Flowchart Improvement Process Bryan Rhodes 5/1/17 OPS/571 The flow chart mapping in this analysis is the payroll review and approval process utilized at Atlas Field Service, a small business in California. Its small size and limited income require the processes used at this firm to leverage resources as efficiently as possible. The metrics used to define effectiveness of this process are: time-to-completion, labor costs, and materials costs. Each of these metrics speaks to the firm's goal of keeping expenses as minimal as possible, while preserving efficiency and limiting errors. In payroll processing, it is important that entry and approval be accurate due to potential employee impact as well as possible company liability. Failure to report accurate information, or to ensure employees are paid what they are owed, carries steep penalties if discovered and reported to the labor board, Employment Development Department, or other agencies. Time-to-completion refers to the time from the beginning of the process to the completion of the final step and the expectation is that payroll processing be completed within 2 business days. Labor costs refers to the amount of man hours spent in the process including myself as the processor, employees, and potentially senior management. The target amount of man hours spent, total, should be no more than 5 hours for all participants. Materials costs refer to the costs incurred through use of physical resources, such as paper and ink toner. The target per pay period is a maximum of 2 sheets of paper per employee time card, this allows for one original time sheet generation and one re-generation in the event of correction. As-Is Process The As-Is process defined above is the exact process used, start to finish, for payroll review and approval and ends with the step of making the accounting entry for payroll. The current process works, however, there are some areas that have caused issues. The first primary issue is the generation of paper time sheets for review. This activity, one the president of the firm insists on, results in the printing of some 30 sheets of paper which are first reviewed by the processor and then returned to the employee if incomplete with a note to complete the time sheet record in the timekeeper software. Once completed, a new time sheet record is printed off. The completed time sheet records are then reviewed against the employees' schedules hours and against any time off requests for accuracy. If hours are off, these are manually adjusted by the processor in the system. One all hours have been confirmed the timesheet confirmation pages are printed and placed on the desks of employees for signature. This part is the second issue. Many of the employees are out of the office doing field assignments. Each has been issued a company iPhone with their work email programmed into it. Most will not return to the office until the end of their assigned shifts and several do not even go to their desks following their work day. If the employee fails to sign the confirmation, an email reminder is sent to them. Once all confirmations are signed, the time sheet confirmations are filed and payroll is entered into the accounting software. Improved Process The timekeeper software allows for timesheets to be converted to .pdf forms. Rather than generate physical copies of time sheets, an electronic version is generated. These can be reviewed; an incomplete form can be emailed to employees. Since all employees have a company issued smart phone, with email capabilities, they will receive these time sheet forms. All employees have login credentials to the time keeper program, which is web based, and the program is mobile friendly. They would be able to review the digital time sheet and make corrections in the time keeper from their mobile device. Once corrections are made, new .pdf forms could be generated and replace the incomplete originals. This new process replaces paper based methods, submits the forms directly to the employee who can review, and sign the .pdf documents. Once the process is completed, the forms are then locked in a secure folder in the company server. This improved process addresses the metrics defined in the following ways: it reduces time-tofinish by cutting out the amount of time between timesheet generation, review, approval, and submission. It reduces labor costs by allowing employees to review documents while they are off-site and reduces the amount of time the processor must use to pursue completion of forms. It reduces costs from materials by eliminating the consumption of paper and ink. Realistic projections of the impact the improvement will have on metrics can be defined by providing averages of the current process. Twice monthly, 58 sheets of paper are consumed as well as ink toner for a total of 116 pages monthly. Over the course of one year, payroll consumes 1,392 pages of paper or around 2.5 reams of paper. An ink cartridge will print around 225 pages of paper, meaning that 6 cartridges will be used throughout the year. A generic brand ream of paper costs around 9.00, an ink cartridge around $20 for a total cost of $142. This may not seem like much, but restating from above this is a small company with limited resources. The maximum allowable time for labor is 5 man hours. This process would likely reduce the number of hours by at least 1 working hour. Time-to-completion will be reduced as well as the direct email activity will cut out waiting time and allow the processor to complete the assignment