Appalachian Renewable Power Systems

Solar Service with a Smile

Customers can’t stop gushing about Appalachian Renewable Power Systems, and neither can we. Keri D, Operations Manager at ARP, recalls a time when there were just five guys in a garage. Now they’ve more than tripled in size and continue to grow and serve all of Ohio, and surrounding states. From solar installation, PV charging systems, maintenance and service, their quality installations and highly skilled labor makes repeat customers excited to come back.

“When they leave a job, our customers can't wait to tell anybody who will listen about the great service they received from us,” says Keri. You know what they say, referrals in business are the highest form of compliment.

Paper Timesheets are Not Energy Efficient

Although ARP is technologically advanced when it comes to design and installation, ClockShark is their first time-keeping solution.

“When there's only five guys, you can use paper timesheets and it’s not a big deal. But as we grew we saw that wasn't a manageable solution.” Soon it became a cumbersome nightmare.

“Oh my gosh, it was ungodly! They weren’t very good about getting the time to me, or even about writing it down. They would have to think about it and guess where they were and what they did, so it wasn't nearly as accurate.“

Let’s just say paper timesheets are not missed. But that wasn't the main reason for the switch.

“All of our time was currently being charged under the standard roofing rate of almost 11%. It didn’t make any sense to me that we should be paying that rate if our guys were installing ground-rack systems, so I requested that part of our time be classified under another much lower rate. In order to quantify the time spent on the ground, I needed an accurate way to track that time.”

A Resource That Saves Money and Energy

“Paper timesheets are just names and hours” Keri explains, “ClockShark allows us to create jobs and tasks. That allows us to track the jobs spent roofing versus the jobs on the ground. We can now clearly differentiate between roof and ground work, staying compliant for audits.That alone saved us almost $27,000 last year!”

With ClockShark now in place, Keri could also track travel time.

“With Clockshark I was able to see that trips to the job site were significantly longer than the trips home. Between the fuel breaks, coffee stops, bathroom breaks and last minute shop runs we were spending more in travel time,“ Keri continues. ''By managing those extra stops along the way we estimate that we were able to reduce our travel labor by over $15,000 over the year. Those 30 minutes add up! As with any construction company, we deal with weather delays, sometimes for a week or longer. When this happens, I really like the ease of making an employee inactive, while still being able to reactivate them with a simple click.”

With more accurate data and simple reporting, Keri has a more accurate picture of the time actually being put into each job.

“I can create an invoice on that exact labor but it also helps estimate future jobs, since I can see past similar jobs. I’m also able to print payroll reports with each employee’s time split by task, allowing me to more quickly and accurately separate each employee’s hours and overtime by task rate. This has eliminated the need for manual calculations reducing payroll processing time and saving approximately $6,000 annually.

“When I began my search for a time tracking software, I researched, spoke with and did demonstrations for several options before finding the one that would give us the detail we needed, but was still cost-effective. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a program that wasn't going to provide our needs or was going to provide more than what we needed. I’d refer a business to ClockShark anyday.”