Kimbrell Electric
A deep dive into how we overhauled their compliance and payroll workflow
“We used to have to manually enter everything for reports about 2 or 3 times.”
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Employees: 95
Challenges
- Lots of manual entry for time reporting
- Too much time spent figuring out payroll & reporting
- Lack of flexibility with previous vendor
eBacon Solutions
- More accurate time reporting directly from the field
- Auto-calculations save significant time
- Adaptable system to help meet clients’ needs
Background
Kimbrell Electric, Inc., a contractor in the Phoenix metropolitan area provides construction and installation of underground wiring for lighting and electrical distribution systems for municipalities and commercial clients. Since Kimbrell does a combination of both, government and private construction projects, there are a multitude of complexities with payroll processing and reporting requirements due to prevailing wage laws, such as the Davis Bacon Act. As the primary person to manage Kimbrell’s timecards and reporting requirements, Jen, Human Resources Manager, needed a simpler way to manage this workload for 75 employees.
“What used to take 35 hours for certified payroll, takes not even an hour now.”
Pre-eBacon
Before implementing eBacon’s solution, Jen would receive handwritten time entries from foreman that worked in the field, then manually enter those entries into their former payroll system. This process was very tedious, left lots of room for error, and also resulted in Jen having to go back and make corrections for many submissions.
The system Kimbrell used at the time took Jen more than one full day to complete time-tracking and payroll, in addition to the time it took to submit reports to government agencies for prevailing wage projects. Jen mentioned, “Kimbrell used to have to manually enter timecards about 2 or 3 times — first into a spreadsheet, then into our previous vendor’s software, then we would have to enter that information into LCP tracker for government contract work.” This resulted in a lot of duplicate work, as well as a lot of mistakes.
Jen added, “It was not easy to obtain a report that told me how many people worked on what jobs and what their hours were,” which is important information Kimbrell needed to submit when working on government contract projects. In addition to having a system that didn’t provide accurate reports and required multiple data tracking methods, their previous payroll vendor did not offer much flexibility for their specific needs either.
“For instance, OSHA strongly recommends that a job site safety analysis report is completed daily. These reports were being done daily on paper by field employees, filed in binders, then I had to scan in each of these reports,” explained Jen. Their previous vendor was unable to implement any type of solutions for these specific requirements.
- Reduction in processing time 50%
- Savings in payroll costs 80%
Busy work is gone, but Jen is still busy!
Currently, all time reporting that was previously entered manually through handwritten, paper submissions gets entered online through the eBacon platform by Kimbrell workers via smartphone.Since time reporting data is now entered directly from job sites by each employee, there is very little need for manual intervention from Jen. After implementing eBacon’s software, it changed Kimbrell’s timeframe for processing payroll and applying the correct prevailing wage rates from more than a day to under an hour. One of the most attractive features of the eBacon platform for Jen is, “The certified payroll section which has saved a ton of time by helping us avoid lots of duplicate work.” All payrates can easily be assigned per job based on prevailing wage requirements and the skillsets required for each project. “It also was actually very easy and only took a few minutes to get everything set up for the first payroll,” according to Jen. “Employees easily adapted to using the eBacon platform as well.” Reports for government contract work was also much easier for Jen to obtain.
Since Jen had a lot of trouble with Kimbrell’s former payroll vendor in getting accurate reports to submit for government projects, she wanted to make sure eBacon would give her easy access to the reports she needs on a weekly basis. “With eBacon, I don’t have to do anything more than click a button to download an accurate report,” Jen explained. “Now, what used to take an entire day to enter into LCP tracker, takes not even an hour.”
Even though Jen no longer spends 35 hours each week on certified payroll, she still finds herself staying busier than ever in her job. Now she is able to focus on more analytical facets. As a direct result of having eBacon software in place for certified payroll, “It has lead to a lot more proactive versus reactive work,” according to Jen. Now Jen can focus on business planning and streamlining Kimbrell’s employee benefits package. Specifically, she has been able to focus on Kimbrell’s billing process and insource their health insurance administration — both of which would have been impossible when so much of her time was consumed by data entry for certified payroll reports.
Conclusion
eBacon not only streamlined Kimbrell’s payroll and reporting for government projects — we also provided solutions for some of Kimbrell’s more specific needs, including their need for daily job site safely analysis forms provided by OSHA. Jen was impressed to see how easily eBacon was able to take their form and make it user-friendly for workers in the field to submit daily reports via their smartphone.
Jen is also pleased to mention how the efficiencies of eBacon’s accurate time tracking has helped save Kimbrell in admin fees and feels that the company is more capable of taking on new government projects, since they now have a reliable system in place that can handle the complexities of payroll and reporting.
