 

Better Allocate Your Resources with Time Tracker

Ready to see how Time Tracker can help you ace resource allocation? Try our free, 14-day trial.

The post 3 Resource Allocation Challenges Managers Face and How to Solve Them appeared first on eBillity.

But there are some easy ways you can create employee schedules without any confusion, headache or stress. 

How to make a schedule for employees in 5 steps

1. Get everyone on the same page

If you’re still using excel spreadsheets to create employee schedules, it’s time to update your process. Not only are hardcoded schedules confusing if you need to make changes after sending, but they can also create a lack of clarity around expectations should employees accidentally refer to outdated versions. And therefore, step 1 in how to make a schedule for employees is to get everyone on the same system. 

With Time Tracker, employees can:

• View their schedule from any device
• See who’s available if they need to request a shift change
• Receive instant notifications when changes are made
• Sync their schedules to their personal calendars

Overall, it’s an easier way for you to create employee schedules that are dynamic, accurate and usable — by everyone, everywhere. 

2. Automate what you can

Whether you need to create employee schedules daily, weekly or monthly, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel each time. 

Time Tracker helps you save time by allowing you to::

• Create and save templates for specific weeks, months or holidays (summer vacation, spring break, etc.)
• Copy previous schedules
• Use drag-and-drop editing to assign and modify shifts quickly
• Highlight different job types via color coding
• Access and update the schedule right from your phone

3. Safeguard against overtime

Overtime is always a concern when you’re determining how to schedule employees effectively. The easiest way to ensure that your payroll costs won’t go over? Stay up to date on where each employee stands. Getting a global view of overtime is particularly helpful when you’re trying to create employee schedules weeks or months in advance.

With Time Tracker, you can:

• View each employee’s total shift hours while creating new schedules 
• See each team’s daily, weekly and monthly hours as they come in, even in the calendar view
• Set up rules so that you’re alerted when an employee goes into overtime
• Use historical data to make sure you don’t over-schedule an employee who often ends up working overtime

4. Integrate time-off requests

Figuring out how to make a schedule for employees always hits a snag when it comes to vacations, sick days and PTO. Save time and minimize errors by employing a system that makes it easy and foolproof for employees to request and track time off. 

With Time Tracker, you can:

• Set up time-off codes (sick, vacation, etc.) 
• Block any days or dates
• Approve or deny every request in a few easy clicks

5. Get creative

Unfortunately, a time-tracking system only takes you so far when it comes to employee scheduling. There will always be decisions that need to be made to create employee schedules, especially in times where people are working remotely, only coming in certain days, etc. 

In those instances, try these creative tips for how to make a schedule for employees:

• If people don’t need to be onsite all the time, try staggering in-person shifts for tasks that must be done in-person.
• Keep or schedule 1:1 meetings with your employees so you can stay informed about their needs regarding scheduling, productivity, etc. 
• If an employee’s project is paused or stalled but you want to keep them on the payroll, take advantage of the downtime. Assign online training or encourage them to pursue remote certification opportunities, and use Time Tracker to track those assignments.
• If continuing education isn’t an option, consider shifting staff into departments or positions that have a need for extra support right now.
• If you do set up a remote workforce, be sure everyone aims for consistency in schedules. Ask employees to notify you if they’re unable to work a regularly scheduled day via Time Tracker so you can keep track of where everyone is at any time. 

Try Time Tracker

Ready to learn how to make a schedule for employees the easy way? Start your free, 14-day trial today. 

The post 5 Tips to Create Employee Schedules that Work for Everyone appeared first on eBillity.

From making schedules to approving time-off requests, you need a vacation tracker that will help your company run more smoothly while also collecting the data you need to make smarter decisions down the line. 

5 features every PTO tracker should have

1. Time off requests

It seems obvious that any vacation tracker should allow employees to easily request time off through the system, but not all do. Some require an administrator to input verbal, written or emailed requests, which places an unnecessary burden on you.

Ensure that any PTO tracker you consider gives employees the ability to submit time off requests on their own, and that you can view those requests as you create the next schedule so you can easily see who’s available and when. 

A good vacation tracker will also allow you to:

• Set up time-off codes (sick, vacation, etc.) that can be used in perpetuity.
• Block any days or dates that employees or specific teams can’t take off.
• Easily approve or deny requests in seconds.

2. Visible benefit accrual

Employee benefits like PTO cost companies a lot of money, and one key function of a PTO tracker should be to market that value back to them. When employees use a system that clearly tracks and displays compounding benefits, they see how their hard work is paying off in terms of benefits, time off, etc. It also helps you avoid problems down the line by giving you a place to set up clear company policies and infrastructure around benefits and PTO. Make sure any vacation tracker you use incorporates visual benefit accrual in a real way. 

3. Mobile mentality

Desktops are not the way of the future. Any effective vacation tracker will allow employees to enter time from desktops, of course, but will place a priority on laptops, smartphones and tablets. People are on the move during the holidays, and a PTO tracker with a mobile-first mentality will allow them to track any work hours that may pop up unexpectedly — sales calls from the road, surprise report requests completed on a plane, etc. — easily and accurately. 

Bonus: Time Tracker can even be paired with voice-activated technologies like Alexa, so employees can start trackers with just their voice.

4. Flexibility

One big reason you need a time tracking system that includes a vacation tracker is to preserve flexibility. With so many workforces going remote, people expect — and enjoy — added flexibility, especially around PTO. In fact, 40% of people perceive a flexible schedule as the most significant benefit of working remotely. 

Make that easy for them by giving them a system that allows them to modify their own schedules as needed (within reason) so they can find a work-life balance that works for them. 

5. Reporting

Another area where many PTO trackers fall short is reporting. They track days worked versus days off, and to many people that appears to be enough. In reality, it’s a missed opportunity. When you need data to justify the size of a team or the salary of an employee, metrics from a vacation tracker can and should be there to support you. 

With Time Tracker, you can pull: 

• Billable versus non-billable hours
• How much time is spent on specific tasks
• How much PTO employees are taking
• Employee utilization rates

Those metrics can help you establish which employees are being underutilized or overworked, especially as it relates to use of benefits such as PTO. 

Try Time Tracker

Ready to get the best PTO tracker on the market in place before the holidays? Start your free,14-day trial today. 

The post Guide to Using A PTO Tracker During the Holidays appeared first on eBillity.