A Time & Attendance Success Story : Alta Regional
Alta California Regional Center is part of a network of 21 regional centers in California that serve people with development disabilities and their families by providing diagnosis, evaluation, and coordinating necessary services and supports.
Alta California Regional Center is part of a network of 21 regional centers in California that serve people with development disabilities and their families by providing diagnosis, evaluation, and coordinating necessary services and supports.
While the organization is a private, non-profit entity, Alta contracts with California Department of Developmental Services to serve over 17,000 people in a 10 county area annually. Over the last several years, Alta Regional has seen tremendous growth, and with that growth, an increasing need to have good systems in place to manage information accurately, and efficiently.
One area that needed a major upgrade was Alta Regional's time and attendance process. The 450-person organization used spreadsheets to record and track employee time. Employees would fill out a spreadsheet, attached it to an email, and send it off to the payroll supervisor.
The next step was extremely time intensive and error prone. The payroll coordinator printed each spreadsheet, verified which employees had submitted their time, and then sent notices to those who had not. She then had to transfer the information from the individual timesheets into a master spreadsheet in order to figure out time worked, vacation accruals, and sick time. Once entered, the information was used for payroll purposes and also generated an email back to each employee providing accrual balances.
“We selected TimeForce because it is very easy to use, and the software allows us to accommodate all of our employees' work schedules, and track and report the time and accruals accurately,”
Peter Tiedemann, Alta Regional's chief operating officer, finally decided that that it was time to automate this inefficient process, and began looking for a time and attendance solution. He wanted a cost-effective system that could handle the variety of work schedules Alta Regional requires to serve its clients, including traditional eight-hour days, 10-hour/four-day weeks, and more. He also needed it to track overtime and compensatory time-off accruals.
The first group Tiedemann approached was Alta Regional's current payroll company. The proposal that came back was extremely expensive due to the amount of software customization that would need to happen to fit Alta Regional's needs.
Tiedemann continued his search. He found three potential vendors and reviewed all of them via web presentations. After an evaluation period, Alta Regional selected Qqest Software System's TimeForce time and attendance solution.
"We selected TimeForce because it is very easy to use, and the software allows us to accommodate all of our employees' work schedules, and track and report the time and accruals accurately," said Tiedemann.
Qqest implementation personnel came to Alta Regional to get the installation started. The team set up the system, and then a team of Alta Regional staff rolled out the automated timecards to one, 20-employee department to test and get a better understanding of the system.
Over the next three months, Tiedeman's team conducted group trainings and rolled out TimeForce to the rest of the organization.
After about nine months of using TimeForce, Alta Regional is already seeing great results. According to Tiedeman, the entire process—from employees recording time in an electronic form, to the payroll coordinator processing information—is much more efficient and accurate. And employees and supervisors alike really appreciate having immediate access to their work history, vacation accruals, and time-off information.
"TimeForce has helped our 450 person company convert a spreadsheet-based time and attendance system to a fully automated, robust, and yet-simple-to-use time reporting system," said Tiedemann. "TimeForce allows payroll staff to spend time looking at data produced in TimeForce instead of manually entering data from hundreds of timesheets. The ability of employees to request time off electronically and for supervisors to review and approve requests online is a great time saver."
In the future, Tiedemann plans to begin using more of TimeForce's reporting features, including customizing some of the reports for different departments. He is also looking into utilizing some of the HR functions to track employee information, and training and education status.
With TimeForce, Alta Regional spends less time and energy processing payroll, and more time providing vital services to individuals with disabilities and their families.
"We're very satisfied with TimeForce," said Tiedemann. "I'm glad we chose this solution, and I'd definitely recommend it to others."
