The Great Falls Public Schools board voted unanimously during their Oct. 14 meeting to purchase an electronic time card system.
The board voted to approve the Time Clock Plus system with a one-time implementation cost of $32,645.75. Annual licensing fees will be prorated for the current budget year to $4,200 for a total cost of $36,845.75.
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Luke Diekhans, GFPS’s human resources director, told the board that the current paper time card management system for about 1,100 employees, or roughly 60 percent of the district, is:
- all hourly employees have a printed time card
- time cards are delivered by the warehouse to each building
- time cards are handed out to individuals by the administrative assistant
- each employee handwrites their hours on their time card
- building administrative assistants and district-level supervisors collect and approve time cards
- time cards are sent via district mail to the district office
- time cards are distributed to appropriate supervisors or payroll
- all time cards are delivered to payroll ready to be totaled and payroll to be performed and for some employees, the process is done bi-weekly
Diekhans told the board time cards need to accurately reflect time worked and be efficiently processed to meet timely payment requirements.
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Throughout the pay period up to eight different employees handle the physical card, Diekhans said.
Once received, Diekhans said the payroll team is responsible for:
- manually alphabetizing time cards by school
- manually tallying hours
- manually verifying hour count
- tallying leave totals
- manually uploading all hours and leave banks for each employee
- reconciling hours and leave banks to match hours and leave on the time cards to the system
- posting and paying employees
- restarting process for the next pay period
Throughout this process, any errors or issues with individual time cards are dealt with through the employee,
supervisors and building administrative assistants.
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If staff are out and needs to turn in their time card, someone from the building has to deliver it in time to be processed. Time cards for employees who are paid with federal funds can require up to three signatures, he said.
Diekhans told the board that electronic time cards would significantly reduce the time spent processing payroll.
Diekhans told The Electric that there are two employees responsible for processing payroll and the electronic time cards would free up some of their time to handle other payroll related tasks more quickly. At this point, he said there would be no staffing change due to the conversion to electronic time cards, but that could be a consideration in the future depending on budget constraints.
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Since the board approved the purchase, the district will start implementing the new electronic time card system by setting up the system, then begin training and implementation at the district office in January; then clerical training and implementation in April; followed by training and implementation for all other hourly employees in July.
