New business centre for SME in Knowsley

Roundhouse Properties has lodged plans to build a new business centre on the 1.6-acre site on Randles Road, Knowsley Business Park.

This Momentum Business Centre, made up of 39 units at 28,550 sq ft, would be the company’s 5th. Currently Roundhouse Properties has sites in Buckshaw, Chorley, Bamber Bridge and Shadsworth, and is in the process of completing a site in Preston. 

Jeremy Lefton, managing director of Roundhouse Momentum Developments, said: "Knowsley was the natural next step for us as we continue to look for sites that are located close to residential developments, with good local amenities and served well by a good road infrastructure.

"Our market research has identified that there’s a strong SME community around Knowsley. Our aim is to provide our brand of quality, small, flexible and affordable business space, catering specifically for small to medium businesses."

Subject to planning permission, work could begin on the Knowsley centre in early 2019.

Small and Medium sized Enterprises can benefit massively from automating their time and attendance systems. Many SMEs are still using paper timesheets and sign-in sheets to manage their payroll, job-costing and sickness absence calculations. 

Paper timesheets are very inefficient for multiple reasons. 

First, they are open to user error or even user fraud. Employees could forget the exact details of their shifts if they delay filling in the timesheet, and give general, rounded numbers which wouldn’t accurately reflect their time worked. This could affect their payment, or even their adherence to the Working Time Regulations. 

Secondarily, paper timesheets need to be transferred into digital data. This is often done by some poor administrator, leafing through piles of paper and carefully typing the data out into an Excel spreadsheet. There is a lot of room here for human error, such as typos or missing a row as eyes scan down. 

To solve these issues, SMEs should use a system like Time and Attendance North West’s WinTA.NET. This enables worker to clock themselves in and out every day using smartcards or biometrics, so they no longer need to retrospectively fill out paperwork. The data can be exported straight to common payroll software such as Sagepay, which means that accounts or admin staff no longer have to spend hours of their day carefully transcribing awful handwriting into Excel.