Detail at Your Fingertips

There are many scheduling programs on the market today. They all do about the same thing. A basic scheduling program allows the manager to define work assignments (aka “slots”) and fill them with employees. This function gets more complicated with contract security companies. That’s because there are multiple sites with varying time slots and a variable number of employees needed to fill them. Some sites will even have different tasks within the same site. There may be a gate guard, camera operator, two patrol officers and an EMT/Security Officer in the first aid room. A schedule program that handles a retail store operation can’t begin to handle this type of challenge.

The key is in how much detailed data the program will handle. An $89 off the shelf software package won’t likely do what you want it to. On the other hand there are some high-end applications out there that do can everything but talk. The price of such packages will have you sputtering!

Snap Schedule is the first affordable integrated package that can handle all the detailed data that contract security operations require. The detail you can enter applies to both the customer and the employee.

Let’s look at the employee detail since that’s your first requirement for a scheduling program. It starts with the employee’s HR information. This is data such as name, address, contact information, and other employee data. Next you can program in skills or warnings. You need a specific skill set for the first aid room and a different skill set for someone operating truck weight scales. Snap Schedule can handle this with no problem. The program will then warn you if you try to schedule someone with the wrong skill set into an important slot. It will also warn you of employees who have personality conflicts with the client.

The program also compiles detail on the hours the employee has worked during a certain time period. It may be nice when you have an employee who will come out on short notice. It’s not so nice when you realize they just burned up your profits with their overtime pay. Snap Schedule will let you know in plenty of time to avoid this costly error.

There is also a wealth of detail you can put into the program about your clients. This information comes in very handy for a number of reasons. First, your manager or dispatcher has client contact information available at their fingertips. There’s no need to switch applications to access needed information.

Second, you can create or import custom report formats. One such format could be your invoice. Yes, you could also export this information into a program such as QuickBooks. But why add an additional step when you don’t have to. Print it out your weekly invoices at the same time you do your payroll.

The amount of detail you can program into Snap Schedules data base is truly impressive. Custom report formats allow you to come up with uses for the program that are limited only by your imagination.