Owners at Da Vinci's Donuts can focus on what they love with Deputy

Family-owned Da Vinci’s Donuts came to be after Andy Rudd, a former commercial lawyer of 20 years, began looking for a new career. His wife, Melissa, who loved making donuts with their boys and her mother, simply said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could make donuts for a living?” Andy, who had always wanted to start his own business, jumped at the chance.

“The idea was to launch a shop where customers could customize their own donuts,” said Andy who serves as Chief Operating Officer of Da Vinci’s Donuts. “We didn’t know of anyone else doing it, so in 2013 we put a business plan together.”

Da Vinci’s Donuts opened its first store soon after in March 2014 and its second just a year later in March 2015.

With two thriving shops and approximately 13 employees, it became difficult for Andy to streamline payroll, efficiently complete employee scheduling, and seamlessly communicate with his team. He quickly realized his current management solutions just weren’t cutting it.

Before implementing Deputy, Andy spent hours compiling employees schedules via paper and pencil. What happened when there was a mistake? Or, when a worker needed to swap shifts? Andy then had to spend extra time manually adjusting the schedule.

“As as small business owner, I typically do not make changes to software or applications unless absolutely necessary,” said Andy. “But it got to the point where our payroll provider was making me so frustrated and angry, that I decided to make a switch.”

However, instead of just looking for a solution to solve his payroll issues, Andy desired a single source solution that would also alleviate the pain points of scheduling and communicating across multiple locations.

Soon, Andy decided upon Gusto for his payroll needs. He recalls, “I chose Gusto for payroll and then began looking for a scheduling solution that integrated with it.” And while a number of solutions came up, it was Deputy’s workforce management solution that stood out to Andy.

“I looked at many solutions, but kept coming back to the fact that Deputy’s robust platform perfectly aligned with the needs of my business, and provided me with necessary tools to run Da Vinci’s Donuts quickly, efficiently, and easily.”

THE BENEFITS:

HASSLE-FREE SCHEDULING

Now, Andy completes scheduling directly from his mobile device quickly and easily. He effortlessly replicates schedules from week to week and makes necessary adjustments on the fly. In fact, each Da Vinci’s Donuts employee inputs their own availability and requests for time off straight within Deputy, further reducing process time and ensuring employees requests are not overseen.

“Before, if an employee submitted a request for a week off in July back in May, I had to use a separate logging system to make that note. Then, come July, it would be easy to forget that the employee needed time off,” said Andy. “Now, Deputy notes that they’re unavailable, and when I make the schedule for the week it automatically pops up. Deputy has finally provided me with the single source solution I’ve longed for.”

INTEGRATED PAYROLL AND OVERTIME MANAGEMENT

Since Deputy seamlessly integrates with Da Vinci’s Donuts’ payroll provider, Gusto, Andy has simplified his entire payroll process, while also ensuring immaculate accuracy. According to Andy, “Deputy makes it very easy to go in and approve timesheets for payroll. I also love that it identifies when a timesheet looks irregular. This allows me to check for accuracy and eliminate errors before submitting.”

After approving the timesheets, Andy then downloads them straight into Gusto from Deputy. In return, saving him a lot of time and effort.

Through Deputy’s integration with Square, Andy is also able to smoothly track and monitor employee overtime, late clock-ins, and more directly from a security locked tablet.

CLOSED LOOP COMMUNICATION

As you can imagine, communicating with employees across multiple locations is difficult. Deputy’s News Feed enables Andy to effortlessly communicate between Da Vinci’s Donuts’ two locations in real time.

“If something is going on at the store, or there is an update that everyone needs to know, Deputy’s News Feed allows us to quickly send a message. It also provides employees the opportunity to respond with little effort on their part,” said Andy.

For example, each week, Da Vinci’s Donuts features a “Donut of the Week.” Andy’s wife, Melissa, utilizes the News Feed on Sunday afternoons to share the donut and its recipe with the team. This way, come Monday morning, everyone is in the loop. And if there are any questions, all employees have to do is respond via the News Feed – just as simple as sending a text.

Deputy also sends Andy notifications when employees have received the communication, helping further eliminate any miscommunication among team members.

THE RESULTS

Since implementing Deputy, Andy isn’t the only one to experience a multitude of benefits. In fact, with the low learning curve and mobile accessibility, Da Vinci’s Donuts employees love the platform just as much. Ultimately, Deputy has been able to provide Da Vinci’s Donuts with:

• Modernized, mobile scheduling, saving Andy approximately 90% of the time it uses to take to complete scheduling.
• Proficient payroll with Deputy’s Gusto integration, reducing the number of errors and decreasing the amount of time it takes Andy to process payroll by approximately 66 percent.
• “One-click” overtime management through Deputy’s integration with Square.
• Closed loop team communication amongst multiple locations through Deputy’s News Feed feature.
• A robust solution equipped with all the features that a small business needs to be successful.

Andy notes, “Deputy does an excellent job of understanding what a small business like mine needs by offering a wide variety of robust features. It has, without a doubt, made my day-to-day business life more productive and successful.”