Grasshopper as a Time Card System?

January 12, 2011

A few weeks ago, we found out about a new customer of ours, 360clean, when they tweeted about signing up for Grasshopper.  One thing led to another and we decided to hop on a call to learn more about their business.

360clean opened our eyes to a very unique and innovative way to use our virtual phone system – As a timecard system!  A virtual phone system as a timecard system? Let us explain…

360clean’s story

360clean is a complete facility care company who specializes in janitorial, maintenance and landscape services.  They innovated “cleaning for health” and use this specialized approach to cleaning in all office buildings to protect employees and clients from illness causing germs.

360clean’s mission is, “To satisfy our customers’ needs on a daily basis while providing the best combination of quality, price and delivery in workplace cleaning services, by continuously improving and developing our systems of operation.”  As a growing business, quality control can be a challenge when teams are spread out across the country and go from client to client providing services.

The problem

With this type of business it’s hard to manage and document the employees’ attendance without actually being present at the client’s office.  It‘s also impossible to be at every client’s office, checking in on employee’s attendance and making sure that employees are doing the proper amount of work for each client.  360clean needed a better way to manage their employees while they were onsite providing services at a client’s location.

The solution

360clean found Grasshopper to be, “a great resource for [their] service employees to clock in and out when they reached their client’s office to provide a service,” says Barry Bodiford founder and CEO of 360clean.

360clean used the unlimited extensions feature from Grasshopper to set up an “employee time center” extension that employees call in to (from the client’s office phone) and leave a voicemail when they are clocking in and then again when they are clocking out.

For this system to work, Bodiford emphasized the importance of employees clocking in from the phone at the client’s office so that you can be certain your employees are really there.  Plus, using the read your voicemail feature, when employees leave a voicemail to check in, the voicemail is transcribed and converted into a WAV or MP3 audio file and sent to Bodiford via email.

Why Use Grasshopper as a time clock?

• No time clocks are needed as this is your source for payroll hours.
• You have the ability to manage employee attendance remotely via Blackberry or other mobile email device.
• You can have confidence in knowing your employees have arrived on time to your client’s facility.
• Voicemails are time stamped, provide caller-id and you hear the voice of the employee, giving you peace of mind that employees are on time and actually where they are supposed to be.
• Lastly, for quality control. This program gives a business owner the assurance that the proper amount of work hours has been spent on each job.

Interested in learning more about 360clean? Check out their website, or follow them on Twitter.

What innovative ways are you using Grasshopper? We would love to hear about them!

• Comments 2
• Date January 12, 2011
• CategoriesEntrepreneurship, Small Business, Startup, Tips & Tricks