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how much money can i save by using GPS to VERIFY TIME CARDS in a LAWN CARE business?

my employees turn in a hand-written time card each week and i know they make them up at the last minute-- also they always put down 1/2 hour for lunch when it takes them 1/2 hour to drive to and from lunch. More ofter times then not they leave work for the day earlier than they are supposed do but report a full days work even if i catch them i never get the time cards on time and it puts unnecessary pressure on my bookkeeper to figure out payroll and for me to figure out if im making money or not on top of that some of my men moonlight while on my time using my equipment WHAT CAN I DO? I CANNOT CONTINUE TO OPERATE MY BUSINESS THIS WAY!!!

Public Comments

1. I used to own a business and I can definitely understand where you are coming from. You have to be careful, because you don't want to make all of your employees upset and have everyone quit on you. Even employees who really need jobs, will quit if you make them angry. I would avoid the GPS unit. If you had a GPS unit, you would have to spend extra time to track it. I would insist that employees fill in their timecard every day. This is a very reasonable request. Make up some story why the timecards now have to be filled out every day. Also, put your energy into monitoring the cost of every job. Also, if a job took eight hours one time and fifteeen hours the next, you need to find out why. Get rid of the bad apples. Don't tolerate bad employees. One bad employee can bring down an entire business. A bad employee brings out the worst in all of the other employees. Big question. How can you tolerate anyone who is moonlighting on your time with your equipment? Fire that person immediately. This is a no brainer. Bad employees only get worse. In business, if you ignore a problem it doesn't go away. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Consider giving employees financial incentives for meeting target goals. Good luck.
2. Start paying by the job, not by the hour.
3. 1st the rules make some new rules and 3 strikes and you are fired. That goes with turning in time cards. I have been known to clean house on employees if they are all poisoned with bad attitude. New work force will listen better and pay attention. The rules are don't get your card in on time don't get paid this week you wait until next week no if's ands or buts. My manager know they better get that card in on Friday afternoon quiting time if they expect to get a check the following Friday. If they wait until Monday its up to the discretion of my book keeper if she feels like paying em. Next use of company equipment without authorization from ownership is considered a form of theft and will be grounds for immediate termination. The next thing is this the changes require a close eye for the first few weeks or month if you decide to retain any old employees so you can eliminate the rotten eggs. Another thing is this do not let employees doing work get close to customers cause they could steal accounts and leave you without employees or work. You might say to workers no fraternization with customers while on the job. for the morons on the crew this means no talking with the customer and if they have a need take care of it but no personal discussions with them. I had a punch clock on some of my job sites but that is not fail safe either. you know one gps not a bunch would be good enough if you move the gps around and they dont know who has it and is being tracked the threat of it can do its job alone! I separate the person that has account information from the workers so people cannot steal accounts when they leave your employ. guard you equiptment with your life! Best business owners are first to work and last to leave. Once you get to work it doest matter what you do cause it seems like early morning and late day activities are all that matters. In the middle if you get that office looking like a living room you will have a place to chill in between cracking the whip. I have a refrigerator and 2 big screens and a pc and my microwave and a lot of nice plants and bonzia trees and a great barristers book case for things to display. and a nice view of a old stand of oaks outside. No one gets into my office unless they are about to get fired. It keeps my paradise a secret and it builds the mystery of the boss! Also I set the example by working faster when I'm around employees and I let them all know my expectations. They don't have to like me just respect me. I don't fraternize with employees cause familiarity breeds contempt. I think its important to have a clear separations of accounting and sales as well as manual labor from both of the above. for example I would never hire the bookeepers son to mow lawn for me or have the bookeeper in charge of getting new accounts or making sales calls. Having one person over lap these duties could actually wind up helping to give away your business to a non loyal employee. Conflict of interest is the term that comes to mind. Also inventory sheets for equiptment make these guys check out equiptment and number or id it if its worth over a certain dollar amount. I hope this helped a little.
4. We have Sprint/Nextel phones and they offer a service through a third party, Telenav (google them and see what they offer.) They have lots of cool products, but one of them is an electronic time card, they can punch into their phone when they start, when they break for lunch etc...and the beauty is that Telenav also offers GPS tracking on the phone, so you can get reports to see if they are/were where they said they were. The services cost roughly $20.00 per phone per month, BUT it might be the tool you need to get your employees in line.