Case study:
Liberty Electric Reduces Administration Time By Over 80% With Access COINS

Manual Data Entry Vulnerable To Human Error 

As the company grew and field crews expanded, the foremen spent considerably more time keying in data, and manually matching cost codes. 

Another challenge was the lack of integration with the existing time collection solution, which did not provide a drop-down list of cost codes. That required the back office to generate and distribute weekly cost code reports to the field. Even with current lists, the manual data entry of cost codes left room for data entry errors that were only realized when the back office entered these timecards. The duplication of effort from rekeying the data into payroll increased the opportunity for new errors, and it took 8 hours to key weekly crew hours into payroll. 

Liberty’s foremen had been using a mobile form to enter crew hours and cost codes each day. At the end of each week, individual timecards were submitted to the office manager to prepare payroll. Each timesheet could have 10 or more cost codes per day, which resulted in thousands of rows of time entry that had to be manually rekeyed. It could take a foreman 3-4 hours each week to type crew hours into the mobile forms, and manually look up cost codes because the mobile form did not offer that functionality. 

Once complete, all timecards were then emailed to the project manager for approval. The project manager would review and forward approved timecards to the office manager who then had to manually key the data into payroll – a process that took eight hours to complete. The Controller then had to open and manually review each timecard. 

Connect And Automate Data Collection From The Field

Liberty wanted a web-based, construction-specific technology solution for time collection and payroll that would increase efficiency and accuracy, automate processes and improve communications. The company had several goals to overcome the time collection and data-entry issues, met by Access COINS: 

• A modern, scalable time-collection solution that integrated with payroll.
• A simple solution for foremen and project managers, with minimal input requirements to prevent unnecessary errors.
• A web-based, time-collection solution that would scale in parallel with Liberty’s growth.

Liberty selected the Access COINS mobile Crew Daily Reports (mCDR) solution for time collection because it was built for field construction. The timeline to select and implement the mCDR solution was incredibly fast because Liberty employees were motivated to solve their industry needs with an industry solution. 

After installation on December 21st, 2020, field crews began using Access COINS mCDR after a successful testing and training period.  

Liberty experienced no issues during implementation or testing, and the process went smoothly. Access COINS mCDR was readily adopted and quickly improved operations by reducing duplicate manual entry. It has also reduced errors in coding timesheets.