Do you wonder why so many organizations end up frustrated with their payroll vendor’s time and attendance module? One of the reasons is that companies believed their payroll provider had everything they needed in one place. It turns out that many of these bundled time and attendance modules just don’t work as promised. These organizations wind up stuck with workarounds, manual adjustments, and payroll departments that dread every pay cycle.
The reason why people end up disappointed is because payroll vendors lack deep expertise in time and attendance. There’s a huge difference between processing paychecks and managing the complexity of tracking employee time. Payroll vendors don’t have a deep understanding of the needs of organizations with complex scheduling, bargaining agreements, or unique overtime rules. Their software is designed for transactional purposes—cutting checks—not for the flexibility required to handle 9/80 schedules, differential pay, FMLA tracking, or emergency services management.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Payroll vendors often take a one-size-fits-all approach. But your organization isn’t one-size-fits-all. You might have employees across multiple locations, different bargaining agreements at each site, and pay schedules that vary by department. You might need to track accruals differently for different employee groups. The bundled module from your payroll vendor can’t handle this level of detail without expensive customizations that take months to implement.
These modules rarely meet the needs of payroll managers, let alone the supervisors and employees who interact with the system daily. When the software can’t adapt to your processes, you’re forced to adapt your processes to the software. That’s backwards.
The Spreadsheet Trap
Organizations disappointed with their payroll vendor’s time module often take an almost-as-difficult path. They end up programming spreadsheets to fill the gaps. Now think about this: why would an organization put a mission-critical process in a spreadsheet? Spreadsheets aren’t databases and they certainly weren’t meant for complex workforce management.
When you rely on spreadsheets, payroll managers become database administrators. They manually manage data that comes in from supervisors, trying to check that formulas still work, manually consolidating results, and then piecing together information for reporting purposes. Who wants to do that? And the risk of errors increases every time someone touches that spreadsheet.
What You Really Need
The solution to this problem is to choose a time and attendance system that has built-in intelligence for workforce management. You need a system that knows how and when to talk to other systems like payroll, HR, and fixed asset applications. You need software designed specifically for the complexities of time tracking—not as an afterthought to payroll processing.
Ecotime by HBS integrates seamlessly with any payroll system. It doesn’t matter if you use ADP, Paychex, or a custom-built payroll solution. Ecotime connects to it. This means you get the best of both worlds: a specialized time and attendance system that handles your complexity, and clean data flowing into your payroll system without manual intervention.
Real Integration for Complex Organizations
Ecotime handles what payroll vendors can’t. Bargaining agreements with unique overtime rules? Configured in minutes. Multiple pay schedules across your enterprise? Not a problem. Prior period adjustments that need to calculate retroactively? Ecotime recalculates all prior periods and delivers the net effect to the next pay cycle automatically.
Organizations running multiple locations—even after acquisitions—can deploy a single, unified Ecotime solution across their entire enterprise. This means consistent processes, consolidated reporting, and simplified management regardless of how complex your organizational structure gets.
Built for Your Users, Not Just Finance
Time and attendance is as much about communication as it is about data. Employees need self-service access to see their balances, request time off, and certify their timesheets. Supervisors need tools to approve time, track attendance patterns, and manage their teams. Payroll managers need accurate data without spending hours making adjustments.
Ecotime provides all of this through an intuitive interface designed for people who aren’t payroll experts. The mobile app lets employees clock in from job sites with geofencing to verify their location. Supervisors can approve time from their phones. And payroll managers get a Manager Dashboard that gives them visibility into everything happening across the organization.
When Integration Really Matters
A good time and attendance system should be installed in a fraction of the time it takes to implement a full payroll system. With Ecotime, most organizations are up and running within weeks, not months. The implementation team understands your workflows and maps your existing processes into the system without forcing you to change how you operate.
The integration with your payroll system is straightforward. Data flows automatically—no manual exports and imports. No downloading spreadsheets and uploading them somewhere else. Ecotime pushes accurate time data directly to your payroll system in the format it expects. This eliminates the errors that happen when humans touch data between systems.
Support When You Need It
When you have a question about your payroll vendor’s time module, how long does it take to get an answer? Are you routed through multiple levels of support? Do you get transferred overseas to someone who doesn’t understand your setup?
Ecotime by HBS offers U.S.-based support from a team who is familiar with your configuration. When you call, you talk to someone who knows your industry, understands your complexity, and can solve your problem quickly. This isn’t just customer service—it’s customer success.
Adapting to Change
Regulations change. Bargaining agreements get renegotiated. Your organization grows and acquires new entities. A payroll vendor’s bundled time module requires costly customizations to adapt to these changes. Those customizations take time, require approval processes, and create maintenance headaches.
Ecotime is highly configurable. When regulations change, you can adjust your rules and policies without waiting for vendor customizations. When you acquire a new location with different requirements, you can configure Ecotime to handle their specific needs while maintaining consistency across your organization. The system scales from 500 to 100,000 employees without breaking a sweat.
The Bottom Line
Your payroll vendor is excellent at processing payroll. But time and attendance requires specialized expertise that most payroll vendors simply don’t have. By choosing a dedicated time and attendance system like Ecotime that integrates with any payroll platform, you get the functionality you need without compromising on either side.
Stop settling for software that forces workarounds. Stop spending hours every pay period making manual adjustments. Stop hoping your payroll vendor will eventually build the features you need.
Ecotime handles your complexity while your payroll vendor does what it does best. That’s how you get payroll right the first time, every time.
Ready to see how Ecotime integrates with your payroll system? Contact us to schedule a demo and discover how the right time and attendance solution can transform your payroll process.
