Former independent companies Trackforce, a front-end solutions company, and Valiant, a payroll and back-office solutions company, merged to create Trackforce Valiant, a new powerhouse in restaurant and hospitality management. Trackforce Valiant serves as a holistic solutions company, offering restaurants their services for front-end, back-end, and everything in between.
Trackforce Valiant specializes in payroll that caters to the restaurant and hospitality industry, allowing for a fluid workforce and specific compliance regulations. Trackforce Valiant prides themselves in their ability to understand the complexities of hospitality management with respect to different types of shifts, front-of-house vs back-of-house, tip pooling, meal credits and other wage and labor requirements. Their software takes into account all of these different nuances and looks at it from a compliance point of view to make sure an employer is running or calculating something like payroll with this industry compliance already in mind.
Over the last year, the hospitality sector experienced an almost complete lockdown of the industry. Especially with such a large number of furloughs, lay-offs, and hour reductions throughout the pandemic, it became increasingly challenging for businesses to even operate, let alone run a complete payroll or HR department. This really gave Trackforce Valiant a window to step in as a service partner to their clients, proving especially helpful while business owners were trying to navigate early COVID legislation such as federal aid or the Paycheck Protection Program. The team at Trackforce Valiant worked closely with their clients to help them understand both the eligibility and application aspects of these new programs. It was not so much of a financial gain for Trackforce Valiant as a company to do this, but more about the creation of true client partnerships, letting these business owners know that they have their backs even during these most unprecedented times.
“We’ve always aimed to do that, and this time of need only emphasized that already existing relationship.” says Trackforce Valiant’s VP of Strategic Communications Tim Lozier.
The team at Trackforce Valiant defines compliance as truly transparent. Whether that be for breaks, tips, or other fair labor standards, it is imperative for businesses to be both organized and candid. Trackforce Valiant is catching what may fall through the cracks with other payroll and timekeeping services through their team’s expertise of the hospitality and restaurant industry. So much of compliance is about understanding where the employee information resides and how it should connect to the other aspects of a business.
Almost every HR system has a place that all their important documentation lives—pay rates, deductions, tax codes, etc.—but what sets Trackforce Valiant apart is that they’ve found a way to connect all this documentation to the payroll system natively. It is not uncommon for a restaurant employee to serve as a hostess one night and a waitress the next, and nuances such as the different pay or tip percentage between those two positions can becoming confusing and difficult to navigate. But Trackforce Valiant understands and embraces this to build a system to easily accommodate such workforce fluidity. They have expertly adapted their technology and systems to best fit the nature of the restaurant industry. Especially with the labor shortages as a result of the pandemic, this flexibility is more important than ever as waitstaff may be taking on multiple roles at their restaurant.
As things begin to open back up and return to capacity, the new challenge for Trackforce Valiant and their clients is rapid onboarding. They want to allow for more remote-based onboarding processes. Now living in an increasingly post-covid world, it becomes more important to decrease in-person exposure prior to employment as well as appropriately allocate resources such as labor as restaurants return to capacity.
“Our remote onboarding solution has become a big benefit for many of our clients, so once an employee finally does come onto the team, all of that prior legwork is already handled,” Lozier explained. “This is especially beneficial for hospitality owners and managers as it alleviates some of their administrative burden, allowing them to focus on bringing customers back into the establishment physically. This completely remote onboarding process was made possible through Trackforce Valiant’s partnerships with various onboarding and applicant tracking systems. We’ve created a system that can integrate with multiple hiring platforms and their apps, that becomes a seamless Trackforce Valiant experience.”
From payroll to onboarding, Trackforce Valiant offers the restaurant and hospitality operator an easy to navigate portfolio of solutions. “Our goal is to enable our clients to do what they do best: create a memorable dining experience,” Lozier concluded.
To learn more about Trackforce Valiant, visit their website.
