- Business: Homecare Your Way LLC
- Location: New Hartford, New York
- Interesting Fact about Homecare Your Way: Suzana has one male aide on staff. He’s been there for four years!
- Interesting Fact about Suzana Sukunda: Suzana was born in Croatia and moved to the United States from Germany in 1997. She says she’s had so many successes and accomplishments in the United States.
When Suzana Sukunda started her home healthcare business, Homecare Your Way LLC, in 2018, she handled every single client on her own. When COVID hit, more people than ever began searching for at-home healthcare solutions. Her team grew, and so did her need to find a seamless timecard solution. After years of using a paper tracking system, ezClocker’s easy-to-use system put time tracking at her employee’s fingertips – and helped her save a day’s worth of work each week.
Suddenly, Suzana’s priorities shifted from working directly with clients to managing an expanding team that was always on the road, traveling to and from appointments with a growing client roster.
Dedicated to Helping Others
Suzana Sukunda started working in healthcare at 18 years old. It’s all she’s ever known. But after spending years working in different healthcare facilities and home healthcare companies in Utica, New York, she decided it was time to venture out on her own. She started Homecare Your Way LLC in 2018 with just two clients.
For years, she handled each appointment herself…until 2021. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, a shift in the healthcare market emerged: People were exiting nursing facilities and looking for ways to stay at home while still receiving necessary care. From accompanying seniors to fun activities and doctor appointments to helping with errands and light housework or meal prep, Homecare Your Way LLC provides compassionate care that gives seniors and their families peace of mind.
“My business picked up after COVID,” Suzana says. “A lot of people didn’t want mom, dad, grandma or grandpa in a facility. They wanted them in their own home.”
With a growing business and more demand from clients than ever before, Suzana realized that she needed more help. Her business eventually grew to 10 employees, serving clients in New Hartford, Rome, Utica, and the surrounding area in upstate New York. Suddenly, her priorities shifted from working directly with clients to managing an expanding team that was always on the road, traveling to and from appointments with a growing client roster.
Suzana needed something that could simplify and digitize the time-tracking process. She ended up finding an app that was much, much more
Expanding Business, Big Problems
As her team expanded, Suzana needed to create processes for time-tracking, scheduling, and time off requests. She started with something simple: good old-fashioned pen and paper. “First, I was doing everything on paper. They had to fill out time cards and drop them off weekly. People would be turning in their timecards late and then I’d be late on payroll,” Suzana says.
With manual timesheets, Suzana had to rely on employees to fill them out accurately and turn them in on time. It also required constant supplies and upkeep, since employees would often run out of timesheets at inconvenient times.
“Paper timesheets were horrible. People would run out of timesheets and have to go into the office to print them out. We had to make sure every house had timesheets,” she says.
Soon, she was also using manual processes for several other key business functions: information sharing and creating monthly schedules. She needed to write down or verbally communicate notes about every single client. Employees also had to call her to determine what each client needed.
She also had to rework the monthly work schedule constantly. Whenever employee availability changed or someone needed time off, she had to redo the schedule and waste precious time.
“I would write out a monthly schedule for everyone, which was kind of a pain. If there were a change, I would have to redo everything,” Suzana says.
It wasn’t long before she started searching for a time-tracking app, hoping for a better solution. She needed something that could simplify and digitize the time-tracking process. She ended up finding an app that was much, much more.
From Mountains of Paperwork to Digital Transformation
Suzana came across ezClocker and decided to give it a try. It seemed like a great fit, but she decided to test out another option, just to be sure. A friend recommended a different app to her, and Suzana downloaded it. “I didn’t like it. It was confusing and I deleted it. I already had ezClocker and decided to stick with it,” Suzana says. She quickly realized that ezClocker was the best fit for Homecare Your Way LLC.
She had 10 employees at the time and set up each of them on ezClocker. As she experimented with more and more features, she unlocked the software’s true potential and said goodbye to her paper timesheets and calendars for good.
With ezClocker, her team could clock in and out from anywhere, just by using their cell phones. No more pen and paper, or running back to the office for more timesheets. The app also logged each employee’s location using GPS Verification, ensuring that each person arrived at each residence when expected. “They can’t clock in until they’re at the physical address,” Suzana says. “That was the problem with paper. You had to wonder, ‘Did they get there on time? Were they late?”
ezClocker’s time-tracking capabilities made an instant impact on her business and it wasn’t long before she found even more uses for the app. The online scheduling tool is her favorite feature, Suzana says.
“At first I was only using it to clock in and out because I thought that was all it was,” Suzana says. “Now, the girls get their schedule on the app. The time off request feature is great too. No paperwork is needed, so I get to confirm or deny each request. That’s great as well. “
It also makes communicating with her staff much easier. The notes feature allows her to input information about each client directly into the app. With a click of a few buttons, every staff member can learn more about who the client is and exactly what they need directly from the job site.
Getting Time Back
The business kept growing and Suzana continued to add employees. Now, she has 25 employees serving the upstate New York area, and every single one uses ezClocker. Suzana just adds each employee and sends them a link to make their password.In just a few simple steps, every new hire is in the system and ready to start helping their clients.
ezClocker has also given Suzana one of her most valuable assets back: Her time. Since timesheets are available through the app, she no longer needs to chase down paperwork from employees to complete payroll or confirm if the time logged was accurate. She also doesn’t have to spend hours rewriting monthly schedules or sorting through requests for time off.
“It definitely saved me, I would say, a whole day out of the week. I do my schedule and payroll every Sunday. I can do everything at once instead of over Sunday and Monday,” Suzana says.
When she has to go into the office on Mondays, she spends her time focusing on another aspect of the business, not tedious tasks like scheduling payroll. That task used to take her a long time – now it takes about an hour.
“It has everything I need for right now,” Suzana says.
