The discussion to institute any automated system within an organization should revolve around some return on investment. A change in a system of any kind whether or automated or not implies some effort, some cost, some expenditure of energy, and resources.
These costs could be hard costs such as the purchase of new equipment or new software or soft costs such as a temporary drop in efficiency while a new system is implemented.
In order for it to be worthwhile to incur these costs, an organization must enjoy some future benefits from instituting a new system.
When considering the automation of a timekeeping system, an organization should first determine what these benefits might be. One of the easiest and most common places to look for these benefits is in existing costs of not having such a system now.
Here are a few indicators that your current system or lack of a system is costing your organization:
- Missing Billings
Your organization does not invoice for all the work accomplished on a project. Hours are somehow skipped over or can’t be audited and thus can’t be billed. Perhaps your current system is not timely enough resulting in billable hours that are discovered too late to bill them. - Missing Hours
Your organization is unable to determine what hours are being worked by each employee. Attendance hours seem to add up to one value but the hours spent on projects or overhead or billed to clients just don’t add up to the same amount as the attendance figures. - Excessive Overhead
Your business model indicates that you should be spending a certain percentage of your hours on overhead activities versus billable or product project activities. Your current system is unable to determine where overhead hours are being spent. You just know that the percentage of productive hours versus non-productive hours is completely unacceptable. - No ABC
Activity-Based-Costing has been the norm in the project management world for years. However, it is just taking off as a popular concept in management consulting and accounting circles. ABC allows an organization to drill down to the lowest level of resolution possible to identify unprofitable or unproductive areas of a project or an organization. If your existing timesheet system is designed to track hours only at the project or perhaps client level and is unable to manage charges at the task level, you will be unable to implement ABC. - Double Entry
The needs of the Payroll department to determine payable hours and the needs of other departments such as Accounts Receivable/Invoicing and Project Management to determine billable or project progress hours are often at odds with each other. This may result in independent timekeeping systems that do not reconcile with each other. Aside from the obvious inefficiency of double-entry effort, inconsistent totals of the same information may result in hesitant or even bad business decisions. - No Variance Reports
If your current system does not allow actual hours to be tracked in the same resolution and with the same coding as they were budgeted, you will be unable to do a budget vs. actual comparison. Budget vs. actual variance reporting is the single most important management tool, particularly in a project environment. - No Integration with Other Corporate Systems
There are many corporate systems that could take advantage of on-line timesheet information. These include Payroll, Billing, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Human Resources and Project Management. If your current system is either not automated or is unable to integrate its data with existing corporate systems, your organization is not as efficient as it could be.
If your organization is experiencing this timekeeping software, there are potential benefits available from automating your timekeeping system. TouchBase-Timesheet Management Software, an enterprise-wide equipped with ready-for-use and tons of more benefits to fulfill all your Timekeeping needs.
