Payroll can take up more time than it should on a farm. Between collecting time cards, checking missed punches and sorting out employee hours, managers can spend hours each week making sure everyone gets paid correctly.
Workforce management software can take some of that work off their plate. Digital timekeeping, payroll integrations and employee records can help farms spend less time tracking hours and more time managing the operation. But with plenty of systems on the market, choosing one comes down to what the farm needs and how well employees can use it.
Finding a Better Way to Track Time
For Libby Eiholzer’s family dairy in Ontario County, N.Y., the move to digital timekeeping started when its old punch clock began to fail. Replacement ink was getting hard to find, so in 2019 she looked into cloud-based software rather than buying another physical clock.
The family adopted Deputy, a cloud-based workforce management platform that lets employees clock in and out, while managers track hours, approve timesheets and manage employee schedules and time off. Getting started took some work, including learning the system and entering employee information. But Eiholzer says the change is worth the effort.
“We have never looked back, and we would never go back to paper time cards,” she says. “It has been a pretty big time savings.”
The system also offers features she did not expect to use, including leave tracking.
“There’s been some additional benefits that came along with some additional features that I didn’t know existed,” she says.
Eiholzer’s family operates Ivy Lakes Dairy near Stanley, N.Y., where they milk about 1,000 cows and employ 16 people. Through her work with Cargill, she also advises dairy farms across central and western New York on workforce management.
David Bittner’s 400-acre Bittner-Singer Orchards in Niagara County takes a different route to digital timekeeping. The farm grows apples and stone fruit, including peaches, plums, prunes and apricots, and brings in about 40 pickers at peak harvest.
The farm used paper time cards for years, then experimented with piece-rate tracking using badges and handheld devices. Each crew needed someone to manage the equipment and check records, taking people away from picking. When the pandemic reduced the size of the workforce, the farm put the system aside.
Today, the farm uses Hector, a cloud-based workforce management platform designed to help farms track employee time, manage crews and monitor labor costs. Employees can record their hours through a mobile app, while managers can review time records and see how labor is being used across the operation.
“I can go into Hector and click on, ‘So how many hours did we spend picking apples this year?’” Bittner says. “And it populates that data.”
Labor accounts for about half the farm’s total costs, he adds, making it useful to see where those hours are going.
Accurate Records Can Prevent Pay Disputes
Reliable time records help managers understand labor costs and meet recordkeeping requirements. They can also head off confusion between employees and employers.
“There’s no better way to make an employee mad than to not pay them correctly,” Eiholzer says.
In her work with farms, she sees how a paycheck that looks wrong can undermine trust. Some software gives employees a way to check their recorded hours during the pay period instead of waiting until payday to raise a concern.
Bittner’s employees enter their own hours through an app. Managers can review a time card and correct a missed punch while the details are still fresh. He also sees value in giving employees responsibility for their own records.
“I think it’s also showing trust in your employees that you trust them to manage the time card,” he says.
Digital tools do not eliminate every timekeeping concern. One issue is buddy punching, when an employee clocks in for someone else. Software providers offer options such as photos, facial recognition, PINs and geofencing to help address the problem.
Some platforms also limit phone clock-ins to a set area. This can help when employees travel between farm locations, although managers need to consider how the feature fits their work patterns.
A phone app cannot confirm an employee has reached the field, Bittner notes.
“They could technically punch themselves in when they walk out the door of the house instead of walking through the field.”
In the end, he says, managers still have to trust their people.
Making Payroll Work
Timekeeping software needs to fit the farm’s payroll process. Bittner’s farm uses QuickBooks. Hector exports data into Excel, where the operations manager reviews it before entering it into QuickBooks. The review takes a few hours, he says, but it is faster than adding up paper time cards and entering each employee’s hours by hand.
Eiholzer’s family uses Deputy to review and approve timesheets. The system flags issues such as missed punches, and approved hours can be exported. The family works with an outside payroll company without a direct software integration, so the information still needs to be entered manually.
