Organization
Business Cleaning Solutions
Thirty years ago, Dennis and Sue Hansen started cleaning commercial buildings in Iowa’s Missouri Valley. Today, their enterprise – now named Business Cleaning Solutions – cleans over 650,000 square feet in four states with nearly 100 employees. The company provides the full range of interior and exterior cleaning services for offices, schools, retail and industrial buildings, as well as carpet and duct cleaning for residential customers.
Location: Missouri Valley, Iowa, USA
Industry: Cleaning
Company size: 50-100 employees
Challenges
Staying focused on customer and employee satisfaction, Business Cleaning Solutions has grown rapidly through referrals in recent years. With an increasing number of employees, the company quickly outgrew its manual employee time and attendance processes.
Every two weeks, staff members collected handwritten time-sheets from employees. While employees at some locations could fax in their time-sheets, others did not have access to fax machines. Instead, Business Cleaning Solutions staff would drive to 30 different locations to retrieve them.
“We started with three locations and grew to 30, so collecting time-cards was getting out of hand,” said Melissa Rosengren, administrative assistant at Business Cleaning Solutions. “We knew we had to find something to make it more manageable.”
Plus, Business Cleaning Solutions manually entered employee time and attendance into Excel spreadsheets. In turn, the company’s accountant re-entered that information in QuickBooks. The entire process took three to four days every two weeks.
Without real-time employee attendance tracking, at times the company did not know if someone failed to show up for work – until the client reported it.
Paper time-sheets became too time-consuming to manage and required double data entry. With employee’s offsite, Business Cleaning Solutions (BCS) needed real-time attendance information.
Solution
Rosengren conducted an online search for solutions to simplify employee time and attendance tracking. Of those she found, Celayix was the best fit for its ease of use and customizability to the company’s needs. Celayix allowed employees to sign into their shift simply by calling an automated line.
To ease the transition for employees, Business Cleaning Solutions gave staff a brief training and a handy wallet-size card with instructions and the clock-in phone number. When employees – paid by the hour – arrive for a shift at the client site, they place a call to the system. They also call the line when they complete their work. The system captures the exact times and call locations, giving BCS verification that employees called from their proper places of work.
If an employee fails to call in by a designated time, Celayix automatically alerts Business Cleaning Solutions staff on their cell phones. They can then proactively call employees or find substitutes – without a client ever knowing.
“Most of our employees work at night. We love the Celayix alert system so we know immediately if someone hasn’t shown up for a shift,” Rosengren said.
“We are serving our customers better by ensuring that we always get our people there to get their buildings clean.”
Melissa Rosengren, Administrative Assistant
Results
Missed employee shifts filled immediately, maintaining high client satisfaction
Celayix was easily configured for a unique aspect of Business Cleaning Solutions operation. Because employees do not need to start at exact times, Celayix business rules alert office staff as long as employees do not show up by a certain time each night.
The alerts have kept employees accountable and improved attendance. In addition, if an employee doesn’t show up, they can easily find coverage for the shift using Celayix, maintaining high client satisfaction.
Reduced time and costs for payroll and billing
Celayix dramatically changed employee time and attendance tracking for administrative staff. Now, each morning Rosengren looks at Celayix to see employee attendance from the night before. With all attendance neatly stored in Celayix, she eliminates the need to re-key information into Excel and QuickBooks. Celayix data exchange capabilities export data right into the company’s accounting software. She can also run reports to calculate gross payroll, billing and profitability numbers right in Celayix.
“In one morning I have the payroll information done, compared to three or four days before,” Rosengren said. “It’s like night and day. I love it.”
In fact, Business Cleaning Solutions no longer uses an outside accountant to process payroll. Rosengren has started handling this function on her own now, saving the company more than $800 per month.
