About one month ago I wrote …
What have I done…
This has been one of the most interesting working months of my life…
I have staff in at least five other locations than the one that I work in… a total of some 45 employees all told. There is a national payroll company that does the payroll so I asked them to send me a list of employees on payroll…. given that this is the 7th month of the year.. there has been a total of 109 employees on the payroll to date … apparently hiring,firing or employees quitting seems to be common place and extremely random happening.
A new focus on better screening and training of new hires and a effort to reduce employee turnover.
I have found 8-9 EIN’s (Employer Identification Numbers), numerous corporations and DBA’s… and 11 bank accounts in five different banks – so far.. there are no financials, P&L’s, Balance Sheets or Asset Sheets.
Nearly everything has a process – or no process – that can only be described as chaotic… the business seems to be running the employees instead of the employees running the business.. Even with the high turnover of employees. I have a solid core of very good, dedicated well trained employees.
Employee moral is on a definite uptick.. the first week I initiated a TGIF lunch that the company buys.. nothing fancy or elaborate… just that everyone has survived another week of the transition.
Everyone Monday morning at 09:30 is a Senior staff meeting.. getting a handle on the week ahead and get some coordinated direction.
This week we received a electronic time clock with RIFD tags locally and the employees being able to clock in/out on their computers and/or smart phones who are in the out lying areas. Other issues has prohibited us from implementing it the first day of the month.. Unfortunately, we will have to run parallel systems – still using the old paper time cards – for a while.. to make sure that all times are recorded on the new system.. This should reduce the number of man hours dealing with payroll by some 90%.
September is slated to initiate direct deposit of payroll and/or pay put on a prepaid debit card.. for those employees that don’t have a checking account.
I have acquired myself a new laptop and multi-function printer/scanner/fax… QuickBooks Pro… I have signed the company up for a new level of 21st century banking program .. opened a new checking account which will be the central account where all monies flow in and out… so that everything can be generated thru QuickBooks as a single entry. On Monday, got my computer checks and got on line access to all the bank accounts – at least at one of the banks.
This week a check scanner showed up.. so that we don’t have to go to the bank anymore.. just stack the checks in the scanner.. log into the bank’s website and minutes later .. all checks being posted to A/R are digitalized copies at the bank and available on the bank’s website.
Like everything else, nothing works correctly out of the gate… the bank only attached one of the bank accounts to the scanner and so – for the time being – we have to continue to go to the bank to make some deposits.. waiting on the IT people at the bank to get their act together.
Finally got to upload the information for the “gas cards” for the staff.. since we purchase some $5,000.00 per week in fuel.. it is important to keep track where it is going.
My presence in the office every day and my “open door policy” is starting to pay off… employees are coming to me with ideas and one “older” driver.. stopped by to thank me for all the positive changes that I am making.
Today, all checks generated were done thru QuickBooks – I think – I hide all the old manual checks and am now able to review each AM.. the checks that cleared the account the day before.. A email went out to all employees last night.. if you want a check for something.. you have to have to give me a invoice to get a checks.. Right now, all the “monkeys” are in their cage and the door is closed.. but tomorrow is another day :-))
Filed under: General Problems
Awesome!
THAT, my friend, was the most exhausting blog post I’ve ever read. Sounds like you are on the right trajectory, keep up the positive work! And with all of that you manage to post at least once per day AND be an advocate for your wife’s medical care. Kudos to you, and aren’t you glad it is Friday?
If you weren’t at the other end of the state I’d send you my resume. Seriously I could work for a boss like you. A few years ago I wish I had the money to buy a guy out who owned the oldest pharmacy in IN. He sold out to Big Evil. It was a real shame.