Even with the extra step, Eiholzer estimates the software saves about an hour a week.
The system costs about $93 a month. Eiholzer says the time saved makes the expense worthwhile.
“It would be like valuing his hour at $23, which I think is very reasonable,” she says. “It easily pays for itself right there.”
Integrations deserve a close look before choosing a platform. Bittner warns an update to one system can change how data exports, leaving the farm with a mismatch to resolve. Reviewing the information before payroll is processed can help catch errors before checks go out.
Farm managers also need to confirm the software can handle their payroll rules. Overtime requirements, pay stubs, tax filings, piece rates and paid leave can bring additional requirements. A product that works well for one employer may need extra setup or may not support another farm’s needs.
More Features, More Decisions
Many workforce platforms now include scheduling, leave requests, training records, onboarding and employee messaging. Eiholzer uses Deputy to manage time-off requests. Employees submit requests through the app, and managers can review approvals, declines and available leave.
Previously, the farm tracked leave in a spreadsheet.
“It wasn’t super well tracked or organized,” she says.
Now, she can see the information in one place, including how much leave employees have available. The farm also uses separate categories in its accounting system to distinguish legally required leave from additional benefits it offers employees.
Scheduling tools may be useful on farms with rotating crews or changing workloads. Some platforms can use previous schedules to help build new ones, which may help managers keep an eye on overtime. A dairy with the same schedule week after week may not get as much value from those features.
Bittner is looking beyond timekeeping, too, especially at ways to connect worker training with farm operations. His farm keeps spray records, but he would like employees to have better information about which blocks are closed during a pesticide re-entry interval. He also needs records showing who has completed food-safety and worker-safety training and which employees hold particular licenses.
“How do you get all that different software and data points into one system?” he asks. “We have to mainly do that.”
He wants employees to know when a block is safe to enter while managers can check training and certification records without sorting through separate files.
Employees Have to Use It
A workforce system can have plenty of features, but it will not help much if employees struggle to use it.
Bittner says language options and visuals can help employees navigate apps, including workers with limited reading ability. Eiholzer helps employees set up accounts and learn the system when the dairy first adopts Deputy. A trusted employee helps train coworkers, and setting up a new employee in the software becomes part of onboarding.
Phones and connectivity can create hurdles, too. Some of Bittner’s employees from rural areas need time on Wi-Fi to update their phones before they can use Hector.
“Sometimes when they come back up here, a new hire, we sit in the office, get on Wi-Fi, and spend half a day getting the phone software up to date,” he says.
Support from the software company is another consideration. Bittner says having regional contacts who understand the area helps his farm get started with Hector. Support options vary by provider, ranging from email and online help articles to phone support when problems arise.
Eiholzer says Deputy offers a chatbot, how-to articles and videos, along with email and phone support. She has not needed much assistance in the past couple of years, but recommends asking how quickly a company responds and whether users can reach someone who understands the system.
Choose the Need Before the Feature List
An all-in-one platform can reduce the number of systems a farm has to manage. But added features may raise the price and make it harder to switch vendors later.
Eiholzer has considered adding onboarding and other HR tools, but she also thinks about how much information the family would be committing to one provider.
“The more eggs we have in one basket, then it increases the pain, the cost of changing to another company,” she says.
Before shopping, Bittner recommends talking with neighbors who have already tried workforce software and making a list of what the farm needs. He also recommends being realistic about how many features the farm will use.
“If you just want electric time card, there’s a lot of options,” he says. “If you want a lot of extra features, you limit yourself.”
Eiholzer encourages producers to consider the time a system could return. One customer used to drive to five time clocks on Sunday nights, collect cards and add up employee hours. After switching to digital timekeeping, that routine disappeared.
Some farms may need little more than accurate time records and a payroll export. Others may benefit from leave tracking, scheduling, training records or labor-cost reports. Before choosing a platform, compare its features, payroll compatibility, employee usability, support and cost against the work the farm needs it to handle.
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