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Timesheet Feature Review #5: Custom Report Builder
Timesheet software is used by companies all over the world to track their employee work efficiency, status of their projects and a whole bunch of other statistics. After all, as the saying goes, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”. However, in order to use the information collected by the timesheet effectively, you need to be able to analyze the wealth of information collected in a clear and suitable report. Different corporations in various industries will need different kinds of reports
For example, web developers will be concerned with billable time vs. non-billable time while non-profit organizations may worry more about expense reporting and administrative managing. When looking at maximizing your timesheet’s potential, being able to create a custom report to suit your company’s needs is a very useful feature.
Why are timesheet reports important for businesses?
Time management is an age-old problem that has plagued companies for decades. Timesheets allow a degree of management as companies are able to track how much time is being spent on a task/project. They are then able to make informed decisions regarding the project – whether to increase its funding/scrap it/assign additional resources, etc. In order for project managers to fully understand what is going on within a project, they must first be able to analyze the information keyed into the timesheet system.
One way of doing this would be to manually sift through the timesheet system – a time consuming and cumbersome process; especially for large corporations. The smarter and better alternative is to generate reports based on the data collected by the timesheet so the information is presented to you and you don’t have to spend time looking for it. Although most timesheet solutions come with a range of standard reports, these may not be exactly what you are looking for.
Why do I need to be able to customize my reports?
Reports can be on just about anything under the sun – it could be a list of invoices sent to clients, a summary of how much projects are actually spending as compared to their respective budgets or a time-use report charting the billability of each employee. If you want to be able to view reports that suit your unique and individual needs, creating custom reports becomes a very handy feature.
For some companies such as legal firms or web developers, the general “everyday” reports bundled together with standard timesheet products just don’t cut it. These companies need to create unique reports that reflect their industry. For example, web developers need to create reports on time spent debugging code and testing scripts. It is important for them to manage this time properly to avoid bleeding cash. This same fixation would not apply for a legal firm who would be more concerned with, say; time spent sourcing for case precedents. In both cases, a general time report would not adequately meet either company’s needs. Custom report building provides a workaround solution for these companies to help them maximize the potential of their timesheet systems.
What does a custom report builder look like?
As you can see from the screenshots below, a myriad of reports can be generated from timesheet data. With custom report building, you can decide what the reports focus on, how the information is presented and also how much detail to display. Custom report building is the only sure-fire way to ensure that the information collected by your timesheet product is useful to your company.
Creating a custom time report (e.g. with Harvest www.getharvest.com)
Timesheet custom report builder (e.g. Replicon www.replicon.com)
What are the limitations of custom report building?
Custom report building only has a few real limitations. Firstly, all reports generated by the timesheet product are based off “templates”. These “templates” are based on the most common reporting needs of companies. The reports are customized by tweaking several aspects of the templates but all in all, the basic output remains about the same. If you’re looking to generate a more “exotic” industry-specific report, you might have to play around with the settings of the report generator a little more or export your data for analysis.
Secondly, custom reports are for those who know what they are doing. If you know exactly what you want to monitor and what you want to look out for, custom report building becomes an invaluable tool. However, if you just want general hassle-free reports that instantly provide you with easily digestible information, then you might get lost in the overabundance of options that custom report building provides. For companies that prefer one-click reports, custom report building is overly complicated and unnecessary.
In conclusion
Overall, custom report building is another of those “handy to have” features that might not appeal to everyone but are important for advanced users or those with very specific reporting needs. It is no wonder then that custom report building places at #5 of Software Shortlist’s top “must have” features for timesheet software. Fans of custom report building are in luck – of the 21 timesheet products reviewed by Software Shortlist, 16 offered custom report building as a feature.
Have your say…
Whether you appreciate the utility that custom reports provide or enjoy the unparalleled convenience of general reports, I think that we can all agree that reports are an essential component of timesheet systems that cannot be done without. Now that you know more about custom report building, we’d love to hear your perspective. Feel free to leave us a comment telling us about the custom reports you prefer and why.
