Lifestyles Catering - Case Study

I have owned my catering company for over 14 years, before that I was in the corporate hospitality world, where you walked in and the first thing you did was punch in, first on Time Cards, (now if that doesn’t date me nothing will,) and then by entering your pin into the key board. When I started my catering company we had a traditional time clock in the catering kitchen, but all of the staff that would meet at the job site signed on a time sheet. There were always two major problems with this system,

First, manually tabulating the hours took an entire day for the office manager.
And, no matter when people got on site, they always signed in at the scheduled time, (All my angels are perfect, NOT!!)

To streamline my payroll I needed another system. A time clock system that would calculate and tally the hours for each employee, (not so hard to find,) and a system that we could take onto the job site and accurately clock staff in and out, (not so easy to find.) One day, while reading a home improvement magazine, I saw an advertisement for an on the job time clock system aimed at the construction trade. After a little more research I narrowed it down to two systems, one that used a proprietary hub and fobs for everybody to clock in and out, (I could only imagine how many fobs would be lost, ) and About Time, the system that was based on a Palm PDA. But if you lose a Palm you’re out a couple of hundred, so About Time wraps the Palm in an Otter Box protective shell. It’s big, it’s ugly, it doesn’t fit in any ones pocket and it survives the abuse of the job site. I haven’t lost one unit since I purchased the system, (OK, now I’ve jinxed myself!) Payroll has gone from an all day ordeal to a task that gets done before lunch on payroll Monday. All we have to do is sync the Palm units to the computer and all of the information is in one place, ready to go over, make adjustments and print out the reports. After experiencing About Time’s ease of use and the use of over the counter hardware there is one other point that has made working with About Time a great experience, their tech support. Over the years, I have always had the pleasure of working with Richard Bird. I have to contact About Time once maybe twice a year, and their ongoing tech support is always able to answer a question and help trouble shoot and solve my problem.

I won’t tell another person how to run their business, heaven knows that I have enough on my hands trying to run my own, but I strongly suggest that About Time look at getting some exposure in the Off Premise Catering Market. I know that I can’t be the only caterer whose time clock needs were met by About Time PERFECTLY!

- Lawrence French | Lifestyles Catering

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