Approving Employee Time Cards

We're always thinking about ways to improve Virtual TimeClock. Sometimes those ideas come from internal sources like engineering and technical support team members. Sometimes those ideas come from customers who use our time clock software everyday. And sometimes those ideas come from people just checking us out or comparing us to the competition. One of the things we've been pondering lately is how to capture the payroll processing workflow of many of the businesses we speak with. The flow of events often goes something like this:

1. Employees print, verify, and sign off on time card hours
2. Employees submit time cards to manager for approval
3. Manager makes any necessary edits, approves or rejects time cards
4. Rejected time cards are returned to employee for clarification or further action
5. Approved time cards are submitted for payroll processing

Sometimes time cards go to an internal bookkeeper, sometimes they get sent to the accountant, and sometimes they go to an online payroll service. Other times, staff bookkeepers pull labor hours directly from the time clock but are still wanting to verify that the overtime and leave hours have been approved by a manager or supervisor before processing payroll.

So we're thinking of adding a time card approval process to a future release of Virtual TimeClock. This may include the ability to electronically sign time cards, the ability of managers to approve or reject time cards, reporting of approved and rejected time cards, and the ability to send time cards directly to a PDF or email. Would that be helpful for your business? Drop me a comment and let me know what we're missing or what we can do to make the payroll process even more efficient for your business.