Article contributed by Valiant Solutions and TimePro
In the restaurant business, “time lost is money lost,” especially when managing employee schedules, HR, and payroll. From paper-based timesheets, to employees forgetting to clock out, payroll errors are time-consuming and costly to resolve. Moreover, continuously changing industry, state, and federal regulations are difficult to keep track of, increasing the probability of fines. If not managed effectively, payroll and compliance issues can significantly impact your bottom-line.
While technology is being utilized to support front and back of house operations, manual processes and spreadsheets still linger, especially when supporting scheduling, payroll, and compliance reporting. Even with the right processes in place, paper and spreadsheets will only take you so far. An integrated HCM (human capital management) system offers a broad range of capabilities to centralize business-critical functions, such as scheduling, time and labor management, employee self-service, and payroll, just to name a few. They can also maintain employee attendance/performance records, archive historical data and other documents which are useful for audits and compliance activities.
Here are four ways an HCM solution can improve your business and bottom-line:
1. Reducing Payroll Errors
Common payroll errors include employees entering incorrect hours on timesheets, misplacing time cards, and supervisors failing to accurately track overtime. Each mistake requires time to correct and more importantly, illustrates how payroll errors can impact your business by draining management resources, productivity, and profitability. A central system can automate the entire workflow process – from scheduling and time management, to payroll processing. It can also improve data accuracy and eliminate miscalculations.
2. Ensuring Regulatory Compliance
Ever-changing compliance rules are the impetus for restaurants being vulnerable to fines. Keeping pace with regulations can be a daunting task. Everything from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), covering child labor, minimum wage, and overtime, to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), to family medical leave, and fair scheduling laws – all these compliance rules have a ripple effect on payroll processing. To ensure compliance, it is essential to maintain accurate employee data. An HCM solution, especially one from a provider with industry experience, can mitigate the risk of labor penalties and fines.
3. Simplifying Audits
Audits and lawsuits can cripple your business; especially if you are not prepared to provide the proper reports. Keeping timely and accurate records is crucial when experiencing an audit, employee accusation, or regulatory penalty. Leveraging a central database, HCM solutions offer automatic record keeping functions, tracking everything from employee scheduling to payroll. If and when an audit requires documentation, real-time and historical reports can be easily generated, eliminating administrative time and costs.
4. Optimizing Business Operations
Key business metrics such as staff utilization can offer insights into how your business is performing, and pinpoint areas of improvement. Automated time and attendance functionality with HCM solutions provide a powerful dashboard to capture business-critical data and analytics. Tapping into real-time and archived data offers the capability to identify trends, comparing locations, shifts and employee performance.
Embracing Change
From grab-and-go cafes and fast casual eateries, to five-star, fine-dining restaurants, today’s fast-paced restaurant operators cannot afford staffing inefficiencies such as missing payroll deadlines, reacting to regulatory audits and employee challenges, and correcting time-worked recording errors.
Labor-intensive businesses require new tools to administer schedules, record-keeping, reporting, payroll, and employee self-service. HCM solutions like Valiant combined with TimePro can help effectively manage your most valuable asset – personnel – positively impacting your bottom-line.
Valiant’s hospitality solutions feature easy integration with your POS system, calculate meal credits, accurately report on tips and ensure compliance with spread of hours pay, all in one place. Learn more at their website.
