Six Illinois Ace Hardware stores have cut payroll processing time by 50% and saved thousands annually

If you’re in Illinois and are looking for a home convenience store to spruce up your garden, elevate your home, or pick up some tools, chances are you’ll find what you need at some of the most iconic chains of Ace Hardware stores in the Prairie State. 

There is a wide range from Princeton City to Gibson City: Village Ace Hardware, Neighborhood Ace Hardware, Seneca Ace Hardware, Rochelle Ace Hardware, Mahomet Ace Hardware, or Neighborhood Ace Hardware. 

All six stores are managed by their Vice President, Maria Amir. She oversees all the corporate offices and operations, including bookkeeping and payroll. 

In the past nine years, the corporation has tripled in size from running two Ace Hardware stores to six, with three more potential stores on the horizon. Currently, there are one hundred twenty-five employees across six independently run stores. 

As the business scaled, it needed software that could keep up with its growth and help it easily manage scheduling, payroll, and compliance.

Before Deputy, Village Ace tried out several different systems, but none of them hit the mark. One of the systems required their team to manage schedules on paper, making it chaotic for their team to keep track of employee schedules and leave requests efficiently. 

“People would request to sign off on paper, and the managers would track it on a calendar and then they have to give that information to a worker who was processing payroll,” says Maria. 

It also took a lot of time and work for their team to keep track of vacation hours, leave hours, and how much they had to pay out with only pen and paper. Sometimes, staff would forget who was taking paid holidays and subsequently forget to tell payroll.   

“It was at least three or four times a year that this would happen. I would have to call my accountant and say, ‘Oh no, they didn’t pay so and so for XYZ amount of hours,’ and then we would have to issue them a check. If that failed, we had to pay them cash and then report their paycheck as they were being paid for those hours. You obviously don’t want your employees not to have the pay that they deserve,” Maria explains.

Then, in January 2024, the State of Illinois passed a Paid Leave for All Workers Act (PLFAW), allowing workers to earn up to 40 hours of paid leave each year. Workers can use it for any reason, and employers can’t require employees to provide a basis for their leave request.

Maria shared that staff called out using this paid leave without much warning, sometimes even right before the shift started. “They can call and say, ‘I'm not coming in today, I'm using my paid leave.’ That's tough to manage.” 

If an employer breaches the PLFAW, it can cost them up to $2,500 for each violation alone.

Village Ace switched to Deputy in 2019. Since then, their stores noticed a significant improvement in their efficiency in building schedules – especially since managers can oversee operations on the go with Deputy’s mobile app, saving them time and having to commute. 

In addition, Deputy’s ability to digitize large and critical documents has saved her team several thousand dollars every year. Maria can share the most updated version of essential files, such as the employee handbook, instantly with her team.

She’s also witnessed staff morale and retention increase because employees have easy access and visibility to their schedules and can balance life outside of work. “Using Deputy, staff can see their schedules ahead, and they are even more energized [when they come back to work] because they were able to take that personal time off.”

In addition, each store reduced their payroll processing time in half and saved 12 hours per payroll. “I will say it used to take us a full day to process payroll, and now it takes us four hours to complete across all six stores.”

Managers also appreciate that they can use Deputy to clearly see how much labor percentage they’ve used or still have left. The reporting features allow them to stick to their percentages and be in tune with how much they spend per payroll period. 

On the compliance front, Deputy has helped simplify compliance management for their team – which has helped them pay their staff accurately and keep up with new labor laws in Illinois.“Truthfully, I don’t know how we would have tracked compliance labor laws or been able to give people what they were owned if we didn’t have Deputy,” says Maria. 

As Village Ace continues to expand, she elaborates on how her team plans to use Deputy to support its growth long term. 

“Deputy has made it a lot easier to track hours and manage payroll for our companies, especially now that we have over 100 employees to keep track of in different locations. The ease of adding another location and onboarding the new hires and so on saves us a tremendous amount of time when we’re hiring people and getting them onboarded, and so on. And as we continue to grow, this will be a phenomenal tool for us to use going forward.”