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Long Distance Phone Call Policy

Question

Our company has always handled payment for personal, long distance phone calls on an honor system. Recently, it seems that employees are abusing this privilege. Our phone system does not track out-going calls by extension. What methods do other MACNY companies use to control this cost?

Answers

If your company cannot track long distance phone calls, one way would be to block certain phones and allow only those that need that option for their job.

The other option is to track the phone bill and find where the calls are being made, when they are being made, and to whom. By process of elimination, you may be able to narrow it down to a select few employees.

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Our phone allows us to use a four digit code that is specific to each employee. When the long distance bill comes in, it is broken down by code.

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We currently have an ID Code system with our phone service (which we set up through MCI). Each employee that is able to make long distance phone has an ID code that they must enter after the phone number prior to the call being completed. When the billing comes in it is sorted by ID Code. This will need to be set up through your long distance carrier with assigned ID Codes. This system will cut down on abuse and anyone not assigned an ID Code will not be able to make long distance calls.

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For a while we had a problem with people using the 900 numbers. We took care of that problem by having the phone company disable access to fee charging #’s such as these. Then there were a few people using company phones for LD personal calls. Long distance is a little more difficult since we can’t track calls from individual phones either. The administrative manager checks the phone bills each month. As we have a CS department, obviously we have lots of LD calls. However, we have a master list of the major customers. Mainly we look for LD phone calls which are not familiar. Also, the time spent on the phone sometimes looks different as we know the average length of most CS calls are. You can also tell by the time of day LD calls come in and a pattern, for instance factory or office breaks or lunch. That helps to narrow it down. The phones on the production floor are not connected to an outside line, only internal calls can be made from them. Therefore, calls have to come from the office or specific people who have access to outside lines in the factory. On occasion, we have actually called the number to see if it is a customer or not. Generally, it is only one or two people who are the abusers, and we then discuss with them the inappropriateness of using company money for personal calls, etc. that usually does it, when we discuss that they will need to pay for the calls from now on! Once we identify a number as non work related, we just keep an eye out for it in the future. As you said, you don’t mind once in a while, but the regular abusers can be identified with a little detective work. Good luck!

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We track outgoing phone calls by extension.

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YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR SYSTEM TO A CODE TO INPUT IN FOR LONG DISTANCE CALLS OR CALL YOUR PHONE COMPANY AND HAVE YOUR BILL BROKEN DOWN BY LINE NUMBERS THAT IS HOW OUR BILL COMES.

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When we were (earlier company name), each employee had a personal phone code that had to entered before any external (local or otherwise) phone call would be completed. It was a little tedious punching in 7 extra digits for each call as a new-hire, but after a few months, I was so quick with it that I didn’t even notice it anymore. Tedious or not, it achieved the goal of providing an internal control to dissuade possible long-distance phone abuse.

That code was scrapped after the acquisition made us (new company name). I’m not sure whether this has resulted in a significant increase in our phone bills......but if the requesting company representative would like to know, I’m sure that I could find out.

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We use Northland communications for our phone service local and long distance. Because we had the same issues, and a good deal of our business is out of Syracuse and long distance, we set up cost codes. In order to call out of our office long distance, our employees must use a personal code which is assigned to them upon hire. Our long distance bill is broken down by code and we are then able to not only track the personal calls (and time spent on those calls!!) but also use this information for cost purposes.

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Our company has call accounting software on our telephone switch that monitors all local and long distance calls. This is used to charge back to individual departments. Detail listings with all calls are forwarded to departments for review monthly. We also have the ability to limit calls to in-plant, local only, long distance and international by individual extension.

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We also use the honor system and also manually scan the bills.

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At our branch offices, I have set up the phone lines set up with restricted long distance. In order to complete a long distance call, a four digit code must be entered.

In my monthly statement from Choice One, my dial tone and long distance provider, I get a listing by account code.

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I would check to see if your phone system could have this option, you may find that the cost is minimal vs. the cost of long distance calls. We track by extension and give a monthly report to everyone. You may also consider sending a weekly account sheet to everyone for them to write down all long distance calls they made and the purpose of the call.

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Each person who is granted access to make long distance calls is given an Access Code which identifies and tracks calls. Our billing provides details of date, number dialed, time and length of call. This system works well for us. Aside from transitioning to such a service, I don’t have any pearls of wisdom.

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We do not allow personal long-distance phone calls but I am sure that they happen within reason. We are able to track each phone extension if there was abuse.

If you are unable to track the long distance calls I believe it is time to for a new policy not allowing personal long distance without specific permission from a manager

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We use software provided by a company called Telemate to investigate potential abuse of company telephones. With the telemate software, we are able to pull records of all phone calls made from a particular extension. The records show us the time, duration and number called.

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Our formal policy is that personal calls - long distance or local - are only to be made in the case of an emergency. We realize that people do make some personal calls, but we also have the ability to track by extension all out-going and in-coming calls. If a supervisor believes that personal calls are getting out of hand (whether incoming or outgoing) he/she can request a print out of all calls from the specific extension. This would then be handled as a performance/disciplinary issue.

We also have extensions throughout the facility that are restricted to internal calls only. In order to make any kind of an outside call from one of these phones it is necessary to go through the operator for an outside line.

Pay phones are located in the facility that employees can use to make their personal calls.

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We have always used a free service by our Long Distance Carriers  that forces a user to enter in a company-assigned Long Distance access code.  Essentially, I am calling Boston, I dial the number as usual, then a tone sounds which prompts me to enter my 3 to 8 digit access code.

When our monthly LD bill arrives either hardcopy or by CD, the calls are listed by Access Code, allowing me to see exactly the costs per person. We also set our codes up that the first 3 digits are the department number and last two are the last two digits of the employees Social Security number. This allows us to post LD bills to a Department along with audit calls for personal use.

Finally, over the past 7 years we have used 4 different LD carriers, MCI, AT&T, RCI and Telergy. There was never any additional fee for this.

We also have a similar system for local calls on phones located in a common area on our factory floor. This is managed by an on-site PBX however, if you are using CENTREX lines, your local carrier could do this for you also.

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We instituted codes with our long distance carrier, Verizon. When an employee makes a long distance call they must enter a 3 digit code for the call to go through. Each department has the code and only those authorized to make long distance calls are issued the code. If you are concerned that individuals are abusing the privilege, you could issue codes to each individual that is authorized to use the phone for business use. They are not likely to give their code to someone else to use because it will reflect against them. It’s not fool proof, but our bill reflects the codes, so we can target what departments are making the calls. If you issue codes to individuals this would break it down further. You would need to check with your carrier about the option. We use this for costing our telephone charges. If a floor employee needs to make a long distance call, they must do so from their supervisors phone and the supervisor provides the phone code. Since I do not know who your long distance carrier is, you would need to check with them to see if this option is available.

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Micro-Call , software by microtell microcall.com This software tracks all outgoing calls by extension. resides on a pc/server and is connected to our Nortell phone system.

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Track long-distance phone calls by extension. In our department our budget manager sends out monthly charges and we identify personal long distance calls and reimburse with cash or check. I expect the procedure is essentially the same across the company.

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we use a program call Telemate, but we have found that the honor system and a little bit of direction and fear, like dropping the list on the offending person's desk once in a while, works the best.