Managers find overtime violations only after payroll has processed

“Curious what tiny tweaks actually stuck for people. Not a big system overhaul, more the little things that quietly buy hours back: how you confirm interviews, how managers request headcount, onboarding checklists, time-off workflows, candidate follow-ups, whatever. What's one small process change that saved you (or your team) real time every week? Concrete details welcome: what you changed and roughly what it freed up. submitted by /u/HR_diva26 [link] [comments]”

“Looking for scheduling app recommendations. Something that allows you to add up to 10-15 different employees, at one location where hours worked can be pulled to run payroll (we have quickbooks for payroll so don't need an all in one program). Was using WhenIWork which was great for what we needed, then they switched to Rippling and its been nothing but issues. I'm in Canada if that matters. Thank you! :) submitted by /u/KaylaR2828 [link] [comments]”

“The contractors we use during busy season are paid hourly. I assume that is the case for you as well? I’ve never seen one of them convert to full time, but with overtime the pay is insane. If you have some experience it’s easy to walk away with more than $25k per month. Granted you really get just 2 months of work during the absolute peak, but those two months are sweet. [re: Anyone joined a Big 4 as a Assurance consultant in a contract role? If yes, please share your experience and guide me if”

“Customers might trust your platform for scheduling or managing employees, but trusting it with everyone's paychecks is another decision entirely. [re: How do you get customers to use payroll once you've added it to your platform?]”

“It comes down to the manager. Some trust people genuinely to manage their own time, and some also seem to measure productivity by how many hours youre online or sitting at a desk. Its quite frustrating because if your manager leaves the "good setup" you had created can be flipped completely [re: How “lax” is your companies hybrid or remote environment?]”

“We get a 48 hour grace period to finish our charts so now I feel lucky [re: How often do you stay late to finish documentation? What's the longest you stayed, and why?]”

“Recently a few of my guys have started to clock in on their way to work. They step out of their house and clock in on the app which has a location on it. This is getting to the job site usually within 15 to 20 minutes of their house. But recently it's starting to creep up on time. I assume it's guys stopping at gas station for drinks or whatever. Occasionally it's 1 guy picking up another guy who doesn't have a car. I don't ask them to do that. And when I hire I tell people t”

“I miss time-sheets so much that I do them now as a solo practitioner. It’s a tough balancing act. If I don’t have enough billable hours every day, I let myself hear about it. And god help me if I go over budget. Or don’t use up the whole budget. I stuffed a bunch of time into Practice Development and of course, I called myself out on it…. [re: Does anyone else in public hate timesheets and the constant feeling of having to rush jobs due to budget?]”

“I once worked at a firm that tracked every 6 minutes [re: Does anyone else in public hate timesheets and the constant feeling of having to rush jobs due to budget?]”

“Basically my full question is in the thread title. I pride myself on doing a great job but it appears that timesheets and rushing jobs due to budget and time constraints are often preferred. submitted by /u/deluxepepperoncini [link] [comments]”

“including the call time in task estimates would make that harder to ignore. [re: Does anybody else have a boss who requires you to be on call with them all day?]”

“My job accidentally added 30 hours to my normal paycheck. I immediately told my GM and operational manager. They looked into it and couldn’t figure out why there is a day it says I worked 30hrs (in addition to my 8hr shift) there’s not even 30hrs in a day so we don’t know how corporate and payroll missed this and the thing is they don’t even care. They literally asked why I would even tell them a mistake like this happened (jokingly) they said if it was serious, corporate would have already call”

“Oh, I know the type. Send him the calculations: how many people are at the meeting, how long it lasts, and what everyone’s hourly rate is.The boss will be shocked to realize he’s just pissing money away on these meetings. [re: Does anybody else have a boss who requires you to be on call with them all day?]”

“We’re paid based on working 45 hours a week, but we regularly work much more than that. Our jobs require us to work many evenings and weekends for events and assignments that take us long distances away. We’re kept so busy that we usually use evenings and weekends to keep up with everything. Despite the 45 hours, it’s expected we will be working more because it’s part of our job and we’re salary. But today we got a curt email from the manager “reminding” us that we’re expected to work 45 hours a”

“The interesting part is that the owner and the person using the dashboard every morning needed two different things. The owner wanted visibility across the business, while the ops team needed to answer one immediate question: which vehicles aren't earning today, and why? I think that's where a lot of dashboards go wrong. They prioritize showing all the available data instead of helping someone make their next decision. Watching the admin work revealed that gap better than another round o”

“So my company rolled out some activity tracking software last month and in our team meeting today they showed us the numbers. Our team averaged about 6.5 active hours a day and our VP thinks that's too low. He's going to dig in by team and by person to see who's bringing it down. Someone asked what actually counts as active and nobody could answer. Like if I'm on a call walking through a design doc and not touching my keyboard, am I idle that whole hour? Does reading code count?”

