It's Monday. You gather up the timecards from the rack and toss them aside. What a pain! Let's face it, calculating a bunch of timecards is not up there with our favorite things to do every week! Relax, I'll show you the simplest system I have ever found.
First comes the hardest change. Military time. I hear you groaning out there but trust me, you'll learn to love it. Military time is based on the 24 hours of a day, a "regular" clock spins twice around the same 12 hour face, and forces us to specify either "AM" or "PM" all the time so people know what we're talking about. The AM time in military time works exactly the same. The part that is different is the after-noon time; the fact that 1:00 PM is now called 13.0 (pronounced thirteen hundred, or thirteen, point-zero).
You will need to either get a new time clock if yours is mechanical or have re-programmed the one you have if it's electronic, to punch out military time. Cost? Please don't get all "cheap-skate" on me here! How much time are you wasting now? How many errors do you have to go back and correct? How much does that cost? It's time to simplify your life! There's one more thing.
The next change simplifies further by using the decimal system for the fractions of an hour. Instead of the exact time in minutes, which are of coarse, 1/60th of an hour, and makes figuring the time-elapsed very confusing, make your time clock use 10th's of an hour instead. The clock will round down to the nearest tenth of an hour. A tenth of an hour is 6 minutes, so 0.1 equals 6 minutes, 0.2 (or two-tenths) equals 12 minutes, 0.5 is 30 minutes or a half hour, and so forth. Examples: 7:00 AM becomes 7.0, 10:18 AM becomes 10.3, 3:30 PM becomes 15.5, 5:07 PM becomes 17.1, 8:46 PM becomes 20.7. Since all you need to remember is that each 10th equals 6 minutes, you will know that 9.9 must be 6 minutes before 10 and 9.8 must be about 12 minutes before 10. It's easier for you when everything is expressed in tenths (6 minute increments).
Pitfall: It is a very common mistake for people to confuse the minutes with tenths when they attempt to convert in their head, manually. This is why you should get a time clock and let it do the work! People think 9:45 AM, and convert that to 9.45. Wrong! 0.45 is a little less than a half an hour. The correct answer is 9.75, or three-fourths of an hour.
Now we get to the good part that makes your life a breeze. To figure time, all you have to do is subtract the little number from the big number. If someone worked 7:36 AM until 3:30 PM with ½ hour for lunch, you are doing this; 15.5 - 7.6 = 7.9, then deduct lunch, -0.5 = 7.4. You see? It become almost effortless and it also becomes error-free.
Bruce P. Van Cleve operates 10 Minute Payroll, Inc., providing payroll service which maximizes the service on our part and minimizes the work on your part. The customer only spends 10 minutes on each pay, it takes us a little longer! We do not take custody of your funds, ever. Payroll is a non-profit chore, it neither makes you money nor saves you to do it yourself. Take 10 minutes and add up all the costs and you may be surprised.
Visit us at http://www.10minpay.com
Bruce's company also fills the niche between a small business's bookkeeper and their CPA. Their clients save money by receiving training, setups, monthly oversight, cash flow forecasting on an as-needed basis at much less per hour than a CPA. We do not do income taxes and are therefore available year-round. Cash flow forecasting is the best way we know for you to run your business with maximum control. We can be reached at (814) 431-4212, or by email at tenminpay@me.com
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