Human Resources Software

St. John’s Church and School Manages Accrued Personal Time Off with Staff Files

“The reports by individuals and by group are terrific. I was never able to respond in a timely manner to a request for a personal time-off balance. Now with just a few clicks of the mouse I can print a full individual statement of the days earned by month and the exact dates of any time off that was taken.”

Sally Elliott, Business Manager
Saint John's Episcopal Church and Parish Day School 

Customer Profile

Saint John's Episcopal Church and Parish Day School, located in Chula Vista, California, is a religious and educational organization that employees 38 people.

Situation/Challenge

Sally Elliott, the business manager, began working at St. John’s over three years ago. At that time, the human resources function was done without any computer support. Gradually, she began building Excel spreadsheets to store employee information, so she could find data more quickly when she needed it. Instead of digging in paper personnel files that were not organized or complete, she was able to quickly reference spreadsheets that contained the personnel information that was not kept in her payroll program. Her spreadsheets kept records of hire dates, birth dates, wage information, accrued personal time, personal time taken, and much more. Each year she would copy the previous spreadsheet forward to continue to track time-off activity.

When it was time for annual contract renewals with teachers, she spent a lot of time putting together scenario worksheets for the Head of School in order for him to make budget decisions on wage increases and employee benefit allowances. They also needed HR reports, in general.

They got a quote from their payroll processing company to add more human resources functionality, but the costs were too high for their nonprofit organization. There were also extra frills to that company’s HR software that St. John’s would probably never use.

Solution

St. John’s IT consultant told Sally about TechSoup and the advantage it was to small 501(c)(3) organizations like theirs. TechSoup connects nonprofits with discounted or donated technology products and software. Sally prepared the application and backup materials to qualify for donations from TechSoup and received QuickBooks accounting software from them. “As I was looking through TechSoup’s catalog I happened upon the human resources software and found Staff Manager,” Sally said. “The more I read about its capabilities, the more I smiled.”

Benefits

Their initial goal was to keep track of personal time-off balances for their 38 employees. “We upgraded from Staff Manager to Staff Files and found it very easy to set up,” Sally explained. “After I had it all loaded and working, and had duly impressed our CPA, I started exploring what else the software could do for me.” She found that in addition to keeping hire dates, emergency contact information and wage information, it could also store license credentials, required health tests and renewal reminders for teacher records. “I can keep these personnel records at my fingertips for current and past employees without the need to rummage through a box in our storage unit for past employees,” Sally said.

“The reports by individuals and by group are terrific. I was never able to respond in a timely manner to a request for a personal time-off balance. Now with just a few clicks of the mouse I can print a full individual statement of the days earned by month and the exact dates of any time off that was taken,” Sally explained. “The entry of employee information is so simple I can keep up on a daily basis. Just the time-off accrual part of the HR software has increased my productivity a great deal. In the past, our CPA was lucky to get the accrual reporting quarterly, if not semi-annually.”

“I would advise any organization of our size to take a look at Staff Files’ capabilities before signing up for more expensive human resources packages,” Sally said. “I definitely feel we have received a good return on our investment in this HR software and look forward to developing my uses for it even further.”