“From a remote worker perspective, fairness is key when tracking hourly shifts for a growing team. We use Monitask where I'm at, and honestly it's pretty decent. It's a straightforward time tracking platform that keeps hours clear without feeling overly intrusive. Might be worth checking out for your freelancers! [re: Best time tracking software]”

“I seen some co-workers on my place taking office work with them to home after 9-5 job to finish tasks in order to keep up with the new tasks assigned to them. Also work on weekends to finish what they can't. All of it is obviosouly unpaid. Is it worth it to take work home ? submitted by /u/Technical-Studio565 [link] [comments]”

“I work for a relatively smaller scale restaurant which leads to some pretty shit management. Recently the closing manager who is supposed to input hours is in more of the "I want to go home" type, which leads to him forgetting to do a bunch of tasks, one of which to input the hours of the cooks. I don't trust him for shit, so when I saw that some hours were missed on my paycheck I brought it up with the team and one of the cooks realized that he's missing hours as far back as t”

“Are contract roles requiring a standard 9-5 shift? New dad and I’m thinking contract work could be easier than standard 9-5 with child. submitted by /u/allknowinguser [link] [comments]”

“I’d keep it simple and have people log their hours against each project as they go, especially if the rates vary. Trying to piece together a whole week from memory at the end of the month sounds like a headache for everyone. We also looked at Multiplier for managing international contractors and payments, but I’d still keep time tracking and approval rules clear from the start. A quick weekly review is usually enough to catch anything unusual without making people feel like every minute is being”

“Recently got a new job as a tax assistant. How do I record time using CCH Central accurately? I find that I spend a lot of time on clients which the tax manager says its understandable with me learning their processes and the client which is fine but how is this normalised to be making sure that 7.5 hours of your time is recorded and put on record? I understand that timesheets to accounting firms is like inventory for businesses, but how can anybody stare at a screen for 7.5 hours! Thanks all &#”

“Management rolled out a new spreadsheet this week where everyone has to log what they worked on in 30 minute blocks. We already have project tracking software, calendars, Teams, and weekly meetings, so nobody understands what this is supposed to accomplish. My manager said it's not about monitoring people, they just want "better visibility." Yesterday he messaged me asking what I was doing between 2 and 2:30 because I wrote "client follow ups" instead of listing every cli”

“I've noticed that a lot of small businesses still handle this manually — texting employees for hours worked, tracking payments in a spreadsheet or notebook, approving time-off over WhatsApp or in person. Tools exist to solve this (Deputy, Homebase, Connecteam, and others), but adoption among very small teams (under 10-15 people) still seems low. I'm curious why — is it pricing that doesn't make sense for a 5-person team, onboarding that feels like overkill, or just inertia, "thi”

“The real problem might be the management system, not the engineers. 😅”

“Does anyone have any suggestions for a good time tracking app for the construction type field? One that can manage multiple changing crews, multiple jobs per day and call outs. Horror and success stories appreciated. submitted by /u/Diligent-Split-4377 [link] [comments]”

“I’m finishing up my second year. Despite billing 13 months over 200 hours, I’ll have a second year of not hitting bonus. I started slow my first year and got busy as hell, but not enough to catch up, and missed several months of work this year due to an emergency. How is this sustainable? How do people keep this up to make partner? I get an email every two minutes. 35 emails in the last 45 minutes alone. I’m being chased on three urgent matters. I get a new deal on an existing client every week.”

“7 hours of active work seems extremely high for engineering. 2-3 actual hours seems normal. Most other work isn’t really able to be tracked.”

