Case Study: Jewell School District
From Paper Chaos to Digital Confidence:
How a Small School District Modernized Timekeeping to Improve Payroll Accuracy with Touchpoint
At Jewell School District, in the coastal hills of Oregon, everyone wears more than one hat. The district serves just 130 students, and nearly everything — from technology to payroll — runs through a small, but mighty team of committed people.
For years, one of the biggest stress points was payroll. Employees filled out handwritten time cards and dropped them straight into their business office. There was no supervisor review, no verification step, and even with such a small number of hourly employees, far too many mistakes.
"It was literally employee-filled time cards going straight to the business office,” says Abby Hines, Jewell’s Technology Coordinator. “There wasn’t a chain of command. It was just a disaster.”
By the time payday rolled around, the business manager was buried in corrections, trying to reconcile hours and track down missing cards — often spending two weeks every pay cycle just to get payroll out the door.
"We're going to get so Much time back we won't know what to do with it."
Finding a Better Way
Abby knew the district couldn’t keep operating this way. Jewell took their first major step in improving time tracking by selecting Time & Attendance software from Frontline Education, who already provided the district’s trusted Absence Management system along with other Human Capital Management solutions.
But rather than taking a DIY approach to Jewell’s time collection hardware, Abby saw an opportunity to simplify time tracking even further with a dedicated time clock, even though it meant more simultaneous change. She believed the right hardware partner could make time collection effortless for staff, and automatically accurate for the business office with badge-scanning instead of manual punches on district laptops or employee mobile devices she didn’t have time to support.
Her solution came when their Frontline rep recommended Touchpoint.
“We just sent Touchpoint one of our building access badges, and it worked from day one,” Abby says. “It was seamless.”
The district quickly installed a badge-enabled SmartClock in the main building, giving staff a simple, consistent way to clock in and out. The badge-scanning process was quick, intuitive, and required no complicated setup or retraining. In fact, it made onboarding with Time & Attendance easier.
Small Wins, Big Impact
Even before Jewell’s payroll integration was fully live with the new software and time clocks, the results were clear:
- Fewer errors
- Cleaner reporting
- Less confusion for staff
“The kiosk has been wonderful,” Abby says. “I cannot tell you how nice it’s been.”
And the biggest win is still to come. Once the district’s new payroll module goes live, Abby expects the combo of Frontline and Touchpoint to cut payroll processing time dramatically — freeing the business manager from two weeks of manual work every month.
“Once the payroll module is live, we’re going to get back so much time we won’t even know what to do with it.”
A Culture Shift
The project has done more than improve efficiency — it’s changing the way staff approach time tracking altogether.
“I think sometimes we need to help people through that transition,” Abby reflects. “It can be scary, but once you walk alongside them, it just works.”
For Jewell School District, despite their small size, the move from paper chaos to digital confidence has been a true breakthrough — and it’s just the beginning.
Is it time for a change at your district?
Connect with us to see how you could experience the the same time collection breakthroughs as Jewell.