Reducing time spent on rostering, payroll and invoicing admin by 75% saves a day and a half per week
Equity Cleaning Services, a contract cleaning company that specialises in the maintenance of commercial and industrial buildings in the South of England, has invested in SmartTask cleaning services management software to manage its workforce of over 200 employees.
Founded some forty years ago, the company has built a reputation for high standards of professionalism, reflected in its client list, including the NHS and Audi. Using SmartTask software has delivered significant operational efficiencies, better communications for staff and customers, and more accurate up-to-date reporting, payroll and invoicing.
Right people, Right place, Right time – Meeting SLAs
Equity’s Operations Director, Louise Haynes sets the scene; “A lot of time was spent on manual admin tasks. What we needed was something that was better than a spreadsheet, that was designed for our particular kind of business. When I first saw the SmartTask software I liked its modern look and knew that it would be easy for people to use.”
SmartTask is used to create weekly timesheets for staff, replacing the spreadsheets and dramatically reducing time spent on admin. A key driver for choosing SmartTask was to streamline rosters, and manage cover for sickness and holidays. Being able to identify staff with the right skills who are available and local to the customer site to fill any gaps has been invaluable because it ensures that all customer jobs are serviced cost efficiently and helps the company to meet its Service Level Agreements.
Since using SmartTask the time spent scheduling staff rosters now takes just half a day instead of two days, a reduction of 75%. SmartTask ensures that all working hours are captured and reports collating data from all jobs completed are fed into the payroll, which means staff are confident that they are paid accurately for the hours worked.
Improving Customer Service with Faster Invoicing
Invoicing customers has become a more automated process. Integrated reports from SmartTask populate the company’s Sage accounts system with no rekeying of data required, reducing the risk of errors and potential for lost paperwork. Previously invoices took a week to reconcile and email out to customers. With SmartTask invoices are prepared and issued in just under an hour.
Louise explains: “The SmartTask software records all working hours ensuring that no cleaning jobs are missed in the invoices, which means no lost revenue. Accurate records also enable transparency of all jobs completed for each customer. Where one-off cleans have been arranged, scheduling the job using SmartTask eliminates paper notes that in the past may have been misplaced or forgotten.”
Future plans support Health & Safety Compliance
The SmartTask solution provides a full range of workforce management capabilities, which can be utilised as business requirements evolve. Equity Cleaning Services plans to further extend its use of SmartTask to include the Holidays module allowing staff to request holiday and see holiday entitlement/accurals via the app. They also plan to utilise the Time & Attendance module which will enable staff to clock in and clock out. This will provide an accurate record of the times that employees start and end their shifts, with automatic alerts should staff fail to arrive on site – helping the company meet its employer’s Duty of Care, Lone Worker and Health & Safety compliance requirements.
A Mobile App for a Mobile Workforce
Introducing the new SmartTask App will make it easier for Equity’s staff to receive details of cleaning jobs and check in and out once completed - they can book onto their shifts, view their daily work schedules and make welfare calls. Completing audits and submitting incident reports via the App will also help to support health and safety requirements. For the managers, activity reports can be used for quality audits of the service provided for customers and to meet profitability targets.
Louise concludes: “Since using SmartTask our operations and administration are more efficient and accurate across the board. Rostering and payroll are massively streamlined, while SmartTask’s user friendly system has freed my time up greatly, enabling me to focus on other priorities. The customer service from SmartTask has been second to none, their attention to customer experience makes them very easy to work with.”
Louise Haynes, Operations Director, Equity Cleaning Services