YOUR GUIDE TO SUCCESS WITH LMN TIME.

Transcription

1 YOUR GUIDE TO SUCCESS WITH LMN TIME.

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3 Sometimes the software is the easy part LMN Time was designed to be simple to use... for everyone. But software can only ever be as good as the people that are using it. We ve put together this guide to help you think about some of the things that are not software related so that you and your staff can squeeze every ounce of potential out of the LMN Time software. If you re looking for hands-on training videos to show you how to use the software, this is not that guide. For hands-on training for your staff, simply open up LMN Time, go to the SETTINGS menu, and click TRAINING on the left hand side. There are several links there that will guide to help videos for field staff, office staff and even accounting staff. This guide is for those who want to solve the business processes that make timekeeping and jobcosting work. Read through this guide before rolling out LMN Time to your crews. Make some executive decisions and set some company policies in place so they can be clearly communicated when training your crews. Organize a minute training meeting for your foremen to roll out LMN Time. Don t let anyone leave until they ve managed to get create, add jobs, and submit a test timesheet. Help them with questions and problems while you re all together. 3

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5 Who is going to use LMN Time to enter timesheets? We ve designed LMN Time with the foreman in mind. Ideally, your foreman will fill out the timesheet for all the staff in their crew each day. [ ] Best Practice: Foreman complete the timesheet for the crew. Having foreman complete the timesheet for their crew will improve both accuracy and efficiency. The less people filling out timesheets, the more efficient your timekeeping. There s less timesheets to review and less potential for mistakes or cheating. Foreman are also more accurate when picking jobs/tasks for jobcosting. It s cheaper, faster, and more accurate if your foremen complete daily timesheets for their crews. If your crews fear they will be shorted hours if not tracking their own time, you can do the following: - Staff can review their hours with the foreman daily. There s a REVIEW button that will display shift start/end time along with total hours. - You could print a payroll hours report for staff at the end of each pay cycle. Leave their report in their mail slots for their review. They can have 2 days to bring mistakes to your attention, before pay gets processed. 5

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7 What devices does LMN Time work with? LMN Time works on smart phones, tablets, laptops, Macs, PCs,...almost any device with an Internet browser. The administrator (office) section of LMN Time is designed to run on a tablet, PC or laptop, not a phone (there s too much information to fit on a tiny phone screen). The timesheet (field-worker/foreman) portion of LMN Time has is best experienced on iphones or Android phones, but will work on just about any updated smart phone and will also work on tablets or laptops.. [ ] Best Practice: Rugged phones save money + repairs. If you are supplying your foremen with a device, save money and headaches with rugged phones. Rugged cases (used with normal phones) are often removed by staff to make the phone lighter/ easier-to-use. Without a case, the phone quickly ends up broken, cracked, or wet. A phone that s built rugged will stand up better as crews can t remove the case. If your foremen use their own phone(s), that works great too! There s no app to install as it runs in a browser, just like any website. You can also quickly and easily disable any employee s access by setting their user account to INACTIVE. 7

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9 When are crews expected to complete their timesheets? You need to be very clear as to when you expect timesheets to be completed.. We designed LMN Time with intention of having timesheets filled out in real time, as the day progresses. This is an important benefit for a few reasons. [ ] Best Practice: Complete and submit timesheets every day. 1. You can use the real-time tracking to see what jobs crews are. 2. Estimated vs. actual hours are always up to date. 3. It eliminates mistakes + guesswork at the end of the week 4. The office can approve daily, which evens out the workload Rushed payroll at the end pay period is expensive. Mistakes are missed or skipped over. People guess at correction because they can t remember. You can save a lot of money and mistakes by reviewing and approving timesheets daily. We recommend you make it a strict policy for your foremen to review and submit timesheets at the end of each day, and for your office to review and approve daily. If you re having trouble getting these rules to stick,d see the last page(s) in this guide for a tip on consequences. 9

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11 If all time must get cost to a job, what about yard or drive time? With LMN Time every payroll hour is assigned a job or task. If your staff is getting paid for time, then its your responsibility to know where that time is going and how much its costing you... there should be no phantom hours! With LMN Time, there can t be. Every payroll hour gets cost to a job/task. [ ] Best Practice: Assign unbillable hours to a SHOP (internal) job LMN Time ships with a SHOP job and an OFFICE job already created for you, along with some default tasks for both. All hours that can t be assigned to a specific job should get assigned to an internal job, like SHOP. You can create more internal jobs if you require. FOR CONSTRUCTION WORK: If your estimates include load/drivetime hours,, your crew should clock their load/drivetime to the job. This way, estimated hours match actual. If your estimates do not include load/drivetime, then those hours can get booked to SHOP. HINT: Including ;oad/drive hours in estimates is easier. It s less switching in/out for your crews. FOR MAINTENANCE WORK: If you include windshield time in your estimates, your crews should clock in to the job when they arrive at the job, and stay clocked in until they get to the next job. If you don t include windshield time, they must switch to a SHOP/Drivetime task each time they drive from site to site. AM/PM prep/cleanup MUST go to the SHOP job since its unfair to put those hours in the first/last job(s) of the day. 11

