More Than Money Saved: A Comprehensive Guide To Justifying Your Time Tracking Software

With ever-tightening budgets looming over districts across the country, teams may find themselves defending the costs of their resources, be they people or software. Digital platforms should, in theory, streamline critical workforce management processes and reallocate crucial time and energy back to HR and business office staff.

In particular, time tracking solutions offer huge opportunities to save these resources and more. However, whenever tough financial decisions must be made, teams need to be ready to identify their most critical assets and prepare strong defenses to justify their costs.

Here are concrete strategies to help your team make the case to keep your time tracking software running, demonstrating not only the cost savings accrued but also the new, even hidden, benefits gained.

Cutting Costs: How Much Are You Truly Saving?

When building your argument, it helps to first understand the most common costs associated with time tracking practices in K-12 education.

By and large, the three biggest costs that workforce management teams face with time tracking are:

• Cumbersome and Risky Systems: Despite the growing number of digital solutions in the market, some schools still rely on archaic, paper-based systems for distributing, collecting, and processing time sheets. These processes are time-consuming to manage — and maintaining all those records can be a major headache.
  
  Additionally, paper-based materials pose a higher risk of loss in instances of severe flooding or fire, as one school experienced after a flood destroyed hundreds of paper copies of student records and curriculum material. Alas, the days of the paper timesheet are best left in the past.
  
  
• Human Error: Whenever manual intervention is required for payroll, human errors are sure to appear, too. Not only are payroll errors expensive to fix in terms of employee time spent, but mismanaged payroll can also result in hefty financial penalties, resulting in even more significant costs. 
  
  
• Fraud: In their 2024 report, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that payroll fraud makes up at least 15% of all occupational schemes across the U.S. and Canada. If you multiply this estimate by the percent of a district’s budget allocated for employee compensation, you potentially have a recipe for disaster. Avoiding time sheet fraud is a common motivator for many K-12 organizations seeking technology-based solutions.

Knowing these three red flags associated with time tracking can help you position the impact of your digital solutions on your district and advocate for its place in the budget.

Begin by gathering data that supports how your solution reduced costs associated with each area. Here are a few ways you can crunch these numbers— and of course, you can adapt any calculations to match your district’s available data or strategic priorities.

Estimated Savings With Greater Payroll Accuracy

This estimate will help you ascertain how much money your district saved by having more accurate payroll data.

Start with identifying the average number of errors that your district may incur in each pay period during one school year. For reference, the average company makes 15 corrections per pay period, with each error requiring investigation, follow-up, and resolution.

Then, estimate the number of worker hours or other costs associated with resolving those issues with payroll. A quick method is to multiply the average number of hours required to completely resolve a single payroll issue by the team member’s hourly wage (estimated is fine). Then, take that total cost and multiply it again by the average number of payroll errors per pay period that you first calculated.

Here’s an example of how this math works with real data:

For more nuanced estimates related to payroll errors, explore the estimated costs per type of error as outlined in the 2022 HR Processing and Risk Survey report conducted by EY Quest and Paycom.

Estimate Savings With Streamlined Management System

This estimate will show how many employee hours (and estimated hourly wages) are saved by processing timesheets with your current time tracking solution instead of handling paper-based timesheets or ones submitted with an older digital solution.

Start with estimating the average number of hours it took an individual team member to complete processing timesheets for each pay period (biweekly, monthly, etc). Be sure to include any hours spent in communication with employees, such as sending reminders to submit timesheets, clarifying questions about submitted hours, and more. 

Multiply that team member’s estimated or actual hourly wages against those hours they spent on timesheets. Then multiply that estimate by the total number of pay periods within a single school year. This is your baseline cost per year.

Next, estimate your current costs associated with timesheet processing. Follow the same steps above, this time with your current time tracking software in mind. This is your current cost. Now you can compare your baseline cost against your current cost per year. 

Take a look at this visual walkthrough outlining how these calculations for your timesheet processing system:

Here again, you’ll likely find that time and dollars have been saved by moving to a new time tracking solution—and if that isn’t the case, it’s time to take a closer look at your solutions and any contracts with them.

Estimated Savings With Easier Data Storage

This estimate will help you determine what savings, if any, your team has generated by switching to your time tracking solution for data management purposes.

If you previously used a paper-based system, estimate first the number of hours required to manually file, maintain, and store paper timesheets (multiplying again by employee hourly wages to get a cost estimate). You can also identify any qualitative details related to these processes, such as the opportunity cost of space occupied by filing cabinets.

