Travel Nursing Pay – Managing Your Time Card and Pay
Different hospitals have different ways for travel nurses to keep track of their time. Some hospitals have electronic time keeping systems. Other hospitals require travel nurses to keep a paper time card and turn it in to the hospital staffing office at the end of the week where it is supposed to be reviewed and forwarded to the travel nursing company. Still others require that you keep a paper time card and get a manager to sign it so that you can send it to your company. The bottom line is that all of these systems are flawed and you should take control in order to ensure that you get paid correctly and on time.
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How Errors with Travel Nursing Pay Occur
First, it’s important to understand the challenges facing the agency with respect to payroll processing. Remember, as a traveler you’re paid by your agency not the hospital. In many cases, the agency is processing payroll on a weekly basis. The payroll processing systems that agencies use typically require them to have everything entered into the system no later than Wednesday in order for the service to process on Thursday so that the money can be in the your account by Friday.
The typical work week is Sunday through Saturday. That gives the agency 3 days to collect and review the time cards, fix any problems, and enter all of the data into the payroll processing system. And even when hospitals are keeping time electronically, they still send a report that must be entered manually in to the agency’s payroll processing system. Furthermore, an agency’s payroll is much more complex than most. Everyone has a different rate. Some are receiving stipends and some aren’t. This complexity results the payroll processing for agencies taking much longer than a normal company’s payroll processing. So the company is in a constant time crunch to get its payroll processed on time.
Given the complexities of travel nursing pay and the volume of variables involved, there are a litany of potential problems that can result in pay errors. First, there are regularly delays and errors in time card reporting. Delays and errors are most common when paper time cards are utilized. Paper timecards have a tendency to get misplaced. Sometimes they’re illegible. Sometimes they don’t get signed by the responsible representative. Sometimes the in and out times are recorded incorrectly or the total hours are added up incorrectly. Similar delays and errors can also occur with electronic timekeeping systems, although they happen less frequently. And when it comes to timecard errors, amazingly they’re always in the hospital’s favor. In other words, reporting errors have a strong tendency to be short of hours rather than long of hours.
How to Prevent and Solve Travel Nursing Pay Errors
Remember, the agency really has no clue how many hours travelers worked because they’re not really under the agency’s direct supervision. As a result, it is highly recommended that you keep your own timecard and send it in to your company with or without a signature as early as possible. A signature is always necessary when required, but getting something turned in as soon as possible is a must. Doing so will ensure that the company has a report of the hours that the you are expecting to be paid for.
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If the company is good at what they do, they’ll match your report to the hospital’s report and address any discrepancies. In addition, the timecard you send to your company will signal to them that you didn’t somehow take the week off and that the company should be expecting a timecard from the hospital. If the company is good at what they do, they’ll use the timecards their travel nurses send in to be proactive in addressing delays from the hospital. All of this will ensure that travel nurses are paid accurately and on time.
However, even if you take these actions, and certainly if you don’t, you may still experience delays and errors in your pay. I highly recommend that travel nurses check their pay as early as possible to see if an error has occurred. Determining if there is an error is not always cut and dry. Again, travel nursing payroll is typically very complex. The complexity can sometimes result in errors that aren’t always obvious. Travel nurses will need to look at the details on their pay stubs in order to confidently determine the veracity of their paychecks. This is why I believe that working with a company that provides on-line payroll and pay-stub services is a big advantage. That said, it’ll clearly be cut and dry if you receive no pay at all!
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Checking your pay as early as possible will ensure that you can contact your company early in the business day if you need and choose to. This will give them time to address any issues and hopefully get you paid the same day. The best companies will make this effort. Bear in mind, it is highly unlikely that the company will be able to process a direct deposit to get funds in to your account in case of an error. This is because direct deposits aren’t processed on an individual basis. They are processed in batches. As a result, there are typically two options to quickly address payroll errors.
First, the company can walk in a deposit to your bank if there is a branch in their vicinity. This is one of the reasons I recommend having a bank account with a national bank that has branches in your company’s physical vicinity. However, if you need immediate access to the funds, then you’ll want to be mindful of bank holds in case the company offers to deposit a check directly to your account. Typically, the bank will place a hold period on checks to wait for them to clear before you can withdraw the funds unless the deposited check is from an account with the same bank. If you need the funds immediately, you can request the company to deposit cash.
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If the company is unable to walk in a deposit to your account, then the only immediate remedy in case of a payroll error will be a wire transfer. Funds sent via wire transfer typically do not have hold-periods. They are guaranteed funds. They can also be available the same day the transfer is made as long as the transfer is conducted before the 4pm EST cutoff. Bear in mind, wire transfers can incur fees on both sides of the transaction, meaning your account can be charged for receiving a wire transfer. In addition, many banks don’t process wire transfers on a daily basis, and a few don’t even accept wire transfers. You should find out your bank’s policies prior to leaving for your travel nursing job. While doing so, it’s a good idea to also check on your bank’s policies regarding any service costs you may experience while traveling. Getting these issues covered early can save you time and trouble later.
The important thing to remember is that in order to hold the company accountable for payroll errors, travel nurses must have met their end of the bargain. Again, that means complying with all of the timecard reporting rules set by the particular hospital and the company. In addition, you can take additional precautionary measures by sending in your own timecard as early as possible and verifying that the company received it.
