Taylor

There are times when employees have to use their own phones to make work-related calls. In such circumstances, it often becomes necessary to reimburse the money that the employees spend on such phone calls. However, certain questions tend to arise with regard to the reimbursement of employees’ phone bills. The first question is as to whether, in fact, an employer is under any obligation to reimburse such expenditure. The second question is as to what qualifies to be viewed as a ‘work-related phone call’ – on the basis of which reimbursement can be done. And the third question is as to how an employer can keep track of the expenditure incurred in this way, to ensure that they don’t end up reimbursing too much. Those are the questions we will be attempting to answer in this article.

On whether employers really have to reimburse employees’ phone bills

In some places, there are actually laws in place, making it mandatory of employers to reimburse employees for funds spent on work-related phone calls. In other places, the employers are allowed discretion on whether to reimburse the employees for funds spent on work-related phone bills or not. But even where an employer is under no obligation, it would still be a good practice to reimburse the employees for funds spent while making work-related phone calls. Failure to do so can lead to loss of morale on the part of the employees, which can in turn start hurting the business.

It is worth noting that there are some situations where employees have to make numerous work-related phone calls. There are, for instance, sales employees who may find themselves having to make phone calls whose total cost is nearly half of their salary. It would then be very unfair to fail to reimburse such people the money they spent making such phone calls. It would amount to ‘impoverishing’ them, and chances are that staff turnover rates for such positions would be very high. On the other hand, there are employees who only have to make work-related phones very rarely – sometimes once in two months. Such employees therefore spend very little on the work-related phone calls, and they probably don’t even expect to be reimbursed.

So the most important thing here is to ensure that all the employees who have to spend sizable sums of money on work-related phone calls are reimbursed. It is something you should do, as an employer, even if you are not legally required to do so. At the very least, reimbursing the employees will raise their morale, and that will surely be beneficial to your business.

On what qualifies to be viewed as a ‘work-related phone call’

In most cases, it is not hard to figure out what qualifies to be viewed as a work-related phone call. Like if, for instance, a sales rep calls a customer on behalf of the business, that would qualify to be termed as a work-related phone call. If a person in HR calls a worker whom the business is headhunting (on behalf of the business) that too would qualify to be termed as a work-related phone call. But then, there are some tricky cases – where some employees try to pass off some personal calls as work-related calls. So this is where the controversy arises. And there is really no way in which an employer can know for sure whether the phone bills he is being asked to reimburse are work-related or not. That is unless one takes the rather drastic measure of recording the phone calls (which can in turn bring legal complications, if the people who are being recorded aren’t notified properly).

When all is said and done, the best an employer can do is to request the employees to ensure that they only request reimbursements for work-related phone calls. Then the employees would need to be informed that if they request reimbursements for phone calls that are not work-related, they would be committing fraud. And that could make them legally liable. They need to be told that in any event, by defrauding the company they work for, they would be potentially contributing to its downfall (which could in turn leave them unemployed).

In most cases, when people are told what the right thing to do is — and why it is in their best interests to do it– they tend to comply. So in this case, you only need to tell the employees that they only need to request reimbursements for work-related phone calls, and that it would be in their best interests to only do so. Most of the employees would then probably comply.

On how an employer can keep track of the reimbursable amounts

Employees who really make lots of work-related phone calls can be given special, company-owned phones, through which they would be making the phone calls. Then there would be a system through which the phone calls made through the device can be audited, before the employees are reimbursed. In fact, the company can go a step further, and take the responsibility of paying the bills incurred on that phone. So it is not the employees who would be paying the bills, and the question of reimbursements wouldn’t arise… Even then, the phone calls made through the device would have to be audited, to ensure that they are all work-related.

Another approach that can be used is that of giving employees worksheets, on which they would be logging all work-related phone calls they make. So they would include details like who the (work-related) phone calls were made to, what the purpose of the calls was and what the outcome from the phone calls was. Reimbursements would then be based on these stats.

Figuring out the exact reimbursable amounts can still be tricky. You see, many people pay flat monthly phone bills (under contracts with the phone carriers like metro pcs). Having made these flat monthly payments, they are able to make both personal and business phone calls – assuming they are using their personal phones for work. So it can become difficult to know what percentage of the (fixed) phone bill to reimburse, on account of the work-related phone calls. But the most important thing is to ensure that, as an employer, you reimburse a ‘reasonable’ amount. You may therefore find yourself having to work with estimates. So you look at how many work-related phone calls the employee made, as well as their durations. Then you get to make a decision (an educated guess really) as to what would amount to reasonable and adequate reimbursement of the phone bills for such work-related phone calls.