If your team used a different technology platform to manage digital timesheets, check with your district’s IT team about how those timesheets were stored. If your district was responsible for maintaining those files on its servers, the IT team may be able to help you estimate the cost to the district for that maintenance. If the platform provider managed the data, reflect on any challenges you may have faced with maintaining those files.

Compare these estimates with what it costs your team today to digitally maintain records of timesheets. In some cases, the costs associated with data maintenance do not differ significantly (especially if you’re comparing two technology solutions for time tracking). That’s OK! Keep reading to discover more ways to check that you are using the most efficient, best-in-breed time tracking system—or else find another solution that’s more effective.

Putting Your Costs Together

Once you’ve collected these data and estimates, you can sum all costs and compare them against the cost of your time tracking software. Odds are, you’ll find that your digital solution is way less expensive!

But remember—not all time tracking solutions are created equal. It’s much easier to justify the expense of such software when you can see its impact across the entire workforce management ecosystem in your organization.

That’s why Columbus City Schools partnered with Red Rover to tackle their growing challenges with tracking employees’ hours devoted to extra duty coverage. By combining our Absence Management and Time Tracking solutions, the team streamlined the entire workflow, from managing coverage requests to easily reassigning coverage between teachers to simplifying payroll through integration with Munis.

Read our recent article for more insights about why time tracking and absence management go hand-in-hand.

Hidden Gains: What Surprising Wins Has Time Tracking Software Created?

As much as administrators want to see time and money saved, there are other benefits that your time tracking software may be generating. With every dollar or minute saved, something or someone else gains time or money back.

Work with your team to learn how each member has redistributed these finite resources to other priorities or initiatives. For example, perhaps all those hours previously spent manually entering data from paper timesheets into the payroll system now go towards responding to teachers’ questions or requests for help with timesheets. Or, maybe your team devotes more hours to increasing fill rates by recruiting more quality substitutes.

The more you connect these savings with your district’s strategic priorities, the stronger your case will be in retaining your time tracking solution.

Read Lake County Schools’ story of how Red Rover helped their HR team whittle down cumbersome payroll processes from days to minutes, not to mention streamline their internal communications.

Success Stories: Who Benefits From Your Time Tracking Solution?

Last, but certainly not least, gather success stories about how your time tracking software helped your district thrive. These tales will paint a picture of the user experience of your solution—never underestimate the power of a delighted user to build your case for software!

With teachers especially, their first impression of a tool can often make or break their engagement and satisfaction. HR and business operations team members also matter with this consideration, as they are the ones that time tracking software should most benefit.

With payroll, the stakes may be higher than you think. In 2017, HR Drive reported that just two payroll errors could trigger up to 49% of employees to start job hunting. In the midst of a teacher shortage and ongoing challenges with recruitment, districts cannot afford to drive away quality staff members through avoidable errors.

Just two payroll errors could trigger up to 49% of employees to start job hunting

Here are a few ways you can source input about your district’s user experience with your time tracking solution:

• If your district doesn’t already, send out an employee satisfaction survey yearly to both full-time and substitute staff. You can tailor surveys to inquire about their experiences with HR or other workforce management processes specifically. Red Rover districts can use the Bulletin feature to mass-notify all staff members of the survey. Use the survey responses to ascertain how “delighted” your users of the time tracking solution really are.

• Consider setting up one-on-one conversations or focus groups for continuous input on time tracking and other HR-related processes. These touchpoints allow you to go deeper into specific areas of concern, which helps your team determine solutions to meet those concerns. Further, creating feedback loops with both guest and full-time staff gives them the opportunity to create positive changes for their fellow employees (which boosts their engagement and satisfaction).

Solutions like Red Rover Time Tracking prioritize a positive, simple, and pleasant user experience within the product. Our investments in capabilities such as interoperability, easy workflow configurations, and automated notification settings make all the difference for everyone involved with timesheets, from employees to HR and business office staff.

Red Rover’s Time Tracking Solution Justifies Itself

Passion and purpose lie at the heart of Red Rover’s mission to design modern K-12 workforce solutions with educators, for educators. We envision a world in which cohesive systems, not “comprehensive platforms,” give back to teachers, administrators, and substitute staff the most valuable resources in education: time and energy.

Discover how our solutions can help you delight your stakeholders with every HR process—yes, even time tracking!