After ten minutes of calls dropping and spotty service, I finally heard the laughter accompanying Tina Holzen’s, “Can you hear me yet?” Looking back on the first time we spoke, I remembered how unhappy she was with her payroll and billing situation.
The Paper Timecard Problem
Tina is the office manager for TC Holzen Inc., a small commercial site development company based out of Troy, OH. They have also recently started working as a crew vendor for their local electrical company, Dayton Power and Lighting. They usually have around 3 different projects they’re running themselves, with a crew that rotates on two or three Dayton Power and Lighting sites. She is works in the office and when she called me, she definitely wasn’t laughing.
Paper timecards just weren’t cutting it. She needed a quick means for finding out who was where, she needed to spend less time on payroll, and she needed these things while working with crews of guys who wouldn’t want to change anything. In short, she needed help. In her own words, “It was just awful and a waste of time.” But that was three months ago … and so much had changed.
She reached out to me and we got TC Holzen set up with busybusy. Her company was using paper time cards before. “We know the guys get busy on Friday…[so] it was a lot of guess work.” The amount of effort to fill out paper time cards was not only in writing down hours, but also in the work it took to distribute, collect, and enter the timecards.
“One of the longest parts of the process was trying to read what they wrote down!” Tina laughed, amused that she had had to waste so much time on something so frustrating. She was ready for a change, but not without trepidation.
The Payroll Solution
She didn’t know how easy it would be to implement a new system, especially a new system centered around technology. “One guy had an iPhone but didn’t know how to use it. We had another guy who had a phone that wasn’t iPhone or Android. They weren’t really the most tech focused kinds of guys.” She thought that implementing busybusy would end up being a tedious, long, and painful process. But she needed to make sure the hours they were paying were accurate being told by the owner, “I want to see they clocked in at the job site, not when they are halfway there.”
We got her signed up on Wednesday and on Friday they taught their crews how to use it. “Monday, sure I had a couple guys who forgot to clock in, but by the end of the week, they were all clocking in and out without my reminders.” For Tina and the rest of the employees, the biggest change came when it was time to do payroll. “It cut down the process by 75%! It’s all automated now. I don’t really need to do much,” I could hear her smiling, “I don’t need to interpret their handwriting anymore. I’m free.”
Management Anywhere
One of the greatest benefits was being able to track her guys. “I usually have the app open on my computer all day just so I can keep track of everyone all the time. It’s helpful so if someone needs one of our guys, it’s not a guessing game anymore, it is as easy as looking at my computer.” But it doesn’t stop there. Tina explained, “I can manage it wherever I am. I don’t need to be sitting at my computer at work to fix mistakes and errors. They text me and I can take care of it right there.” It matters to Tina that she can take care of problems regardless of where she is.
Tina had really converted to using technology on the job site. “We can’t just stand there with paper time sheets forever. By adding busybusy to our company, we are keeping up with the progression of the world. Busybusy makes us a more professional company.”
“Goodbye” Billing Problems
She went on to tell me about how working with Dayton Power and Lighting had been hard before busybusy.
“A good number of times for billing with Dayton Power and Lighting, they forgot to put the hours in Note Vault. I can go into busybusy and pull a report and put that information into Note Vault. Just the fact that we can pull reports out to give me that versus going back and digging through the timesheets,“ she chuckled, “Well that’s a no brainer. It’s much easier to pull a report out of busybusy.”
By the end of our call, I knew she had been satisfied with busybusy. After I thanked her for her time, she told me that she had no idea how good busybusy would be for her company when she signed up. “busybusy gives you the comfort that your company is moving in the right direction with the accuracy it should have.”
Solve Your Payroll and Billing Problems, Like Tina
