Time Tracking
Once you’ve installed the app, you can upload employee details in bulk through an Excel file or your accounting software, divide them into groups if required, and allocate various jobs to them. Clock-in and clock-out times can be assigned. Once you’ve done this, there are a lot of customization options available. You can set hourly rates, either individually or as a group. Further, jobs can also be classified as parent or child jobs. For example, the parent can be the construction of a gated community, while an individual house can be the child.
Clock-In And Clock-Out
Once your employee clocks-in, the timer starts ticking and stops at clock-out. Meanwhile, breaks, like for lunch, can also be recorded by the system. What’s more, the app also accounts for overtime. Employees can even clock-in as a group. VeriClock also provides an auto clock-out option, so that the timer automatically stops in case anyone forgets to do it.
Multiple Device Access
Your employee can clock-in and clock-out via a smartphone, a dumbphone, laptop, desktop, or even a landline. If they’re using a smartphone, the device location is recorded automatically upon clock-in from the app. On the other hand, if he’s using a dumbphone, he can send in an SMS or call. The app gets the location from the mobile service provider, but it’ll cost you an additional $3 per user. He can also clock-in with a laptop or desktop, for which the location comes from the IP address. If the employee uses a landline, the app uses voice verification to confirm that he’s not an imposter. This can be especially handy if they’re in an area without mobile network coverage.
Three Access Levels
The app has three levels of access – employee, manager, and admin – which is especially useful for larger companies. The settings allow you to limit managers’ access to data of only the employees who report to him. Likewise, employees cannot access any other employees’ data. The live tracking timesheet is simple and clear. You get to know whether your employees’ statuses are at clock-in or clock-out in a single glance. Clever use of icons also indicates from which device the clock-in was.
Geotagging
Geotagging is VeriClock’s most useful feature. It helps verify that your employee is actually where he is supposed to be at clock-in. Also known as real-time location tracking, it offers three different levels of monitoring. The lowest level of scrutinizing involves recording only the location at the time of clock-in and clock-out. The second gives you the ‘instant location,’ where the employee’s whereabouts can be accessed whenever requested or pinged. Finally, there’s ‘continuous location’ to track their whereabouts at predetermined times across work hours. The software displays all of his movements on a map in the form of a bread crumb trail.
The app comes with another smart feature called geofencing. VeriClock registers an automatic clock-out if your employee leaves a predetermined geographical area. For example, you can set the geofence to be 100 feet from the job site. If your employee breaches this, the clock-out occurs. Further, the geofence can even be set to self-destruct. Adding to the app’s flexibility, you can even configure a warning to your employee if he’s about to leave the fence, and the manager will also receive an alert if the employee moves out. Geofencing enables monitoring employees on large job sites, where unscheduled breaks can disrupt project implementation. This feature even works with dumbphones.
Geotagging is extremely useful for companies in sectors like construction, security, agriculture, oil, delivery, transport, and hospitality. To assuage any privacy concerns, geotagging remains strictly off outside work hours to protect employee privacy.
Verification And Custom Data Fields
The app adds a level of sophistication by allowing you to verify job status or completion. Your employee can just take a photo and send it across. It can even be a voice message, perhaps the client’s approval or disapproval. You can also set it up such that every clock-in and clock-out must be accompanied by visual proof. A hotel employee can send a picture to show that they’ve decorated the lobby just as you wanted. You can further tailor this feature to your needs using custom data fields. For instance, a driver may be required to send in odometer readings accompanied by a photograph. Besides this, they can also submit fuel gauge readings. Or, someone working with a painting firm can key in the number of rooms completed that day.
The app also allows you to set up a checklist that enables employees to choose between a series of options at clock-in or clock-out. For example, employees could be required to complete a best practices or safety checklist, or even simply rate his day, from very good to very bad.
Alerts
Vericlock adds a variety of alerts to ensure that you and your employees are always on top of things. No-show SMS or email messages can be sent to employees if they do not clock-in on time or if they’re not at a designated location at the precise time. Admins especially benefit from alerts, with five kinds tailored for them. For instance, there are alerts to inform you when employees clock-in and clock-out. There is an overtime alert that warns you when a particular employee is going into overtime. Further, TimeGuard alert also sends a message to remind those who forget to check-out at the end of the day. This can be triggered if either the work hours are over, or your employee leaves the worksite.
Job Cost alerts are perhaps the most valuable. You first specify a budget for a particular job. The app calculates the costs in realtime and will send a notification when your budget is about to be breached and notes projects that do not allow for overtime. What makes it better is that you can set a range of budgets. There’s Daily Budget, Weekly Budget, Monthly Budget, and Payroll Budget, and you can configure this for each job at hand. You will then receive a warning when any of these figures are about to be crossed. Whether you’re a small business or a big corporation, it helps you seal the breach before it becomes a flood that overwhelms your budget.
Real-Time And Custom Reports
There are a variety of smart reports you can generate to make life easier. They’re simple but customizable enough to be effective. Even better, the app delivers the reports to you in all the formats you usually use – Excel, PDF, or CSV.
The app delivers two types of reports, realtime and customized. The realtime reports cover employee hours, employee cost summaries, job costs, and payroll. To create a customized report, you can use the reports tab and manipulate the template filters by a simple ‘drag and drop.’ The fields you can move around include information on employee time, jobs, device addresses, payroll, and budgets. Your report can group these fields under employee, job, or any of the service items (sub-jobs) on which you’ve decided. Once you’ve adapted the template to suit your requirements, you can schedule them to be automatically generated at any interval you choose.
Because they’re so customizable, you can easily use the reports to look for patterns that’ll help you improve your business processes. For example, you can compare employees doing the same job to discover who’s the star performer and who’s slacking. You can compare similar job sites to see if one particular site is taking longer, and then give it more attention to get it up to speed. Unfortunately, you need to do this manually. If VeriClock used the data to deliver insights instead automatically, it would make for an outstanding feature. That would take the app up a notch, from one that eliminates human effort to one that helps you get smarter.
In-App Signature Capture
For companies where they, or the regulations, mandate that employees sign the timesheet before they can be paid, the app allows for digital signatures from their devices itself. The system can even generate digital signature requests when you choose.
