Lakeland Practice Solutions Punches In without Knocking Themselves Out

Imagine coordinating payroll for 600 employees spread across 12 companies. Now imagine that these companies were composed of dozens of independent departments. Sound challenging? What if each of these departments used a different time clock system, requiring manual entry of each of the 600 timecards?

These are the challenges that Tina Blank and her co-workers at Lakeland Practice Solutions found themselves facing as their company took on the payroll duties for a consortium of health facilities in Southwest Michigan.

Fortunately, Lakeland had two aces up their sleeve. A recently installed TRAVERSE Accounting Software solution from Open Systems, Inc., and a resourceful technology partner named Rich Van Daele, Jr. of Maple Business Software Consulting.

Integrating Web Functionality into TRAVERSE

“With that many timecards and different systems,” observed Van Daele, “the situation had become untenable.” Since Van Daele had recently helped Lakeland migrate from an older accounting system to TRAVERSE, he knew that the new software was extensible enough to allow a separate online timecard system to feed directly into the database.

“Our goal was to eliminate all manual entry,” said Van Daele. And with the help of Customware, Inc., that is what he was able to accomplish.

On-Time Web Brings Big-Time Changes

Van Daele contacted Karen McGaughey at Customware, specialists in the development of web applications for the enterprise. Between the two experts, Customware’s On-Time Web system was installed first on a few test sites, and then rolled out across all 12 affiliate companies.

“On-Time Web is a web-based timecard system,” explained Tina. “Employees can just go on a website, and they can punch in when they get to work. Each employee has their own ID, so all of their information gets routed to the right department.”

And the information that used to require manual entry? “I can just upload it,” says Tina, “hit the ‘easy’ button, and it’s done!”

The Future with Strong Partners and TRAVERSE

One of the advantages of close communication with the developer of the software is that the developer can incorporate suggestions into the final product. “With On-Time Web, there were features that we needed and suggested, and they were able to implement them,” said Tina. “We’d say, ‘Well, can we do this?’ And they’d say ‘Sure!’”

Van Daele is also providing Lakeland support as they transition to the latest version of TRAVERSE. “The new version is more modern, more current,” said Tina. “Rich showed us that we can do more with greater ease.”

With their new timecard system in On-Time Web and their reliable back-end accounting system in TRAVERSE, Lakeland is poised to spend time on more critical business issues than hand-keying information for 600 separate paychecks each pay period.