Aug 25, 2022
AgTech award for labor management system goes to PickTrace

PickTrace, the only all-in-one labor management suite for agriculture with paperless hiring, time and productivity tracking and employee payments, has been selected as the “Labor Management Solution of the Year” in the 2022 AgTech Breakthrough Awards.

The awards are conducted by AgTech Breakthrough, a market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global agricultural and food technology markets, according to a news release.

PickTrace enables organizations to rapidly hire and re-hire their workforce by digitizing the I-9 and W-4 document completion and storage process, removing the need for paper onboarding packets and manual data entry of employee details into payroll systems.

PickTrace’s labor management suite offers real-time performance visibility across field labor, insights into job and block level costing, while ensuring a business is operating in compliance with federal, state and local wage and hour regulations, according to the release.

PickTrace’s proprietary Compliance Engine takes away the complexities and burden of payroll calculations and compliance by automating the process of calculating piece paid breaks, NPT, OT, and DT, generating accurate and compliant gross payroll calculations.

As the only all-in-one labor management solution, PickTrace offers the ability to pay a workforce via the PickTrace PayCard, providing a streamlined card issuance process that is integrated into the hiring workflow. The PickTrace PayCard removes the headache of printing and distributing checks on a weekly basis, as well as removing the burden employees and employers face with activating traditional payroll card products that are not designed for the agriculture workforce.

“Labor represents the largest cost center across the fresh produce industry, representing 60%-plus of a grower’s operating cost,” Bryan Vaughn, managing director of AgTech Breakthrough, said in the release. “As growers experience a continued rise in labor cost, the industry has been challenged to understand how they can effectively manage their rising labor cost, remain compliant, and drive a profitable growing operation.

“The powerful balance of world class implementation practices and customer-centric solutions enables PickTrace to improve the lives of employees across the entirety of their customers’ operations,” Vaughn said in the release.

The mission of the annual awards program is to conduct the industry’s most comprehensive analysis and evaluation of agricultural and food technology categories, including Internet-of-Things- and Artificial Intelligence-based agricultural technologies, farm management, indoor farming, food quality, data analytics and more. This year’s program attracted more than 1,600 nominations from more than 15 countries.

“This award from AgTech Breakthrough is a wonderful acknowledgement of all of our team’s hard work and dedication to creating valuable solutions for the agriculture community,” Harrison Steed, co-founder and president of PickTrace, said in the release. “With our typical customer having hundreds to thousands of employees, we focus on building solutions for the industry that enable large operations to manage their workforce in a more efficient manner, better understand their labor cost and performance in real-time, to enable more informed decision making throughout their business.”

Examples include making an informed decision to switch from hand thinning to chemical thinning based on real-time data, or identifying fraud and ghost employees that can result in thousands in savings.

“We’re here for our valued customers and will continue to develop solutions that are focused on solving real business challenges for our customers,” Steed said in the release.

PickTrace is uniquely positioned to continue delivering breakthrough technologies through its exceptional customer relationships and team of more than 60 individuals. PickTrace was founded by brothers Harrison and Austin Steed, who grew up on Fairfield Farms LLC in Pauma Valley, California, and is the largest AgTech software company focused on labor management.


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