Time sheets can be a real headache for school districts—especially those relying on paper-based workflows to get things done. Stories frequently hit the headlines about school district employees falsifying time sheets or making costly data entry errors.
With 80 percent of a school district's budget being spent on employee compensation, accurate time tracking and fraud prevention are more important than ever before. Learn how to avoid school district time sheet fraud with the help of technology.
Paper time sheets pose significant risks and can lead to unwelcome issues such as buddy punching, payroll errors, audit noncompliance, and even time sheet fraud. In fact, mitigating time sheet fraud is a pain point for school districts—especially with the potential for costly errors, such as:
Using paper time sheets increases opportunities for deliberate data entry errors, such as time sheet padding by employees looking to make a few extra bucks each pay period. Of course, manual data entry is prone to error in general, so this can also happen unintentionally. Either way, it’ll cost your district!
Believe it or not, false or “ghost” employees have been caught collecting normal paychecks. Payroll fraud is particularly easy to achieve when time sheets are tracked on paper, which lacks the checks and balances built into digital tools that make it difficult for scammers to get away with their schemes.
It’s also not uncommon for employees to create fake vendors and manually submit time sheets for hours worked in order to reap the rewards by dispersing funds to themselves, family, and friends. Yet again, paper-based data tracking makes the chance of deliberate misentry much greater.
Issues with paper time sheets can impact school districts in numerous ways. For example, paper time sheets sometimes make it impossible for payroll administrators to correctly determine the total hours worked so they can pay staff accurately. This can also lead to challenges with school budgeting, cash flow, and regulatory compliance—all of which are obviously less than ideal and can certainly have downstream effects.
These days, nearly every school district is going digital—and for very good reason. Electronic time sheets reduce the risk of fraud and/or the potential for costly errors, helping school districts save time and improve accuracy. Paperless, automated time tracking is much more efficient and far less prone to human error due to manual data entry.
Despite the clear benefits, many school district administrators are wary of making the move from paper to digital. K-12 time tracking complexities—such as employees working multiple jobs at different pay rates and collective bargaining unit requirements—pose unique challenges that many big-box technologies aren’t built to address.
That said, a time tracking system that’s built with the unique needs and nuances of K-12 education in mind can make all the difference, helping to:
Red Rover’s time tracking solution is built exclusively for K-12 school districts and can help with going paperless and minimizing errors due to paper-based time sheets. Everyone from payroll administrators and employees to district leaders will love gaining a new, easy, and efficient way to collect data, approve time, and process payroll. Plus, Red Rover is fast to implement and easy to use—how’s that for a win-win?
The last thing your district needs is to fall victim to time sheet fraud, and with the right technology at your disposal, you can avoid it entirely. Schedule a demo for a firsthand look at Red Rover’s time tracking solution.