Off-duty police work provides officers, government entities and communities many benefits - like extra income for officers and tighter bonds between law enforcement and the community. Managing off-duty, however, doesn’t come without costs.
Off-duty management requires time spent scheduling, invoicing and collecting payments, both on the part of the law enforcement agency and often the finance departments of their respective governing entities. Implementing off-duty software can provide finance teams with insight into improving costs and controls by cutting down on workload, streamlining invoicing and payments and providing clarity in accounting.
Cut down on workload
Off-duty work is just that - off-duty. However, off-duty is still a service the department provides to the community and managing the details usually happens while the coordinating officer is on duty. While each department’s off-duty process is different, it can be time-consuming and cumbersome.
A quick and efficient process where scheduling, invoicing and payments are all in one place significantly reduce administrative workload.
"RollKall’s platform is like having a partner that never sleeps. It saves me about 90 to 95% of the time spent on off-duty coordination," says Deputy Carlos Gallo of Harris County Sheriff’s Department.
Accessing one report that combines all invoicing and payment details also makes reconciliation easier.
Manage invoicing and payments more efficiently
Streamlining the off-duty process extends to invoicing and payments. More often than not, businesses hiring off-duty officers are sent a separate invoice for the officer, coordinator and equipment fees. This is a lot of manual paperwork, never mind the inconvenience it presents the business.
Off-duty technology can combine all the associated fees into one electronic invoice - and even allow businesses to make one payment for multiple or recurring jobs. This minimizes the work it takes in creating and sending manual, paper invoices.
Collecting payments via ACH or credit card also expedites the payment process, allows officers to be paid faster, and creates easy access to comprehensive and detailed payment history and invoice reporting. And businesses don’t have to worry about writing out checks, especially when so many are now using online payments for bill payments and account payables.
Clarity in Accounting
With electronic payment processing and documentation of all job details, every financial detail of off-duty is documented. Detailed reports are easy to pull and reference if and when an audit occurs. This level of clarity prevents questions, confusion and time-consuming scrambling in the event of any off-duty questions, concerns our if audits arise.
If an off-duty program is run manually through excel spreadsheets, text messages, whiteboards, manual invoicing and paper checks, it can add to considerable overhead and costly inefficiencies. Implementing a more efficient, online process can provide relief to the person or persons managing off-duty - and to the agency and government's bottom line.