“Our team averaged 7 hours of “active work” a day and we were told that the number is too low and that our director was going to drill down to see who and what groups were too low. Nobody could actually answer what exactly counted as activity like if someone is talking in an online meeting but not moving their mouse or keyboard would they be “inactive” in the tracking. Then we were told that in the future a number would be assigned to each person based on your rolling averages compared to your pe”

“I signed a contact with a small hospitality business last year for a $70k salary, but with the hours my manager is scheduling me, I’ll only make two-thirds of that. Am I expected to schedule myself with extra activities to make up for this, and is this even my right? I have the authority to clock in for extra work I do, but I’m confused about the expectation and the norms. I’ll have a conversation with them, but I don’t want to go in blind, or give an ungrateful impression. Staffing is their big”

We had an issue with the front door lock at work and my manager asked me to stay after everyone left because a locksmith was supposed to come. I’m hourly. Guy ended…

“Question for those Lead PAs/those in charge of scheduling. For those in a fixed staffing setting (where you require X amount of providers each day) how do you handle scheduling around the holidays? I am inheriting this duty and our group has a long history of people taking large chunks of times off during this time leading to inequality of work imo. Wondering if anyone has made a system that’s more fair to the group as a whole ? submitted by /u/No-Set-8307 [link] [comments]”

“For teams working across multiple projects at different rates, the manual submission approach ends up not being the most reliable. By the time you're reconciling reported hours against invoices across multiple contractors, it becomes a part-time job on its own. What worked best for a lot of teams is getting everyone into the same time tracking system where hours are logged against specific projects as they work, rather than reported after the fact. The data is there when you need it, and nob”

“thanks for checking it out! Was there anything that felt confusing or anything you expected it to do that it didin't?”

“Our nonprofit is growing, and keeping track of volunteer hours with spreadsheets is becoming a mess. We have people signing in at different locations, missing entries, and it's taking way too long to verify everyone's hours at the end of the month. Has anyone switched to a volunteer hours tracking system that makes reporting and attendance easier without creating extra work for volunteers? I'm mainly looking for something that's simple, accurate, and works well for recurring volu”

“My salaried job views a 40 hour week as a minimum, not an average. I average somewhere between 42-45 hours per week, and my boss thinks that's too low. She doesn't get that people reporting more hours are likely doing just as much or less work, just reporting more. This month, we are expected to work 40-50 additional hours on top of our regular work. It includes evenings and weekends. My pay stays the same, so each hour worked over 40 basically lowers my "full time" hourly pay.”

“I would compare the workload rather than use a headcount cutoff. List the recurring work, hours per week, and decisions that currently fall between managers. Then separate the work that needs a consistent internal owner from specialist projects you can buy occasionally. Ask the firm to price fractional and permanent options against the same scope, and make the transition criteria explicit before they pitch a search.”

“This is exactly the kind of thing I hate needing but always end up needing, signed up”

submitted by /u/Kwlogger [link] [comments]

“Did a quick time audit this week — logged every 30-minute block for 5 days. Turns out about 35% of my time was going toward things like fielding inquiries, chasing documents, scheduling, and onboarding follow-ups. None of it bad work, just not revenue-generating work. Started thinking about it as a staffing problem: if I had a small ops team, I'd have one person on inbound inquiries, one on paperwork and records, one on calendar and follow-ups. The business actually needs those roles — I jus”

“We have since switched to a different clock system that goes minute by minute, but we used to also have a system that required a 7:23 (or later) sign out in order to get paid for the whole shift, otherwise we would be shorted 15 mins because it would round down to 7:15. 7:23 would basically be counted as 7:30. You still get paid for the other hours, but when every minute counts, you just wait until 7:23 with your bags ready… I will say on my unit, I have very rarely even gotten done with report”

“Being in at 7:01 is considered late. We have to punch in between 6:53 and 7. So most of the staff is in by 6:45. Reports, when they are updates, are easily done by 7:05”

“The piece that changed this for us was separating the tracking from the reviewing. I used to ask contractors for an end of week report and every Monday turned into me trying to reconstruct what actually happened from memory and half finished notes. Switched to a tracker where hours get logged against the project as they work, now payment day is just me scanning a summary instead of playing detective. For the different rates part, we gave each project its own rate in the tool and stopped tracking”

“Hey everyone! One client’s shifts are in your calendar. Another client’s deadlines are in a task app. Payment dates are somewhere in a spreadsheet. Everything is technically written down, but figuring out what needs your attention still means checking several places. That’s the problem behind Desku , an organizer for virtual assistants managing multiple clients. I’m part of the team behind it, helping with marketing, and wanted to share it here. Desku brings your client schedules, tasks, deadlin”

“Per-project time entries with a short note handle different rates cleanly without turning it into screenshot surveilance.”

