How Fankhauser Apples handled new minimum wage regulations

Fruit Types

Apples

SIZE

98 acres / 40 hectares

Using Hectre App

Since 2016

Modules In Use

New Minimum Wage Regulations: No Worries

How Fankhauser Apples Handled New Minimum Wage Regulations, Improved Bin Traceability, and Saved Time on Invoicing

The Fankhauser family has been growing apples in Australia for around 140 years.

Owners Liz and Glynn Fankhauser are fourth-generation orchardists. Their son Brad Fankhauser leads the business as General Manager, Brad’s wife Darlene runs all of the admin, and Brad’s sister Lauren works in the orchard and packing shed. Together they produce approximately 2,000 tons of apples each year.

Here’s what Brad Fankhauser, General Manager at Fankhauser Apples has to say about the introduction of the new minimum wage regulations, traceability, and saving on invoicing.

Minimum Wage Regulations

As a result of the minimum wage changes, we simply can’t employ any staff that don’t meet expected targets.

As a result of the minimum wage changes, we simply can’t employ any staff that don’t meet expected targets

We have always paid new staff an hourly rate for the first three or four days before moving them to piecework rates. It gives the employee a chance to make changes to their performance, and it helps some workers to identify that they may not earn as much as other higher-performing staff.

We’ve been using the Hectre Orchard Management App since 2016. The app captures all of the hours worked by our employees, so we’ve already got the recording side of things sorted.

Hectre captures all of the hours worked by our employees, so we’ve already got the recording side of things sorted.

With the new minimum wage requirements, if an employee hasn’t met minimum wage, Hectre will use algorithms to automatically calculate the top-up amount required for that employee. This will be highlighted in the payroll reports.
So, if we ever have someone not meeting minimum wage through their performance, we can easily identify and address the issue.

If an employee hasn’t met minimum wage, Hectre will use algorithms to automatically calculate the top-up amount required for that employee

Traceability: Back to the Pick and the Picker

Traceability is one of the most challenging aspects for our QA. Before we had Hectre, we were spending heaps of time manually writing out bin tickets. It was time wasting and frustrating. So, we really wanted to have printable bin tickets with all of the details on them and move away from the labour-intensive work of handwriting bin tickets.

We were spending heaps of time manually writing out bin tickets. It was time wasting and frustrating

With Hectre, we have bin codes that are automatically GPS-tagged to the picking location in the orchard. We can include all of the detail that is required for QA, and being able to separate out and review individual pickers is always impressive in an audit. Knowing we’ve got this covered with just a couple of clicks equals great peace of mind.

Being able to push a button on the Hectre App while we’re out in the orchard and have bin tickets printed straight from a portable printer, complete with all of the traceability data we need, makes a huge difference to our operation. No more handwriting bin tickets!

Labour Costs and Invoicing

During our yearly block review, Hectre allows us to compare all of our labour inputs with picking tallies for each individual block. Getting all of this valuable data is really simple with Hectre. It makes it very easy for us to see where our profits and losses are and how best to make decisions on improvements for the future.

Hectre allows us to compare all of our labour inputs with picking tallies for each individual block.

When it comes to billing the labour company, we’ve made considerable time savings. Being able to easily pull all of the hours worked, and get all of that information in a spreadsheet instantly using Hectre, means it’s simple to do our invoicing.

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