The Client

Select Laboratories is a unique assembly of clinical reference labs in central South Carolina, furnishing fast and accurate results to hospitals, physicians, skilled nursing facilities, urgent care providers, and medical specialties such as pain management and drug rehabilitation practices.

The Challenge

Select Laboratories, which provides lab services such as blood and urine analysis to medical practices and practitioners, operates two locations in North Carolina and one in South Carolina. The Laboratories used paper-based time cards and a punch clock to track employees’ regular and overtime hours. The company’s third-party payroll service, ADP, mandates receipt of payroll data by a specific date. Same time each month, but it often left Seawell scrambling.

“It could take me three days to get payroll done, plus a day that the South Carolina lab manager needed to tally his location’s time. Knowing the payroll deadline loomed, the pressure to make the date could bring me to tears as I worked on the time cards each month,” Seawell recalled. “With the old system, I had no flexibility if a medical or family emergency arose, which created even more stress. I would close my door and people would be afraid to interrupt me. I had to come in on weekends just to catch up on other month-end work.”

The inefficient, time-intensive manual system also left room for mistakes or dishonesty, said Jess Merritt, Vice President of Information Services at Select Laboratories. Some employees waited until the last minute to complete their paperwork, resulting in guesswork and errors, added Seawell, who often was tasked to track down these workers.

“We wanted an automated system to ensure that everybody was being honest and accurate,” said Merritt. “We needed a solution that would speed up and simplify the payroll process.”

Merritt researched the options, finding time tracking systems that required employees to swipe a time card, and biometric solutions that used fingerprint recognition. “With the cards, you get an initial set free and then must buy the rest. We knew people would lose or forget their cards and we’d still be in the same position,” he said. “We ruled those out and decided to use a biometric system.

The Solution

Digging deeper, Select Laboratories chose a Wasp time and attendance solution, which pairs time and attendance software and a biometric employee time clock. This scalable solution tracks arrivals and departures, breaks and meals, and integrates with leading payroll solutions such as ADP, QuickBooks and PayChex. “We bought Wasp time and attendance because it was the most cost-effective solution,” Merritt said. “It is extremely easy to use and I easily integrated it into our network. It all came together and was the right fit.”

Initially implemented at the South Carolina site, the Wasp time and attendance solution delivered such immediate benefits that Select Laboratories rolled out the solution in both North Carolina offices.

The Result

Today, Seawell finishes payroll within regular business hours, immediately boosting her productivity and lowering her stress level. With the Wasp time and attendance solution, Select Laboratories finishes payroll about 70 percent faster than before, spending two days a month on payroll for all three locations, compared with at least a week per month using the old time clock.

“I work in the business office so we always have a lot of pressing month-end things to do. I’m better able to handle month-end processes now that payroll takes less than a day,” she said. “It’s much more relaxed now, knowing it’s not going to take me so long. Now the door is open and people can actually speak to me at the end of each month.”

Since the Wasp time and attendance solution is so intuitive, other Select Laboratories administrators can access the information if necessary, Seawell said. “We have three administrators here who can go in and download reports,” she said. “If I have an emergency, people would still get paid on time. And to me, that’s a huge stress relief.”