Online Time Tracking and Hearing the Words “You’re Hired”
There aren’t many companies these days that don’t have to outsource in one way or another to conduct their business. Whether it’s a web developer who is perfecting your page or an accountant who is keeping up with your numbers, chances are there are at least a few individuals who you cut checks to outside your normal payroll check run. And more often than not, these vendors are billing you by the hour for their services, right?
This happened to be the case in a true story with the Illinois Department of Transportation. Just like you and me, they entrusted another organization to manage a task that they did not, or could not, handle internally. Unfortunately for them, this organization successfully cheated them out of more than $1 million dollars simply by falsifying their paper timesheets.
Kamleshware Gupta was the owner of the Elgin-based engineering consulting firm that was being used and had made it a normal practice to falsify timesheets. It was more than likely not a coincidence that their company policy was to write out paper timesheets and use pencil so those timesheets could be easily edited. Mr. Gupta then signed off on fraudulent invoices that were sent to the Department of Transportation to be paid. Fortunately, the fraudulent activity was discovered during a routine audit.
It seems farfetched but do you think the same thing might be happening to you? It might not be on the same scale but it might be worth a few minutes of your time to look into how your vendors are keeping track of their billable hours. Do they have a manual system or have they upgraded to an automated time tracker? If you don’t know the method that they use, it’s only natural to wonder how accurate their invoices might be. If a vendor is “ball parking” their time and writing down billable hours manually, it’s easy to forget the coffee breaks and the 10 minutes here and there that they spent taking calls or doing work for a different client.
Don’t be shy when it comes to asking your vendors how they track their billable hours. If they are using manually entered time sheets chances are they have padded their hours to cover themselves. If they have adopted an online time tracking software you can breathe easily knowing they have made the effort to accurately and efficiently track and report their time.
Processing your request, Please wait....
