U.S. President Barack Obama is focusing heavily on promoting
time and billing legislation that would require women to be paid equally to men in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.
Earlier this month, First Lady Michelle Obama said her husband "knows that closing that pay gap will mean the difference between women losing $50, $100, $500 for each paycheck, or having that money in their pockets," as quoted by
Bloomberg.
Lilly Ledbetter, who sued her employer after discovering she was being paid substantially less than her male colleagues, is working with the president to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. The legislation would empower workers to find out how much their colleagues make, and is expected to be a helpful tool in the effort to ensure
time and billing compliance with regard to how much female and male members of the workforce are paid.
Those who oppose the legislation argue that it may do more harm than good. In an editorial for
U.S. News & World Report, Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute argued that it is "a special-interest bill for litigators and aggrieved women's groups."
A recent survey by Sage North America revealed that while many small business owners are eager to integrate mobile applications and the cloud into their companies, the tools are not as widely used as they could be.
Specifically, nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of surveyed entrepreneurs reported that they still track time using a pen and paper, despite the fact that
mobile time tracking solutions are quicker, easier and more accurate.
Tracking time via manual methods wastes time for busy small business owners and their staff members. Indeed, nearly one-third (32 percent) of respondents said they dedicate up to one-quarter of their time to performing basic administrative tasks.
Connie Certusi, executive vice president and general manager of small business solutions at Sage North America,
noted that 18 percent of respondents wanted their applications to work together more efficiently.
Sage Timeslips'
mobile employee time tracking component allows slips to be created from any email-capable device, facilitating quick and easy time recording without the need for a pen or paper.
A seemingly mundane HR responsibility - tracking professionals' time - has undergone an evolution in recent years, Workforce.com reports.
"There are biometric readers to scan fingerprints and prevent fraud, sophisticated scheduling tools ... and there are also analytic tools," the news source notes. "Taken together, the applications can save companies millions in their biggest overall expense: labor."
Ensuring time is being fully and accurately accounted for is a major concern for businesses.
"In all of the different areas that organizations can save money, one of the last remaining holy grails is this concept of time and attendance management," Jason Averbook, CEO of advisory firm Knowledge Infusion, told the news source.
Web based
time tracking software from
Sage Timeslips facilitates quick, easy and comprehensive time capture for busy professionals. even when they're out of the office. Sage Timeslips also simultaneously provides
billing that is convenient and easy for clients to understand.
For more details from the Workforce.com article, click
here.
Choosing
small business time invoicing software is a task busy entrepreneurs often elect to put off in favor of what they see as more pressing demands. However, as
Business Insider notes, few things are more important than keeping track of time.
"Look at it this way: Is profitability important?" the source asks. "Is it important to stay on track with budgets and projects? Yes? Then you should absolutely be tracking time."
Often, companies implement
time invoicing software purely for its human resources benefits. However, time data can also be used to help automate project management and facilitate internal, external and reverse billing.
"It will unleash profitability that you didn’t know you had available," according to the news source.
Products such as
Sage Timeslips offer a number of optional add-ons to facilitate
electronic billing, bill delivery, accounting integration, added timekeeping capacity and even remote software access.
A recent
survey conducted by OfficeTime.net offered insight into the benefits enjoyed by company owners and professionals who have a
time tracking system in place.
Nearly half (46 percent) of respondents said they use
time keeping technology to help themselves become more productive, ahead of the 42 percent who cited an increased ability to provide clients with comprehensive invoicing while improving their own revenue.
When it came to tracking time in order to improve productivity, 42 percent used data obtained from their
time tracking software to zero in on how they are spending their hours, while nearly one-third (31 percent) leveraged the information to identify where time was being wasted.
"By accurately tracking time each day, business owners and professionals not only can bill for more time and increase their revenues, but they can simply work more efficiently by making better use of their time," noted Stephen Dodd, director of OfficeTime.net, in a statement.
Business Insider recently noted that in addition to tracking time and productivity,
time keeping software can also be used to automate project management and streamline internal, external and reverse billing.
Georgia's Richmond County Sheriff's Office recently became the last government department in the area to upgrade to an electronic
employee time tracking system, according to the
Augusta Chronicle.
Sheriff's Colonel Gary Powell said the
employee time tracking technology will empower supervisors to more effectively keep tabs on employee hours and adjust schedules as needed.
