Multicultural Leadership Institute: Compliance and Accountability

The Multicultural Leadership Institute (MLI) is a non-profit corporation that promotes multicultural leadership through diversity awareness, education and research. MLI, which operates in Connecticut, is a leading statewide resource for multicultural education and training, serving a range of clients in health and human services, education, social services, government, and corporate environments.

The Challenge

MLI required a simple, unobtrusive time and expense tracking solution that would allow them to be accountable to grantors and funders. MLI had been tracking their time and expenses through a mix of paper timesheets and Excel workbooks. With increasingly stringent grant requirements and a growth in grant activity, the ad-hoc solutions became more and more disruptive to their day-to-day processes.

"The more active we became, the more we realized how increasingly difficult it was to coordinate and report hours for a few employees and a bevy of consultants--even for a company as small as ours," recalls Tamara L. Petro, Executive Director.

MLI had the additional challenge of consolidating the disjointed stream of information from employees and consultants into reports that could be sent out for payroll processing as well as grant tracking.

"We work statewide on a variety of projects and it's critically important that we have properly reported work duties, accurately tracked funding sources, and the certainty that all worked hours have been tracked," said Petro.

“Now we can track benefits, job/tasks, and funding sources within seconds. As we continue to grow our company, these functions are increasingly important to our work.”

— Tamara L. Petro, Executive Director

The Solution

With ClickTime Web Timesheet, MLI was completely set up and started tracking time and expenses within hours. MLI was able to capture data from employees whether they were working from the office or remotely. Even time entries from consultants working throughout the state were being neatly entered and tracked in ClickTime.

Additionally, with features like Mobile Time Entry and remote access, employees and managers were both enjoying the benefits of a hosted web solution.

"As the Executive Director, and the one who has to approve payroll, having the mobile option meant that I was no longer bound to the office (versus the field) on payroll reporting days. With internet and email access, we can report, start the payroll process, and have employees paid on time," said Petro.

The Results

MLI has been using ClickTime since 2009, and have seen savings of up to 40 hours a month in time and expense administration. Capturing time and expenses for readily accessible reporting in budgets, grants and payroll has never been simpler for them.

"Now we can track benefits, job/tasks, and funding sources within seconds. As we continue to grow our company, these functions are increasingly important to our work," reports Petro.

ClickTime's ease of use has also enabled MLI's employees to be more responsive and accountable. The intuitive time and expense entry interfaces have helped to ensure data integrity. As a result, MLI has quick access to consistently up-to-date and accurate reporting.

"We required a time tracking solution that would allow us to track our funds, manage our grant sources and budgets and all around remain accountable to our grantors--and still flexible enough to also track our day-to-day payroll, leave accruals, and expenses. We found that in ClickTime!"