“For your situation the most practical approach is a payroll platform with built in time tracking and PTO management. Employees clock in and out digitally, hours flow directly into payroll without manual re entry, and PTO balances update automatically and are visible to employees through an app or portal. No binder, no Excel, no Monday morning discrepancies. Most modern payroll platforms can produce reports your accountant can work from directly, which removes the Excel handoff altogether.”

“For those who make shift schedules, what app do you use? Do you like it or not? I make the resident schedule for our ER and my predecessor was just doing everything in word and excel. It works, but I'm curious if there are smoother options that, preferably, I don't have to pay too much to use. Thoughts? submitted by /u/fellow_hotman [link] [comments]”

“I'm going through this right now. Job recently implemented "productivity software" and it's not aligning with how much I work. I'm always a top performer, get rave reviews and constantly being asked about going into management. Yet, according to this software I'm not doing shit. They're focusing on whatever bs metrics the software computes and all of a sudden have amnesia in terms of my actual performance. It's time to leave. For you and me.”

“Tell me you haven’t done Billings or set budgets before without telling me. Sarcasm aside, if a job takes a staff 18 hours, a good partner isn’t going to set the budget at exactly 18 hours, especially if the budget was 20 hours previously. Public accounting firms are in the business of making money, so it makes no sense to charge the client less than you did the year before. Besides, the fact that no job will take the exact same amount of time each is exactly why you wouldn’t set the budget to b”

“Ok bud, if the next time it takes 18 hours to do the work, then OP is screwed since this time it took 16, and the manager, wanting to be "realistic", sets the future budget at 16...but, maybe next time it takes 21, then next time 17, then next time 15. Manager is going to be pissed and OP gets screwed. Understood?”

“As we’ve grown the spreadsheets I started with are becoming a real headache. Tracking schedules and hours across more staff takes way longer than it should, and things get missed more often than I’d like. I’m trying to find something better for scheduling and payroll instead of sorting everything out by hand every week. One of my friends mentioned having a home setup, so that’s on my list to look at. But I wanna hear from other managers. What’s worked well for you? submitted by /u/FA”

“Hi everyone, I've been so confused and paranoid about my work timeframe because it does not align with my paystubs. Here's my pathway: - Hired on June 1, 2024 as a summer lab position at X per hour - Transitioned to full-time lab position on July 10, 2024 at X per hour - Completed 1st probationary period on October 1, 2024 and started earning Y per hour - Completed 2nd probationary period on December 1, 2024 and started earning Z per hour, making me officially a lab technician. I also go”

“If the budgest hrs is 20hrs and u finished it at 16, do you record 20 or just 16. I dont like to be competitive and besides I have budget hrs to reach so I dont get those people who are putting their correct time, maybe they are the future partners. submitted by /u/Cool_Paramedic_9068 [link] [comments]”

“Like 1-2 hours of real work. Maybe 10 hours a week. I’m leaving because of it, i’m extremely bored. Yet of course i’m expected to look busy. Manager gives me no work and i’ve tried to find stuff to do for a whole year. Manager expects me to ask other teams for work.”

Excluding meetings. Meetings are work too

“When I worked govt it was in 10ths of an hour, and offset by 3 minutes. 0-3 minutes = 0 minutes on timesheet. 4-9 = .1 hours, etc. So glad I’m no longer there. But still some god awful managers here and there. The director I replaced made hourly employees use pto if they were even a few minutes late. I let my employees flex their time (within reason of course).”

“How did I put up with that shit in public?? No timesheets, no manager up my ass, no justifying the time I took or why I went X amount over expectations. I just get to do my work and then go home. God the grass is SO much greener. submitted by /u/Ok-Snow-939 [link] [comments]”

“Correct, however that must be made explicitly clear to the employee. Its up to the company (not the employee) to ensure the employees hours are accurately tracked (barring time fraud, on the employees part, of course). If the employee thinks they cant clock early working hours that were actually worked, that is an FLSA violation.”

“We got a new timekeeping policy this month and I thought I was misunderstanding it until my manager explained it. If you clock in at 8:01 instead of 8:00, they deduct 15 minutes because you're considered late for that block. But if you stay until 5:08 finishing something, you still get clocked out at 5 because anything under 15 minutes of extra time supposedly doesn't count. We asked in the meeting why the rounding only seems to work one direction and our manager literally said, "be”