EcoUp Oyj: all working hours, contracts and employee data in one view
EcoUp, a Finnish manufacturer and installer of cellulose insulation, does not use hours24 for tracking hours alone. Contracts, employee data and reports sit in the same system, and the payroll accountant checks instead of typing.
- hours24 team
EcoUp is a Finnish manufacturer and installer of ecological cellulose insulation. The business is split between factory production, installation crews and administration, and each part produces its own data: hours, contracts, employees' personal details, maintenance records, contract addenda and holidays. Every piece of data used to live in its own place and its own format.
One tool in practice means at least three different things
For EcoUp, time tracking was not a separate task. It was part of a bigger picture: how much each person worked, under which contract, at which hourly rate and on which projects. Every cell you copy from one system to another is a place where a number gets lost or changed.
A typical situation looks like this: the payroll accountant opens the hours in a spreadsheet, checks the agreed pay in the contract, compares it with the pay table and types in the figure. Every month, for every employee, for every pay type. As a rule of thumb, ten employees means about 30 minutes of checking and typing. The figure is an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a measured result, but the direction is clear: fifty employees means several hours.
The difference is not only in minutes. A figure typed in by hand does not carry the information about where it came from. If an employee asks six months later why the March pay was what it was, the trail in a spreadsheet is broken. In a system it is still there.
Every transfer of data from one system to another is a place where a typing error is born. The more systems, the more such places. One platform means all the data lives in the same reality, and the payroll accountant checks instead of typing.
All the data behind one login
In hours24, hours, contracts, employee data and much more are in the same system. EcoUp gets the information it needs from one place: it can check whose contract ends in which month, see which project took the most hours and export hours to payroll without copying figures by hand from one system to another.
Then there is the small friction of everyday work. When someone asks whether Janne's contract has an overtime limit, there is no digging through files: the contract and the hours view are behind the same login. When someone asks how many hours installation took last quarter, the report is a click away.
Working time records are not voluntary
In Finland the employer must record hours worked and the compensation paid for them per employee. The records must be kept until the limitation period under the Working Time Act has expired, and an employee has the right to receive, on request, a written account of the entries concerning them. To the occupational safety and health authority and to the employees' representative the records must be provided on request, not merely shown.
This has a practical consequence. If hours are in one system and contracts in another, the account has to be put together by hand afterwards, usually when there is the least time for it. When hours, contract and compensation are in the same view, the account comes out of the system as it is.
The same applies to collective agreement supplements. Evening, night, weekend and overtime supplements are calculated from the same hours that the payroll export is built from. If hours and contract terms live in different places, checking the supplements is manual work every month.
If installation work is done on a shared construction site, there are further duties on top. Under section 52 a of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, anyone moving on the site must wear a visible photo ID showing a tax number, and under section 52 b the main contractor must keep a list of those working on the shared site. The law on tax numbers has been renewed: the old act 1231/2011 has been repealed and act 473/2021, which entered into force on 1 July 2022, applies. These are different duties from working time records, but they rely on the same personnel register, which is worth keeping in one place.
What a good tool really means
A good tool is software that you do not first have to figure out how to get working when you open it. For EcoUp, hours24 means that daily personnel work moves forward without the system getting in the way. Every question that comes up during work finds its answer inside the same system.
The Hours time tracking software is an excellent tool in daily work. The program gives a very good overview of working hours, employees' contracts and much more.
What to take away from this story
Personnel work cannot be cut into pieces. Hours depend on the contract, the contract depends on the employee and payroll depends on all three. The more systems, the more joints where something can break. One platform is not about being modern for its own sake but about avoiding errors.
In a production company with several departments and different contract types, the value of a good system is measured over a year: how many hours it gives back to the payroll accountant, how many errors it prevents and how long it takes to find the answer to a single question.
Source: Working Time Act 872/2019, section 32, working time records and providing them (Finlex, in Finnish)
Source: Act on Tax Numbers and the Tax Number Register 473/2021 (Finlex, in Finnish)
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