The secret ingredient for Olivia Macaron? Deputy!

Ana Claudia Lopez, founder and owner of Olivia Macaron, has been perfecting macarons for the past 5 years. “We’re a women-led small business that loves color and community!” Olivia Macaron offers a variety of seasonal flavors but is most famous for their honey lavender, blood orange, salted caramel, and wedding almond. Located in the heart of Washington D.C, Ana stays busy serving up some of the best macarons the district has to offer.

Business has been great for Ana. She now has 3 different locations and an off-site kitchen located at a central point for all her stores. The macarons are delivered fresh every morning in an air-conditioned van. Not only do customers go to her store to satisfy their sweet tooth, but they also go to Ana for wedding favors and desserts.

When Olivia Macaron was just starting out, Ana used Excel to create weekly schedules for her employees. “I experienced a lot of challenges with Excel. It required a lot of memory on my part and I was constantly going back and forth with my employees,” says Ana, “It was a never-ending process of revisiting the calendar to make adjustments.”

The majority of Ana’s employees are part-time students, with constantly changing schedules. Ana had to manually keep track of each of her employees busy schedule on top of trying to run her business successfully. “It was even challenging to plan ahead. It was almost impossible to schedule someone’s shift a week in advance.”

As Ana’s business grew, so did her demands. She now had to keep track of more shops with more employees. Her business finally outgrew Excel and Ana was on the hunt to find a better solution. “Excel would work if I only had 2 or 3 employees. Now, I have 25 employees and 3 shops! We outgrew Excel fast. I needed something that could handle all of my employees as well as my different locations.”

Ana researched for a solution and narrowed it down to her top 3 picks. She ran a trial for each software, making sure to find the right solution for her business. In the end, Deputy came out as the winner. “Everything in Deputy is so streamlined. We use ADP for payroll and I love how easily integrated it is,” states Ana.

Before Deputy, Ana would spend an hour on payroll. “It was so easy to make a mistake on Excel. I was constantly double-checking. Now with Deputy, it takes me 10 minutes with zero errors!” exclaims Ana, “I don’t have to print out timesheets anymore. It’s all streamlined perfectly. Everything is sent automatically to ADP.”

Not only did Ana see an 83% decrease in time spent on payroll, she also saw a decrease in time spent scheduling. Even with having multiple locations, scheduling her employees with Deputy is now a breeze. “It’s fantastic! I love that our staff can swap shifts easily without having myself or management get involved,” states Ana, “Deputy makes it even easier by suggesting who to reach out to for open shifts based on location and availability. My employees feel more empowered by being in charge of their schedules.”

When Ana was using Excel, she struggled with keeping up with how many hours each one of her employees worked. Now, with Deputy, Ana gets alerts and warnings for overtime. “Deputy helped solve so many scheduling issues for me. Now we release schedules monthly instead of the week before! The ability to copy templates for the next month saves me so much time and helps everyone prepare and plan. Deputy makes the process so simple.”