Deputy takes the stress out of scheduling for the team at The Avenue Church

The Avenue Church has been in operation since 1943 and provides church services on Wednesdays and Sundays, as well as weekly Bible studies and other local events to the Dallas, Texas community. Complimentary childcare is also provided to members and attendees through The Care Team, a group of 30+ women, paid by the hour to supervise preschool children. The Avenue Church’s preschool minister, Traci Alverson, manages the Care Team.

The Avenue Church recently opened an additional campus to better reach the surrounding community. The new campus, coupled with a growing membership at the church’s original location in Dallas, (averaged 3,500 members each week) nearly doubled the amount of church services, Bible studies and other community events.

Traci was responsible for ensuring both locations had ample childcare support for all of its services and weekly events, which would attract anywhere from 150-1,000 attendees per location. Traci would manually create bi-weekly schedules for the Care Team in Microsoft Word, then email the schedules to team members in advance so they could sign up for shifts. Once the Care Team members responded, Traci would update the Word document based on the individual availability of each employee. This process would take hours each month to create, communicate and update. To add to this, The Care Team could only view the schedules via a desktop or laptop computer, creating a delay in responses around availability and changes.

With the number of services and events growing at a steady pace, The Avenue Church sought a more streamlined process to scheduling and communicating with The Care Team about childcare service needs.

“We strive to create an irresistible church environment for the children in everything we do, because we want church to be fun for them. To do this, we needed a better way to manage and schedule our Care Team,” said Traci.

The Avenue Church needed a solution that could:

• Streamline the creation and management of bi-weekly childcare scheduling and shift changes.
• Create a digital, more mobile process for clocking in and filling shifts last minute.
• Improve the communication and task management among the 30-member Care Team.
• Seamlessly update, approve and integrate employee timesheets into payroll processing.

Because The Avenue Church recently switched to accounting software provider, Xero, for payroll processing, the entity looked to Deputy to manage The Care Team scheduling, due to its high level of integration with Xero and ability to deploy via any smartphone or iOS device.

By leveraging Deputy’s scheduling features, The Care Team members can now pick and choose which shifts they want to work each week via their smartphones, enabling Traci to instantly create bi-weekly schedules for both church locations based on member’s availability. To avoid the process of re-creating the same schedules each week, Traci can copy over the open shift schedule from a prior week and make adjustments as needed. Once the schedules are completed, a push notification or SMS can be sent directly to team members’ smartphones, enabling immediate access to them to fill the available shifts in the schedule.

Instantly fill open shifts last minute

If a Care Team member cannot make their shift or wishes to switch their shift with another, Deputy’s Shift Offer and Shift Swap features enable members to instantly notify their team of the available shift or switch their shift with another worker all via their smartphone. Traci no longer needs to contact the 30 Care Team members about the vacant shift by phone or email. This is all done within Deputy’s system, and employees are immediately notified on their smartphones.

Clocking in with the click of a button

By utilizing Deputy’s Time Clock feature, Care Team members can easily clock in and out of shifts using Deputy’s on-site iPad kiosk. This automatically updates member timesheets, eliminating the need to manually adjust before payroll processing.

Seamless communication with the entire team

Whether a team member needs to sign a certain document or a specific task needs to be completed by an individual team member on a certain day, by using Deputy’s News Feed feature, Traci can communicate and assign tasks to the Care Team from any location. She can also get updates on when the tasks are completed.

Approve timesheets and export to payroll in minutes

Because Deputy already integrates with The Avenue Church’s existing accounting software, Xero, timesheets that are created and approved in Deputy are automatically updated in Xero payroll.

“Deputy’s Time Clock feature was exactly what we were looking for,” said Traci. “The Care Team members can view their schedules and adjust their shifts right from their smartphones. Having team members fill their own shifts not only saves time for me and for our Care Team members, but it also removes the stress that comes with trying to get a shift filled last minute.”

The Results

Within months of leveraging each of Deputy’s features, The Avenue Church has now streamlined the administration work surrounding its child care services at the two church locations, enabling Care Team member scheduling, communication and management to be done from any location using a smartphone, tablet or laptop. The results of using Deputy include:

• Reduced time spent creating schedules from hours to minutes.
• Easy digital access to and updating of team member schedules via smartphone.
• Increased productivity and clearer communication of assigned tasks and duties.
• Less hassle and quicker process to fill open shifts last minute.
• Peace of mind that each shift will be covered and each employee knows their responsibilities.
• Instant updates and total accuracy during timesheet processing and approval.
• Error-free payroll reporting for The Care Team members.