"It's a good time-management tool for supervisors," Powell said, as quoted by the news source. "I think that once everybody gets into it for a couple of months and sees how easy and beneficial it is, they will like it."
As Business Insider points out, "
timesheet software is not just for payroll." Rather, solutions such as
Sage Timeslips can also double as
project tracking software that offers in-depth insight into time and expenditures on a project-wide scale.
"Without timesheet software, it is very difficult to understand project costs," the source notes.
Ultimately, solutions such as Sage Timeslips can lower payroll processing costs, increase accuracy, expedite billing and even automate travel expense reimbursement.
A recent guest post on the Legal Ease blog noted that both solo practitioners of law and multi-attorney law offices can leverage
time tracking technology to great effect.
For those in law offices, tracking both billable and non-billable use of time can offer needed insight into where administrative employees or other billable staff could be of use. Solo attorneys can use
time tracking system data to get a breakdown of how long they spend dealing with administrative tasks and whether these should be either partially or entirely outsourced in order to allow them more time to focus on billable activities.
Although tracking non-billable time may not seem important, the data collected can provide valuable information about where attorneys' days went and how they spent the time they did not bill for. "For example, you might be spending an inordinate amount of time interrupted by email, phone calls and staff, instead of working on client matter management," the blog notes.
A recent Law Department Metrics Benchmarking Survey from ALM Legal Intelligence found that the majority of legal departments don't have a
time keeping system. Just nine out of 82 responding firms said they tracked time, either manually or with the use of
time tracking software.
Enabling employees to work from home can give back up to two months of time per year, per worker, Moneycontrol's SME Mentor reports.
As a rising number of employees work from home, en route to a business meeting or out in the field, the need for a cost-effective, real-time
cloud employee time tracking system becomes more prevalent.
"In today's challenging economic environment, growing businesses need to be able to take advantage of any window of opportunity," the source notes. The fact that
cloud timesheet systems such as
Sage Timeslips can be used to submit information remotely from any mobile device capable of accessing the internet facilitates the quick, accurate recording of hours without the need to submit them via computer or paper timesheet, which may require a visit to the office.
"As complete mobility has become the norm, installing software ... onto individual users' mobile devices adds proficiency to communication while on the road," added Scott Kraege, director at MOBI Wireless Management, in a recent guest post on TMCnet's TechZone360 blog.
Thanks to advances in
mobile expense tracking and
mobile time tracking, professionals can report their hours and expenditures in real time from outside the office.
The debate over proposed
time and billing legislation that would raise New York's minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 continues as both Democrats and Republicans held legislative hearings to discuss the issue earlier this month.
Nassau County Republican Dean Skelos, Majority Leader of the New York State Senate, spoke out against the increase, arguing it would be detrimental to job growth and lowering the unemployment rate.
"Our focus should be on creating jobs, not potentially killing jobs," said Skelos, who characterized the proposed minimum wage rise as "a job killer."
Speaking with small business leaders, Skelos said he favors offering small business tax incentives over raising the minimum wage, according to Long Island Business News.
Manhattan Democrat and Senate Majority Leader John Sampson, on the other hand, said it's important to look out for low-income workers and ensure they are able to afford the cost of living.
"It's about justice," Sampson said. "The more you take care of your employees, your employees will take care of your business."
In an age of smartphones, tablets and laptops, desk phones are rapidly becoming obsolete, according to a recent guest post on TMCnet's TechZone360 blog.
Indeed, installing tools such as
mobile time and billing capabilities and the ability to securely view and manage data such as sales numbers, calendars, email and agendas allows many professionals to conduct virtually all of their business outside the office.
According to guest blogger Scott Kraege, director at MOBI Wireless Management, the transition from corporate to individually owned devices has several advantages, including reducing a company's costs, boosting productivity, ensuring usability and providing mobility.
"As complete mobility has become the norm, installing software ... onto individual users' mobile devices adds proficiency to communication while on the road," Kraege writes.
Indeed,
mobile expense tracking capabilities allow professionals to report expenditures on the go, while
mobile time tracking and
project tracking technology facilitates accurate, real-time reporting from outside the office.
Thanks to the cloud, web based
time and billing software such as
Sage Timeslips is accessible from any internet-capable device, making it possible for workers to submit information remotely.