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Collecting Time: Why Is It So Difficult?
 On the surface, time collection seems to be straight forward. It is simply a matter of capturing what was done when. Yet, for most IT Solution companies, it is a major source of aggravation for everyone involved. Even worse, it frequently impedes accurate utilization measurement, is a source of lost revenues and it significantly slows down cash flows.
The problem usually stems from time collection being a separate – and sometimes redundant – administrative activity. The most common approach we see at IT Solutions companies is for employees to set aside time, either at the end of each day (at best) or the end of each week, to sit down and try to mentally reconstruct their activities. Even if you have a combined system in which you are capturing project task and service ticket updates along with time, the longer the period of time between work being done and updates being made, the more likely it is that you are losing revenue. And you are certainly losing detail that is sometimes necessary to back up your invoices to clients. Finally, if this describes your situation, you are probably not billing your clients according to your agreements, which means you are slowing down cash flow. And this can be deadly for a small company.
ConnectWise PSA solves this problem with a set of workflow rules, a liberal amount of automation and notifications and escalations that keep managers informed of exceptions. Simply by acting on exceptions, everything else falls into place. And we make it easy for employees to comply because they enter information as part of their regular workflow routines. Heck, field people can even enter time when they send updates from their mobile devices. Some people even go so far as to say that with ConnectWise PSA, entering time is ‘fun’!!
How Do You Know If You Have A Time Collection Problem?
Take a look at the following list of questions. Answering as indicated on several of them may suggest time collection processes and systems could be improved in your company:
- Is time and expense information captured during each workday, as a result of updates to service tickets, project tasks or sales activities?
- Does your solution automatically associate billing rates to work done, so employees don’t have to do this as part of closing tasks, since this is a major reason time isn’t entered when work is done?
- Does your solution propagate time entered to all relevant modules, including project workplans, service dashboards, client invoices, and all related reports? Does this happen in real time?
- Are time submissions automatically forwarded to project and service managers to review and approve the time spent on various activities, prior to being forwarded to the direct manager for approval?
- Are managers kept informed of the time and expense reports in their queues for approval?
- Is the time entry path auditable to easily identify bottlenecks and for continual process improvements?
- Can employees enter time and expenses from any web-connected device, including mobile devices frequently used by field employees?
- Does your solution have any automatic checks on time and expense entries, to prevent obvious mistakes at time of entry?
- Are you able to automatically route timesheets and expense reports both ways, in case there is a need to reject an entry? Do rejected entries notify the employee and provide enough information for corrections?
- Do employees see outstanding time entries and rejection notices when they log on to the system for any reason?
- Does your solution provide time entry analysis reports to help you drill down to utilization, billable hours, forecast to actual, profitability and chargeability, by employee, group, or company?
ConnectWise PSA Helps You Solve Time Collection Problems
ConnectWise PSA provides robust functionality so you can get rid of the time collection headache and exchange it for higher revenues and faster cash flow. And, there is an added bonus that employees find it easy to enter time, which eliminates nagging and friction. So everyone wins! ConnectWise PSA will enable you to:
- Provide each employee a customizable desktop that includes a prominent indicator of the status of their time records, including what is outstanding and what has been submitted, approved, or rejected.
- Automatically notify employees via email of outstanding time records.
- Provide each manager a customizable desktop that includes information about their personal time records and also those queued for their approval.
- Capability to customize the approval process.
- Automatically add bill rates to time records, based on existing client agreements or standard rates.
- Enable employees to enter time on a service ticket, project or sales activity, which then automatically updates the appropriate timesheet, project workplan, service dashboard, client invoice, and all related reports in real time.
- Eliminate time entry errors through automatic system checks when records are saved.
- Immediately access standard time and utilization reports to facilitate continual process improvement.
- Keep an audit trail of all time entry and approval activities.
- Add on mobile device access to allow field employees to update records without having to be at an internet-connected computer.
ConnectWise PSA is the easy answer to your time collection problems.
Click here to see more product details, including screen shots.
ConnectWise PSA: The Total Business Automation Solution for IT Solutions Companies
ConnectWise PSA is a complete suite of modules that automate and integrate every process in your IT business: Find & Win Opportunities; Capture, Plan & Schedule Won Deals; Manage Projects & Services; Track, Approve & Invoice; Analyze & Report; Integrate to Internal & External Applications. ConnectWise PSa is offered both as premise based or hosted (subscription based) solution.
Learn more. See all ConnectWise PSA Product Module Features.
The sole purpose of ConnectWise PSA is to give you transparency into and control over your business, a faster and higher cash flow, more revenues, greater profits and higher levels of client satisfaction.
See How ConnectWise PSA Helps You Solve Other Management Problems.
See How ConnectWise PSA Helps You Solve Your Workflow Problems.
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