You need unique solutions to the diverse issues that arise with a field service business. If you're in California, labor compliance is a big deal. Did your off-site employees take their required paid breaks? Perhaps you need a way to see open shifts so you can find workers to fill them. Do you pay employees different rates based on the work they do or when they do it? And why aren't you tracking the time of your independent contractors for accurate job costing?
What We'll Cover
1 - Employees Confirming They Took Paid Breaks
California labor law requires employers to give employees a paid 10-minute rest period for every four hours worked. Employees who clock in through Chronotek's timekeeping system stay clocked in and take their breaks, but how do you document the paid break for California's big eye in the sky?
One of our California customers started using Custom Prompts on clock-out to verify if employees took their required paid break. Custom Prompts will ask your employees any questions when they call to clock in or out (in English or Spanish). The requirement is that they call. We don't have Custom Prompts on the mobile app, but they do work with the Dialer App.
"Did you take your 10-minute paid break? Press 1 for yes or 2 for no."
We log the response, and you have it for your records. Compliance is simple.
***Use Custom Prompts to capture answers to any yes or no questions or answers that require a count, such as "How many bags of salt did you use?" (snowplow companies) or "How many empty racks does the store have?" (plant merchandisers).
Contact us if you're interested.
2 - Admins Seeing Jobs with Open Shifts
You need to identify jobs that lack coverage. Chronotek has an "Any Employee" status you can use when scheduling jobs, which is ideal for industries like commercial cleaning that have high turnover. Rarely do the schedules for cleanings change, but the cleaners often change. "Any Employee" is perfect and prevents constant schedule editing.
You could use the "Any Employee" option to specify open shifts, but that gets confusing. Instead, create an employee named *Open (first name) *Shift (last name), and schedule the Open Shift employee for all jobs that need an employee assigned to them. Use the asterisks to make the Open Shift employee populate near the top of the scheduling list.
Then, view all schedules for Open Shift in Schedule Manager or run a Weekly Schedule by Employee report. When you find someone to do the job, simply edit the schedule from Open Shift to Any Employee or a specific employee.
3 - Employees Paid Different Rates Based On the Work
Scenarios:
You pay a higher rate for a job that's only done on the weekends
You pay a higher rate for specific work, like floor stripping and waxing
You pay a lower rate for travel time
Or you have 58 other unique scenarios. Chances are, we can easily handle them with Activity Codes and Job Pay Types. Stop pulling your hair out and trying to do spreadsheet magic. Our Payroll Snapshot is the magic.
Let us know your scenario, and we will find a solution to save your hair.
4 - Independent Contractors Clocking In for Accurate Job Costing
Every labor dollar you spend at a customer site is a cost of doing business for that customer. You bid on the job for a certain price, and you need to track every dollar spent to know if you're making money, including money spent on independent contractors.
"But I don't pay overtime to independent contractors," you say.
No problem. We have basic reports that show total hours without overtime, or you can create non-OT Pay Types (they really are powerful) for independent contractors.
Naming Convention to Identify Independent Contractors
Easily identify independent contractors by putting (IC) as a prefix to their last names.
Run Reports on Independent Contractors
And put independent contractors in their own zone to run reports just on them.
But What About Flat Rates?
Even if you pay independent contractors flat rates by the job, it's still a good idea to track their time. You can divide the flat rate by their average time doing the work to calculate a pay rate for job cost reporting.
By the way, do you know the differences between employees and independent contractors? The IRS knows, so be careful about classifying your workers. Check out this guide, Employee vs. Independent Contractor- The Right-to-Control Test.
Wrapping It Up
Chaos swirls about you all day as you run a field service business, and you need powerful and flexible solutions to your unique issues. Chronotek can help!
Do you have other scenarios boggling your brain? Let us know.
For help on other topics, check out our Help Center. 😎
If you want to ensure that your employees are always at the job site when clocking in, take a peek at our new platform, Chronotek Pro.