Also, don’t forget to stay tuned for more reviews of “must have” timesheet features! Coming up next: Report Permissions!
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Timesheet Feature Review #4: “Accounting Integration”
Many companies use timesheet software for one simple reason – to track time spent by their staff. However, time tracking alone is not enough. While it’s all well and good to simply measure the amount of time spent by your employees on a particular assignment, you also need to be able to use the data for something.
One of the most common uses for timesheet data is for accounting – companies often use timesheets either to bill time to their clients or to help in the payroll process, ensuring that their employees are paid accordingly for their time. Most companies already have some form of accounting system in place; many would be uncomfortable with revamping their accounts process just to accommodate a timesheet system. It is therefore vital that timesheet products are able to provide users with the ability to regularly and easily port the data collected by the software over to their pre-existing accounting systems.
How can I use timesheet data in my accounting system?
Timesheet software collects data on the amount of time spent by your staff on a project/task. Obviously, you wouldn’t be logging time just for the sake of it – you want to be able to do something with the information collected. There are several ways that timesheet information can be used by a company but one of the main ways is to help with accounts and reports.
For example, companies that bill their time to clients such as legal firms or consultancies need to be able to generate accurate bills based on the hours worked by their staff. Some timesheet software have inbuilt accounting features that can help you create basic reports and bills but as most companies would already have an accounting system in place, this is far from ideal. Many companies would therefore prefer an option to transfer the information collected by the timesheet software over to their pre-existing accounting software so that everything is streamlined and their employees are also spared the trouble of dealing with two separate accounting processes.
Another way that companies can use timesheet data is in the payroll process. As employees are usually paid by the hour, some companies use timesheets to track employee work time to help cut down on costs and to monitor work efficiency. For these companies, being able to use the information collected by the timesheet software in their accounts system is crucial in ensuring that their employees are paid fairly for their time worked.
What are the advantages of integrating timesheets into my accounting system?
Many companies use popular accounting software like QuickBooks and MYOB to help log and audit their finances. Being able to integrate your timesheet product with these software would provide a hassle-free way to transfer data in between both systems. This way, your employees will not have to trouble themselves with manually entering the information logged by the timesheet into the accounts system.
Integration also makes the whole process much more efficient and less prone to human error as everything is done automatically and you don’t have to worry about keying in wrong information. Accounting integration thus also reduces your employees’ workload which allows them to focus on their actual work instead of being bogged down by needless admin processes.
What are some of the limitations of accounting integration?
The main drawback to accounting integration is simply that not every accounts package/system can be supported by your timesheet product. Timesheet developers can only provide integration with a limited number of accounting systems so they target “popular” systems such as QuickBooks, MYOB, Saasu and Xero. However, with this approach, there are still many companies that are left in the cold because they use a less popular accounting package.
Also, the popularity of accounting systems varies from region to region, so what is popular in the United States may not be as widely-used in Australia. As most timesheet developers mainly focus on catering to US-based companies, popular accounting systems used in other countries are unlikely to receive integration support from the timesheet vendors. Fortunately, there are a host of integration specialists (e.g. WDCI) that can provide custom connections between timesheets and accounting systems.
The other limitation to accounting integration is that it requires several other features to be in place in order to work well. For example, accounting integration would not work quite as smoothly for companies that bill their time to clients without a “billable/non-billable” distinction. Without clearly distinguishing billable from non-billable time, automatically porting data over to the accounting system could cause confusion and major client issues. Also, if a problem arises within the timesheet system, it is possible for the accounting system to be affected as well due to integration.
In conclusion
In the recent review by Software Shortlist of the top must-have timesheet features, accounting integration was listed as the #4 most wanted. It is easy to see why many companies would want to be able to combine the utility of a timesheet with the familiarity and administrative power of a pre-existing accounting system. However, with the limited number of accounting systems supported by most timesheet products, some companies may be disappointed with the lack of support for their particular system (especially if they are outside the US).