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13 What do the crews do for unpaid lunch breaks? LMN Time can automatically deduct lunch breaks at the end of the timesheet. Instead of requiring crews to remember to clock out, then back in at lunch break, there s an auto-deduction option when they submit their timesheet. [ ] Best Practice: Use the auto-deduction at the end of the timesheet. At the end of their shift, crews are prompted for what time they took lunch, and how long lunch lasted. LMN Time will automatically deduct that time from payroll and from jobcosting. If the crew did not take a lunch, they can did not take lunch. Timesheet warnings will alert your office when a lunch deduction was skipped. You can choose to ask your crews to clock out, then back in at lunch if you d like. If your crews do clock out, then back in during their lunch, make sure they do NOT use the lunch deduction tool when submitting their timesheet. Crews should stay clocked in for breaks, as they paid. (If you don t want the break time to hit a job s estimated hours, you can have them clock in/out to a SHOP task called Breaks. 13

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15 How are you tracking absences/lates? Your company should be tracking lates and absences for every employee, every day. It s much harder to deal with an absent-prone employee if there are no formal records of the number of times they were late (or did not show up) for work. [ ] Best Practice: Use LMN Time s late/absence tracker LMN Time can track employees who are late (including # of minutes and reason) or absent (including reason) You can run attendance reports to show how many times (and when) each employee was late or absent. The LMN Time field training videos show foreman the process for tracking late and absences. It only takes a few seconds and it makes an attendance report available in 3 simple clicks. 15

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17 Do I need to create an estimate for every timetracking job? No, you don t need an estimate for every job. There are lots of small jobs or one-off tasks that don t have a formal estimate. It s easy to create a job direcltly in LMN Time to track hours and you can setup all the same information (different tasks, estimated hours) like you would with a regular estimate. [ ] Best Practice: Foremen can t create jobs in the field. Crews cannot create jobs from their phones. If crews could create their own jobs, it would open up all kinds of potential for some serious problems. Unapproved work could get done (for free), jobs would be entered multiple times under different names, and jobcosting codes would not be set correctly. If crews are asked to work on something that s not setup in LMN Time, they should immediately call the office and request the job be added. It takes 60 seconds or less to add a job. As a backup, you could always create a HOLDING job in your LMN Job list. Use the HOLDING job to book hours against any jobs that are not setup/available in LMN Time. The office should switch hours from the HOLDING job to the correct job before approving the timesheet. 17

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19 Now we know our hours on the jobs, what about jobcosting? LMN doesn t store wage and payroll tax information. It s not a full-scale payroll system, nor will it ever be. The best place to do your jobcosting is in your accounting system. All your paychecks and vendor invoices have to go through accounting - using anything else is just duplicating work. [ ] Best Practice: Do your jobcosting in your Accounting LMN Time instantly exports payroll data to Quickbooks for perfect payroll and costing. Employees are paid to-the-minute and every minute of wages are jobcost to the correct job. If you are using an outside payroll service, you re likely not going to get jobcosting. External payroll services typically don t divide hours worked by jobs, although some do. LMN Time can export jobcosting details to payroll services using a.pdf report or via an Excel report. LMN Time can also export summary payroll information (no jobcosting) as well, if your payroll service doesn t do jobcosting. If your payroll service doesn t do jobcosting, have a look at Quickbooks payroll. They can help manage your remittances AND you can get to-the-penny labor costs on every one of your jobs (and for probably less than you re spending on your payroll service!!!) 19

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21 Can we do material jobcosting in LMN Time too? Yes, you can track materials used in LMN Time, but it s designed to work for jobs with only a few materials. You can set up materials in LMN TIme as something called ACTIVITIES. When crews clock out of jobs, they can tick off whether they used any activities and even how much they used. [ ] Best Practice: Use vendor invoices for material jobcosting. LMN Time was designed to be able to track simple materials, such as those used in maintenance. It s easy for crews to record that they used a specific quantity of one or two materials like mulch, fertilizer, or salt. It s extremely unreliable to attempt to track an entire day s worth of construction materials. On construction jobs, there could be any number of materials used on any given day in many different quantities. The list you d have to setup for your crews would be extremely long. Materials also get shipped in bulk on one day, then installed over the next few days bits at a time. It s very, very unlikely that your crews could record every day s materials accurately. You re far better off using your accounting for material jobcosting. When entering vendor invoices,assign each invoice to the job it was used on. If it s shop inventory, transfer the inventory from the yard/shop to the correct job. 21

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23 What do I do with people who won t follow the system? LMN Time can literally change your company to be more accurate, more accountable and more results-focused. You ll have more information about your jobs than you every thought possible, and all at your fingertips. BUT, it only works if your people follow the rules. [ ] Best Practice: Pay for the first training. The rest are on their time. Pay all your staff for the first training. Make sure everyone signs off that they understand how to use LMN Time before leaving. Then, announce that, if policies are not followed correctly, future training meetings will be on employees own time*, on Friday night from 5pm to 6pm. Any employee not following the rules MUST attend followup training watching the training videos until they get it right. * This is a suggestion only. Check your labor laws to ensure this is OK. Whatever you choose to do, make sure there are consequences for not following the rules. Paper is the easiest way for employees. They can submit late, make mistakes, even make up information and they re rarely held accountable. Be prepared for some push-back, but be firm and consistent. This is the best way for your company to get job tracking and jobcosting data it needs to be profitable. Don t allow stubborn employees to ruin the potential rewards and success for those people in your company that deserve it. 23

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25 More questions? LMN Time can be one of the most powerful tools in your office. Knowing estimated vs. actual hours at all times can be transformational to a company s culture and success, but it will take some change too. If you have more questions, we d be glad to help. support@golmn.com [ ]

26 Landscape Management Network