- Business: A&J Electric
- Location: Cranston, Rhode Island
- Interesting Fact about A&J Electric: Arthur never intended to start a business. He started picking up odd jobs, and before he knew it, he was running a company.
- Interesting Fact about Arthur Jordan: He started playing football when he was 8 years old. Now he coaches youth football.
When electrician Arthur Jordan was laid off, he started picking up odd jobs to support his family. Suddenly, he found himself operating a business he’d never planned on owning. As his business grew, he realized that a paper time-tracking system was costing him time and money. When he discovered ezClocker, Arthur was able to save hours every pay period working on payroll. Plus, ezClocker allowed him to quickly and easily generate man-hour reports that benefit his business in a number of ways. Now, he can spend that time building relationships with customers and landing the next big contract.
Arthur Jordan had worked as an electrician for almost 10 years when the housing market crash caused him to lose his job. He started scraping together small jobs on his own, and his work kept building.
Turning a layoff into an opportunity
Arthur Jordan had worked as an electrician for almost 10 years when the housing market crashed in 2008, causing him to lose his job. The electrical union in Rhode Island, where Arthur lives and works, told him to expect to be out of work for three to four years. “It was scary,” Arthur says. “I didn’t know where the next check was coming from. I didn’t know how I was going to support my family”
With a two-month-old son at home, being out of work that long was not an option. So Arthur started scraping together small jobs on his own. Pretty soon, he had more work than he could do alone, so he got a friend to help him.
Arthur found that, as a small business with little overhead, he could compete for small jobs that the larger construction companies couldn’t. As those companies laid off workers, Arthur’s work kept building. Before he knew it, four years had passed, and the union called him to come back to work. “But I had enough work to stay busy, so I just stayed doing what I was doing,” Arthur says.
At first, Arthur had his employees manually fill out paper timecards when they clocked in and out. “It wouldn’t be 100 percent accurate,” Arthur says. “It would cause discrepancies when I was going to bill customers.”
Time-tracking troubles
When Arthur started A&J Electric, he was nervous that he might be faced with an electrical project that he didn’t have the experience to complete on his own. Before long, he realized that having the right trade knowledge was the least of his worries. Running a business involved paperwork, insurance, billing, and other administrative tasks that presented unforeseen challenges.
One of those challenges was accurately tracking employees’ hours. At first, Arthur had his employees manually fill out paper timecards when they clocked in and out. “That was a huge hassle, to make sure that they would do that every day,” Arthurs says. “A lot of times they would forget. They would try to retroactively fill out their timecard at the end of the week. But it wouldn’t be 100 percent accurate. It would cause discrepancies when I was going to bill customers.”
Arthur was also spending a lot of time on payroll each pay period. As his company grew, Arthur began to have multiple crews going to different job sites simultaneously. Every payroll period, he would have to figure out who had been on which job site on which days. He would often have to call his employees, who would have to stop work on their current projects to figure out what jobs they were on the week before. To save time and avoid discrepancies, Arthur needed a new time-tracking system.
Arthur downloaded six apps in one day to try them out. ezClocker was the only one that offered the features Arthur needed at a price that suited his budget.
The right features at the right price
Arthur searched for a timecard app on his phone. He downloaded six apps in one day to try them out. Some apps were too intricate and expensive. Others didn’t offer enough features. ezClocker was the only one that offered the features Arthur needed at a price that suited his budget.
With ezClocker, Arthur was able to start off with a lower tier of membership. He knew that he could upgrade later as he added more employees and needed more features. He liked the fact that the app could GPS stamp where employees were when they clocked in and out. This made him feel comfortable knowing that his employees were being honest even when he wasn’t on site with them.
Other features that ezClocker offers that Arthur likes include easily setting the work week and the payroll schedule. With ezClocker, Arthur was able to adjust the work week to a Saturday to Friday schedule. With other apps that he tried, the work week was set at Sunday to Saturday, and he couldn’t change it. ezClocker also allows him to adjust the payroll dates to fit his company’s pay period.
Recently, Arthur called the technical support line at ezClocker to fix a small glitch. He got a human on the phone right away. Within a couple of minutes the support technician had walked him through fixing his problem. The ease and speed with which ezClocker helped Arthur solve his problem made him feel like a valued customer.
Arthur’s favorite feature of the app is the flexibility of how he can generate reports. This enables him to determine how much profit he’s making.
Generating free reports with ezClocker
As Arthur added more employees, he needed more features. Eventually, he began using the job list feature. With this feature, employees who work on more than one job site in a day can clock out of the first job and then instantly clock into the next job. This gives Arthur the ability to track hours not just by employee but also by job. When he bills his customers, he can print out a report from ezClocker that lists the man-hours for each job. He sends that report to his customers along with the invoice. This builds accountability with his customers, because they can trust that he’s only billing them for hours worked. Plus, it saves him time that he used to spend calculating man-hours manually. “I used to spend an entire Saturday doing what I do now in 10 or 15 minutes,” Arthur says.
He can also print out a report for a specific employee. This report shows how many hours that employee has worked in a given time period. This is useful when a person is employed under an apprenticeship. Apprentices require documentation of how many hours they’ve worked to take their journeyman license test. This free report that Arthur can generate with ezClocker saves him from having to pay a payroll company to provide the same data.
Arthurs favorite feature of the app is the flexibility of how he can generate reports. He can generate man-hour reports company wide, for each employee, for each job, for a given job over a specific time period, or for all jobs for a specific time period. This allows him to track how efficiently his crews are completing projects and determine how accurately he’s estimating the work when he bids on projects, which enables him to determine how much profit he’s making.
ezClocker gives Arthur the freedom to allocate more time and energy toward growing A&J Electric’s business. He knows that ezClocker will allow him to grow easily and effectively.
A growing app for a growing business
With ezClocker, Arthur is able to build accountability with his customers by providing man-hour reports for each job. Those reports also allow him to track how accurately he’s estimating jobs. Plus he saves money by not having to pay his payroll company to provide reports that he can generate on his own through ezClocker. He’s also able to trust that his employees are being honest about their hours. And he saves hours of his time and his employees’ time each pay period on payroll.
All of these benefits allow Arthur to spend more time in the field and less time on paperwork. They also give him the freedom to allocate more time and energy toward building the next relationship, finding the next project, and growing A&J Electric’s business. He hopes to continue to add employees so that he can bid on larger jobs. He knows that ezClocker will allow him to grow easily and effectively.
Arthur also likes that ezClocker is always adding new features. “As my company’s been growing,” he says, “the app has been evolving right along with us.”
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