Unscheduled absenteeism can cost businesses a significant amount of money per year in direct payroll costs. In addition to the increase in payroll, absenteeism can negatively affect a business by resulting in decreased productivity, lost revenue and poor morale. According to a recent CCH survey on unscheduled absences, approximately two-thirds of workers who call in sick at the last minute do so for reasons other than physical illness. The survey found that most common reasons for last minute call-ins to be for personal reasons and family issues.

So how do you keep employees productive and at work?

• Offer an Employee Assistance Program that allows employees to seek confidential counseling for personal or work related issues at no cost to them.
• Offer incentives such as flexible work schedules, telecommuting, compressed work week, leave for school functions, wellness programs, and flu shot programs.
• Offer Paid Time Off (PTO) rather than a separate sick leave or vacation leave policy. PTO allows for employees to have all of their hours placed in a single account to be used for vacation, sick leave and personal time.
• Implement Absence Control Programs to keep control of absences. Some of the most effective programs include verification of illness, disciplinary action, buy-backs, and yearly reviews.
• Improve employee morale by recognizing employees' stressful workloads and allowing for employee growth and development. Low employee morale has been linked to an increase in the unscheduled absence rate, especially for reasons other than personal illness.

Involve management, HR and employees in determining the best solution for your business. Evaluating and reevaluating the effectiveness of programs offered is key to maintaining a happy and productive workforce. Keep in mind that employee needs are constantly changing, and so should your approach to keep employee absences to a minimum.

ASI SmartBooks allows you to set up a barter account - similar to how you would set up a checking or credit card account. This will provide you the ability to track transactions through the register and balance the barter account to verify barter transactions through the reconcile option.

How do I set up procedures for bartering?

Create a new ledger account for each bartering agreement.

Create a new payment method for bartering under Tools-Financial-Payment Method.

How do I write off a customer's invoice due to a barter agreement?

Like with any other customer payment, enter a Receipts-New for the amount you are writing off due to bartering. Use the payment method (Receipt Type) set up for "Barter".

Allocate the payment against the customer invoices that will be a part of the barter transactions. In the Receipts-Deposit screen, use the ledger account you set up for bartering as your bank account. Select only the invoices with the payment method setup for bartering and process.

How do I write off a vendor's bill due to a barter agreement?

Like with any other vendor bill, enter a Bill-New for the amount of the vendor's bill and apply the bill as normal either to an order or directly to the appropriate ledger account.

On the Bill-Pay screen, use the ledger account you set up for bartering as your bank account.

By following these steps, you will be able to see the balance of your barter agreement in the check register options. Simply select the ledger account you set up for the barter agreement. You can also verify the transactions through the reconcile option if there is a statement or some other type of register to balance the transactions against.

Shipping cost can dramatically affect the profitability of an order. Ask yourself:

Interfacing ProfitMaker with your shipping software will eliminate rekeying of address information and link tracking detail to the order. This type of interface allows shipping software for third parties (like UPS and FedEx) to access order information directly and in real time. The shipper simply enters or scans the order number. The shipping software then pulls the order information directly from ProfitMaker. This eliminates the need to rekey the order's shipping address, and helps ensure the address information is up-to-date. Order information includes: the ship to address, email address, residential indicator, third party shipper number, and other order entry information.

Once the package has been shipped, tracking information may be pushed back to ProfitMaker, linking it to the order. Users will be able to quickly access the order's tracking information without calling the shipping department. Just think, no more wasted time calling the shipping department for tracking numbers. You will also cut down on the number of customer service calls. As I mentioned earlier, an email address can be passed to the shipping software. The shipping software can then email the tracking number directly to the customer.

Now, you may be thinking, "How is this saving me money? The shipping company is still charging me the same amount." The cost savings isn't from decreasing your actual freight bill; it is from decreasing employee time. Think about this: entering a complete address, including an email address, takes about 2 ½ minutes. Compare this to entering an order number, which takes about 15 seconds. This results in a total savings of about 2 minutes per shipment. Ship 100 packages a day and you would save approximately 16 hours a week. The average employee costs about $15.00 to employ (hourly rate plus benefits and employer taxes). This is an estimated savings of $12,480.00 annually. This doesn't include customer service time savings. Remember, time is money.