Case Study: Paulding County Sheriff’s Office

Pen and paper off-duty management

Major Karen Ritch has been with Paulding County Sheriff’s Office for 28 years. She has participated in a broad variety of roles, from patrol to criminal investigations, and currently serves as the Commander for the Office of Professional Standards. In addition to the various roles she’s held, she also began managing off-duty jobs about 12 years ago.

When Major Ritch initially took over this responsibility, off-duty was managed using pen, paper and a big desk calendar. The deputies would come in person to the sheriff’s office to find and schedule off-duty work. Major Ritch managed every aspect manually, from scheduling and invoicing to client payments, using the hand-written desk calendar. The process was lengthy, difficult and inconvenient.

The search for an efficient off-duty tool

In 2018, Major Ritch enlisted a solution to help her manage the day-to-day administrative aspects of off-duty. While initially helpful, it was not ideal. To start, the fee structure was multifaceted and kept increasing. In addition to licensing fees, there was a fee for each officer, which the officers did not appreciate.

“We went to [another platform] a few years ago but the price kept increasing with no updates to the capabilities,” she said.

Additionally, Ritch was still manually generating all the invoicing - an administrative task that was taking up hours of her time. Overall, the off-duty solution was clunky and time-consuming, making the software as a whole virtually obsolete. As a result, she went back to the drawing board to find a solution that better matched her agency’s needs.

An easy yet comprehensive solution

While searching for a new solution to off-duty management, Major Ritch looked for a program that was simple and easy to use. After watching a demo for RollKall, she was excited about the robust capabilities of the platform. “I liked the format of RollKall. It's user-friendly, simple, and not overwhelming,” she said.

Transitioning to RollKall was much easier than she anticipated. Major Ritch found the platform easy to learn, and where she had issues or questions she found the team at RollKall incredibly supportive, responsive and easy to work with. The RollKall team not only helped her and the officers onboard, they also worked with the businesses to make sure everyone was trained and comfortable with the platform. “Transitioning was easy - it was a lot easier than I anticipated and it was fairly simple to learn how to use,” Major Ritch said.

Moving forward with more off-duty in less time

Since implementing RollKall, Ritch has saved about 8-10 hours a week - nearly 25% of her workweek - while expanding the program. A leading contributing factor in this time savings is RollKall’s automated invoicing. After a job is completed, invoices can be sent with just a couple of clicks. Between the easy scheduling and automated invoicing, Major Ritch has reduced off-duty management to less than 5 hours a week despite bringing on more deputies and more details.

“It’s a tremendous time-saver because I don’t have to do the invoices, the program does it automatically. That alone saves me 8-10 hours a week.”

The officers love using RollKall, as well. Any off-duty management system Paulding County chose had to be user-friendly, as a few of her deputies aren’t as tech-oriented. Learning how to find and apply for jobs was quick and simple for everyone. “The officers really like InstantPay and that they don’t have to wait on a check,” she said.

Paulding County’s deputies like using the mobile app so much that participation in the off-duty program has increased significantly. Since implementing RollKall, Major Ritch has seen a rise in participation by about 25 deputies, bringing the total to 60 deputies working about 800 hours a month.

Businesses have also been quick in adapting to RollKall’s business portal. Many of the business owners within the county already use RollKall with other agencies, so they’re familiar with the features that benefit businesses, like automated invoicing and electronic payments. This familiarity also means they already know how to use the business portal.

One RollKall feature Major Ritch discovered she really likes is how the mobile app uses GPS to track when an officer is on location and leaves the site. “I like the GPS clock-in and out,” she said. “That way we know the officer is on-site and we can go back and verify that for the business if needed.”
Moving forward, Major Ritch anticipates an even bigger increase in off-duty requests, particularly during holidays. With RollKall on board, she’s not concerned that any increase in requests or deputy participation will significantly add to her workload.