Welcome to the latest edition of MobileTime, a blog about the issues affecting mobile time tracking and the construction industry in general. Our goal for this blog is to provide useful, helpful information presented in a concise format to our customers and all others who might benefit. Today’s article is the first in a series of posts that will deal with internal controls embedded in mobile time tracking systems.
Have you ever wondered what internal control features make for a safe, secure mobile time tracking application? One that you can depend on to give you an accurately recorded, properly disbursed payroll. In this issue we will focus on the role of data integrity in assuring accurate payroll data.
A properly designed mobile time tracking system begins with using correct information. It pulls this information directly from the payroll/accounting system to insure the validity of the data used including employees, jobs, cost codes, pay codes, etc. One can assume with at least a certain degree of confidence that this data has already been reviewed and approved by the appropriate accounting managers. Compare this to a system where the data has to be manually input into the time tracking system. The possibility of human error increases dramatically when manual processes are introduced. This is one of the main shortcomings that electronic time tracking applications were created to address in the first place.
Once the newly created records have been reviewed, edited, and/or approved, they are exported back to payroll/accounting. It is at this point where a second integrity check occurs. These records will be validated before being accepted by the importing application. Any invalid data will be rejected and the time tracking application administrator will have to research the cause. Unless someone has manually entered new data, or there has been some kind of update or deletion in the payroll/accounting system since the data in question was initially imported, invalid data should be the exception and not the rule.
A good mobile time tracking system makes it very easy to use the correct data to generate accurate payrolls. Do you have such a system?
