Taking matters into my own hands - Buying a SB and making it better
I own a small <10 employee steel fabrication shop. The previous owner ran it the same way it was running in the late 90s. Very low tech, hard copies only, old school stamp timecards. I love tech and hate paper. My first two years of running the company was basically scanning and purging 20+ file cabinets of records when I wasn't putting out fires or selling. After all that manual labor I knew I had to do something better. I got a server installed and implemented standard folders for quotes, jobs, etc. Ended a two reference code system that made zero sense, one number for quotes and another for jobs, with no way to cross reference. I felt relieved and things were running fast and smooth in the office. My next big hurdle was the timeclock. I hated the 1970's ribbon stamp timecard machine. Weekly it would be out of sync with the clock, ribbon issues, you name it.
I looked everywhere and ended up trying a cheap digital one from amazon. It was okay, better than what I had but still had it's own issues. Downloading reports, not cloud access, and everything came out in messy excel sheets. I eventually moved on to ADPs timeclock. But they oversold and underperformed. I have no idea what business model could use the data the way they jam it down your throat.
Knowing the market was full of trash options I reached out to my long term friend (very long term, +30 years) who is in the software business. Several convos shooting the s**t and we agreed we could do it. Took him 6 months to have a version to launch in my shop. Looking back on all the work and phone calls puts a smile on my face because I was doing something with someone whom I have known and trusted for awhile. I was always in a different line of business then all my friends, so I was on my own island before.
We launched the version and changed it over and over while we used my shop as the testing grounds. I am so thankful that my employees were open and excited to develop the software. One year from the start and we now have a fully functional timeclock software that was actually made for a small business, in the USA, by two dreamers. I have easy payroll and real data for productivity and estimating, no more guessing how I did.