When it comes to payroll during holidays, Santa isn’t immune to the challenges.
By this time of year, Santa and Mrs. Claus are deep in their December tasks: tracking toy expenses, making schedules—and checking them twice—and approving time off for everyone at the North Pole, all while ramping up to a delivery schedule that would make FedEx tremble.
How do they make it work?
First of all, they use Time Tracker, the best employee time tracking system for the North Pole and beyond. Secondly, they’re avid readers of the eBillity blog, so they never miss an inside tip like 5 Employee Time Tracking Features You Need for Payroll During Holidays. Thirdly, they know who they really rely on this time of year to make the magic happen, and they treat them accordingly: the elves.
Mastering elf-ployee appreciation
While the legend of St. Nicholas goes back almost 2,000 years, his elves only made the scene about 140 years ago. Undoubtedly, this was because Santa wanted to help keep his elves anonymous for as long as he could to protect their privacy. (Can you imagine the kind of takeover Amazon would try to stage if they had access to the elves’ addresses?)
But everyone in the Pole has long-known that elves are the backbone of the Kringle operation, and that Santa does everything he can to keep them happy—starting with an employee time tracking system that they like as much as Santa does.
3 reasons Santa’s elves like employee time tracking
1. Flexibility and transparency
Did you know that studies show that people who trust each other at work are less stressed, more satisfied and more engaged than people who aren’t inside a circle of trust? Happy employees also take fewer days off for illness and make more money than their non-trusting counterparts.
Nothing fosters trust more than an open, honest culture at work—or, rather, at the workshop in this case. And while everyone in Santa’s workshop loves a schedule, life happens—even to the most punctual of elves.
Time Tracker helps by allowing them to:
- Shift work schedules for doctor appointments, emergencies, or wooden-clog fittings without losing hours
- Take hot-chocolate breaks whenever they need to without worrying they’ll appear unresponsive
- See how many hours they’ve clocked for a specific period so they know exactly how many more gingerbread houses they can make that day
- Request extra work hours from the foreman so they can stay late on nights when a special toy simply must be finished
All of these features give elves an increased sense of control while allowing the workshop foreman to avoid unnecessary overtime, approve payments, and still have enough time to lead a shop sing-a-long every now and then.
2. Overtime prevention
One of the easiest ways to derail payroll during holidays is to rack up overtime without a plan. Elves in management need help, too, yet many employee time tracking systems lack the ability to notify managers when employees are edging toward overtime.
With Time Tracker, elf managers from workshop to sleigh shop can:
- View the elves’ daily, weekly, or monthly hours in real-time, as they’re added
- Create overtime rules so sections of the dashboard will turn red—a favorite color of elves everywhere—once overtime hours are in effect
- Get alerts to their mobile devices when elves go into overtime so they always know what’s going on, even if they’re busy onsite in the candy-cane forest
- Use historical data to make sure they don’t over-schedule an employee who often ends up working overtime on Santa’s suit upgrades all the way up to the 24th
3. Time-saving integrations
In many workshops, accounting elves feel forgotten. Since their goal isn’t to keep up with fun and flashy toys but instead to keep Kringle, Inc. from getting audited, their work happens behind the scenes. But at the North Pole, Santa knows that every elf, from Sleigh Emissions Auditor to Head Candy Cane & Number Cruncher (which is her formal title), needs tools to make their jobs easier.
That’s where software integrations come in. If you’re using an employee time tracking software like Time Tracker, be sure every department takes some time to get familiar with all the integrations at their disposal.
With Time Tracker, the integrations for accounting elves alone include:
- Invoice Tracker
- Myob
- QuickBooks
- Reckon
- Sage + Sage Intacct
- Xero
And there are 11 integrations total that every elf is welcome to employ.
So what’s the candy-coated takeaway? That the best employee time tracking software should be as helpful to the employee as to the employer! Now you know Santa’s little secret.
Want to spread cheer like Santa this year?
Upgrade for your elves! Start our free, 14-day trial now.
