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Higher EducationROI: 240%12 weeks
Horizon Learning Institute Success Story
Horizon is a private university with 400 faculty members and 220 administrative staff. Payroll errors from mismatched time records cost the institution $320K annually — adjunct faculty were paid for classes they did not teach, full-time faculty overtime went unrecorded, and administrative staff flex-time was tracked on paper forms that were routinely lost. The provost's office had no reliable data on how faculty actually allocated time between teaching, research, and service.
620
staff
$320K
savings
+87%
accuracy
The Challenge
Horizon Learning Institute is a private university in the mid-Atlantic region with 400 faculty members (250 full-time, 150 adjunct) and 220 administrative staff across six academic colleges, a research division, and central administration. The institution had long treated time tracking as a corporate concern irrelevant to academia — a blind spot that was costing real money and undermining institutional effectiveness.
The payroll problems were multifaceted. Adjunct faculty were paid per course based on enrollment rosters, but roster reconciliation lagged by 2-3 weeks. Multiple instances were discovered where adjuncts were paid for sections that had been cancelled due to low enrollment. In the other direction, full-time faculty who taught overload courses or supervised additional thesis students often went uncompensated because the manual tracking process failed to capture the additional effort. The net cost of these bidirectional errors was approximately $320K annually.
Administrative staff operated under a flex-time policy that allowed flexible start and end times within a core hours framework. The policy was popular, but the paper-based tracking system was not. Flex-time forms were submitted monthly, frequently lost, and impossible to audit. Supervisors had no visibility into whether their teams were meeting the required weekly hours, and disputes over flex-time balances consumed disproportionate HR bandwidth — an average of 15 hours per month spent investigating claims.
The deepest problem was invisible: the institution had no data on how faculty allocated their time across teaching, research, and service. Accreditation bodies increasingly required evidence of faculty workload equity and research activity, but Horizon could only provide anecdotal estimates. The provost had attempted two survey-based time studies, but response rates of 23% and 31% produced data too sparse to be actionable. Grant-funded faculty had a parallel time-tracking burden: federal sponsors required labor-effort certifications documenting the percentage of time devoted to grant activities, and producing these certifications was a 5-day manual exercise that faculty universally described as excruciating.
The Solution
Track Nexus was deployed with a higher-education configuration that recognized the fundamental difference between tracking factory shifts and tracking knowledge work. For faculty, the timekeeping software integrated with the university's course scheduling system and automatically recorded teaching hours based on class meeting times. Research time, office hours, and service activities were captured through a lightweight weekly allocation interface where faculty classified their non-teaching hours into predefined categories — a process designed to take under 3 minutes per week.
The time tracking tools provided role-specific experiences. Full-time faculty saw a weekly view showing their teaching load, research allocation, and service commitments against the university's expected distribution (typically 40% teaching, 40% research, 20% service). Adjunct faculty saw only their course-related hours. Administrative staff used a standard clock-in/clock-out interface with flex-time rules built in — the system automatically tracked core-hours compliance, calculated flex balances in real-time, and eliminated the paper forms that had been the source of chronic disputes.
The data that emerged transformed institutional decision-making. Within two months, the provost's office had the first reliable picture of faculty time allocation in Horizon's history. The data revealed that research-active faculty in the sciences were spending 34% of their time on committee work and administrative service — far above the 20% target — leaving inadequate time for the research that the institution depended on for grants, publications, and rankings. This insight led to a comprehensive workload rebalancing initiative that redistributed service obligations more equitably.
Grant labor-effort certification was automated through integration with the research administration office's grants management system. Track Nexus pulled grant assignments and faculty time data to pre-populate effort certifications, reducing the process from a 5-day manual ordeal to a 6-hour review-and-approve workflow. Faculty satisfaction with the certification process improved dramatically, and the research administration office reported zero compliance deficiencies in the subsequent NSF audit.
Implementation Timeline
Completed in 12 weeks
- 1
Mapped all institutional time-tracking requirements including faculty workload policies, flex-time rules, grant labor-effort certification standards, and accreditation evidence requirements
- 2
Configured role-specific interfaces for full-time faculty, adjunct faculty, and administrative staff; integrated with the course scheduling system and grants management platform
- 3
Launched a 4-week pilot with the College of Engineering (65 faculty, 30 admin staff), refining the faculty time allocation interface and flex-time compliance rules based on user feedback
- 4
Expanded to all six colleges and central administration over 6 weeks with dean-led training sessions and department-specific configuration adjustments
- 5
Established semesterly faculty workload reports for the provost, automated grant effort certification pipelines, and monthly flex-time compliance dashboards for department heads
Measurable Impact
Key Metrics
Before and after comparison showing the tangible impact of Track Nexus
Annual Payroll Error Costs
Before
$320K
After
$42K
-87%
Flex-Time Disputes per Month
Before
18
After
0
-100%
Grant Effort Certification Time
Before
5 days
After
6 hours
-85%
Faculty Time Allocation Visibility
Before
Not tracked
After
100% coverage
New capability
Outcomes
Results Achieved
Payroll errors reduced by 87% — saving $320K annually
Faculty time allocation data available for the first time in institutional history
Administrative flex-time disputes eliminated completely
Grant labor-effort certification time reduced from 5 days to 6 hours
“For years, we had no idea how our faculty actually spent their time. The timekeeping software showed us that research-active faculty were spending 34% of their week on committee work — insight that led to the most significant workload rebalancing in our institution's history.”
DKW
Dr. Katherine Wu
Provost, Horizon Learning Institute
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