Supporting payroll is traditionally an administrative headache for fleets. Whether fielding calls from drivers who are unsure about their pay status or chasing down missing paperwork, back-office staff spend a lot of time communicating with drivers—and much of it is busywork.
Brad Aimone, Central Oregon Truck Company
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Before the age of ubiquitous mobile devices, there was no other method for getting these things done. The only way drivers could get paperwork to the office was with outdated truck stop scanners—or worse, by mail or fax. (You remember fax, don’t you?) And the only way they could check the status of their pay, or question the details of their pay, was to call and talk to someone in Payroll. By the same token, the only way for the billing department to get a critical document from a driver was to call him up or chase after him and ask for it.
But that was then. Now, mobile devices are in every pocket, and they can do just about anything you want. That includes scanning and uploading documents, showing drivers their payroll status along with other details, and alerting them if they have forgotten something critical.
Yet some fleets are still doing things the old-fashioned, manual way.
The manual method does work, but it is a significant drain on back-office personnel. More importantly, it is also a big drain on driver satisfaction. Drivers don’t like wondering what’s happening with their pay, or having to use their personal time to call in to find out. They especially dislike navigating complicated phone systems, and then being put on hold, plus having to send in paperwork via snail mail, or with clunky, manual systems.
Alternatively, using a platform like Eleos, drivers can send in paperwork by simply scanning it with their phones. Once accounting handles all the paperwork, drivers can immediately see their pay status on their driver app. This eliminates a key point of frustration in their jobs. And they (and you) can get paid faster.
It has been incredibly helpful for our drivers to be able to access their “paychecks” right from the mobile app. No more mailing or even emailing their paperwork, it’s all available right there. – Jannelle Kennedy, TMC Transportation
In fact, it goes a step further: it gives drivers greater clarity and understanding about how their pay is calculated than they likely had with simple paystubs. “It alleviates a lot of phone calls to me or to Payroll, wanting to know what the deductions are,” says Joe Keys, Driver Manager at USA Truck. “The old way, all they could view was their check amount.”
Because everything is computerized, a driver app can actually suck in a lot of information that drivers might not have had access to before:
- Itemized breakdowns of past settlements, showing where every dollar came from—including receipts and deductibles for each load, and what loads were paid out per paycheck
- What their pay to date looks like, even early in the week, for loads they have run, including any bonuses
- How much money they have been advanced
- Whether there is any outstanding paperwork they need to send in before they can get paid
In the Eleos platform, this functionality is extremely powerful and fully customizable—so it can be implemented in very flexible ways.
Here’s an interactive example showing how driver pay might look in the driver app: (Go ahead. Click around our app to see what a driver would see.)
With Eleos, drivers don’t have to call into the office during work hours to find out about their pay. They can check up on it whenever and wherever they want, including during downtime, because the information is up to date 24/7.
This information can also be presented in a very intuitive way. For instance, several Eleos customers use badges or icons on loads. These are used to show at a glance whether or not the driver has been paid for a load—and can even display whether paperwork is due. If a document is missing that needs to be processed before the load can be invoiced, your system could automatically notify the driver of the missing document and send a To-Do request for this via the app. Drivers can thus see at a glance the status of each load, and know immediately if they are missing documents that could prevent them from being paid. This helps back-office personnel from having to chase down drivers for missing paperwork, and it gives drivers a clear view into payment status.
Because of features like these, some of our larger fleets have gone from fielding hundreds of calls from drivers every week, to fielding nearly none. As Brad Aimone at Central Oregon Truck Company puts it, “The questions every Friday for pay are gone. We just don’t get them.”
The system is also flexible enough to deal with situations where you don’t want drivers seeing pay information. For instance, NAPA Transportation wants Owner Operators to see pay information but doesn’t necessarily want other drivers operating under the Owner Operator’s authority to see pay details.
With Eleos, NAPA was able to tie the Owner-Operator to settlements for all of his drivers, and even show a few helpful pieces of information, like lease payment and escrow account balances. Meanwhile, the Owner Operator’s drivers have no access to any pay information and are none the wiser.
Using a platform like Eleos, fleets are able to get the right payroll information to the right drivers, drastically reducing both back-office overhead and driver frustration. The upshot: a smoother, more efficient operation, with happier and more productive drivers.