Some phone bill payment software systems are said to be ‘good’. Some other phone bill payment systems are said to be ‘bad’. The question that arises, in a software designer’s mind, is as to what distinguishes the ‘good’ phone bill payment systems from the ones that are said to be ‘bad’. And that is the question we will be attempting to answer in this article. You will definitely find this information useful if you are involved in phone bill payment software development. Based on this information, you will get an idea as to how you need to design the phone bill payment software, so as to get it to be regarded as a ‘good’ solution. You will also get an idea as to what you need to avoid, while designing phone bill payment software, so as to ensure that your solution doesn’t fall into the category of ‘bad’ systems.

Without any further ado, the features of good phone bill payment software include:

User-friendliness

So, to put it simply, the best phone bill payment software is that which is easy to use. This is mainly a question of the interface between the software and the end user. With regard to that interface, we find that the best phone bill payment software is that which is not ‘intimidating’ to the end-user. The screens through which the user interacts with the software are not cluttered. And the software asks for just enough information to process transactions… The software is therefore perceived as ‘easy to use’ by the customers who make payments through it. It is also perceived as ‘easy to use’ by the staff who have to interact it: for instance, the people who have to audit transactions through the system.

The best phone bill payment system is that which is able to handle user errors in a good way. It is ‘forgiving’ — knowing that users are bound to make errors. And it is designed in a manner that makes it fast – meaning that it doesn’t keep on hanging in between transactions and frustrating users.

To put it another way, the best phone bill payment software is designed with the end-user in mind. In designing such software, the developer thinks of common mistakes that the end-user is likely to make while using the software, and provides ways to mitigate those mistakes. The end user also thinks of challenges that the end-user is likely to encounter while using the software, and then provides help to tackle such challenges. So the software is centered around the end-user, and the developer is willing to do many more lines of code, if that is what it takes to includes features to make life easier for the users of the software.

Effectiveness and Efficiency

The best phone bill payment software is effective (and efficient) at the role it is supposed to serve. It is, in simple terms, effective and efficient at facilitating the payment of phone bills. It is designed with the various scenarios that are likely to arise (in the course of phone bill payments) in mind. It has mechanisms to deal even with unique scenarios. Due to this effectiveness and efficiency, the people who use the software find that it is indeed rather easy to to pay phone bills through it. This is as opposed to what is regarded as poor/bad phone bill payment software: which at times brings so many complications that one just wishes they were doing the payments manually.

Versatility

The best phone bill payment software is capable of being used on a wide range of platforms. In other words, it is capable of functioning well, regardless of the hardware of operating system platform it is used on. This is an important feature, knowing that the people who will be trying to pay their phone bills will be doing so through a huge variety of platforms. In actual fact, you have no control over the platforms that people will be using to pay their phone bills through, using the software. So the most important thing is to have a versatile system, which can work well with whatever platform the customers use to pay their bills. See, you may have someone using a desktop machine to pay his phone bill through the system. You may have another individual using a smart-phone, or just an internet-enabled mobile phone, to pay his phone bill through the system. You may have someone using Linux, another person using Windows, and yet another one using the Mac-OS… So you need to ensure that the bill payment system is capable of working well, regardless of the platform used.

With regard to versatility, there is also the aspect of seeing to it that the phone bill payment system can integrate well with the other software systems used in the phone company. So, for instance, if the folks at the accounts department want to import data from the phone bill payment system, it should be possible for them to do so with ease. So you need to avoid the situation where data from the phone bill payment system would have to re-entered manually – on account of it being impossible to import such data (due to lack of versatility).

Scalability

In this regard, the best phone bill payment system needs to be capable of expanding, in line with the phone company’s needs. So the idea here is to avoid a situation where, when the phone company’s operations reach a certain level, the bill payment system proves incapable of coping with further growth. So this would mean that the phone company would have to invest in a brand new system, and then have the data from the old system imported (or re-entered manually) – a costly affair. It therefore becomes critical for a phone company to ensure that it has a scalable bill payment solution right from the outset. This is particularly important knowing that at times (and in certain markets), a phone company’s scale of operations can grow much faster than was initially anticipated.

Maintainability

The code on which the phone bill payment software is based needs to be clean, clear and backed by helpful comments. The latter would be to help people who may be given the task of maintaining it in the future. What you want to avoid here is a system that can’t be maintained/updated in the future. We have seen code that is so ‘dirty’ that only the person who initially wrote it can understand it and maintain it. So that is what you need to avoid, by going for a phone bill payment system that can be understood and maintained by anyone with the relevant expertise.