Of the 21 timesheet products reviewed by the Software Shortlist, 16 provided integration with accounting systems like QuickBooks, MYOB or Saasu. I hope that this article has provided you with an idea of what you can accomplish with accounting integration and also the possible drawbacks of adopting such a system.
Have Your Say
As usual, we’d love to hear from you regarding accounting integration. Why not leave us a comment about whether you prefer your timesheets to be integrated with your accounting systems or not, and why? Perhaps you could share your experience with an actual integration of two specifics systems?
Also, stay tuned for more reviews as we count down on the top “must have” timesheet software features.
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Timesheet Feature Review #3: Billable vs Non-Billable Distinction
Many timesheet users are companies that perform contract or “outsourced” work, charging for their specialist services on an hourly, daily or retainer basis. This includes professional service firms such as accountants, lawyers, graphic designers, engineers, architects, web developers, PR firms and many more.
For these companies, using time tracking software isn’t just about internal auditing and accounts. For them, the timesheet system is arguably the single most important software that they deal with on a daily basis. Companies that bill their work to clients must be able to generate reports that accurately reflect their work done and the hours put in by their workers. However, as any working adult knows, not every minute spent on the job can reasonably be billed. This makes the billable vs non-billable distinction one of the top must-have features for timesheets.
Not All (Billable) Time Is Created Equal
In the highly competitive world of contract and professional services work, clients are demanding greater transparency and accountability. They are becoming less accepting of paying for “filler time” or time where they don’t see good progress being achieved. For companies that bill their time to clients, this means that every minute billed must be accounted for and justified by productivity and outputs achieved; most clients won’t settle for anything less.
When entering time into a timesheet, the problem with not being able to distinguish between billable and non-billable work becomes glaringly obvious; without this distinction, you won’t be able to log time at all without billing your clients for it. This would create a problematic scenario where you need to trade-off between accounting for the time spent on the project and billing your clients reasonably for the work done.
Take web development for example, coding isn’t always a straightforward and easy task. Sometimes, developers can take longer than expected to fix all the bugs in the website. Now when the developer gets around to entering time into the timesheet, he faces a dilemma: On one hand, he can’t always bill the extra time to his client because it may have been his fault for taking longer than expected to debug the code but on the other hand, leaving the timesheet blank would create a large, inaccurate, and potentially embarrassing void in the middle of his report. So, what can contractors do to side-step such tricky situations?
Enter one of the most useful timesheet features known to man: the ability to differentiate between billable and non-billable work.
e.g. Creating a non-billable time code (14Dayz timesheet, www.14dayz.com)
e.g. Entering non-billable time (in 14Dayz timesheet www.14dayz.com)
What Exactly Does “Billable Work” Mean For Timesheets?
When performing contract work, you need to ensure that your final reports are clear and concise. These final reports are the “receipts” that you submit in order to get paid by your clients. When submitting your reports to external clients, it becomes even more important that you are able to account for every single minute spent on the job and can justify every minute billed to your clients. This will help minimize any disputes with your clients over your charges and final bills. Billable work is simply a term used to describe time that you are charging your clients for. In other words, it is the time logged into the timesheet for which you are actually getting paid.
The concept behind billable and non-billable work distinction is simple: Log all the time spent while on the job into the timesheet but only bill the client for time when work is actually progressing. This way, you are now able to accurately account for all the time that you’ve spent on the job while only charging your clients for “actual work” done.
The advantage of such a system is immediately obvious, your clients will be able to see exactly what your workers were doing on the job and at the same time, they will also not be able to reasonably dispute the time billed to them. This way, you present both accountability and professionalism in your final bills, two highly-prized characteristics for any contracting company or services firm.
When Will I Not Need to Distinguish Between Billable and Non-billable Work?
The whole “billable/non-billable work” concept is only relevant to contract work. When using timesheets for internal purposes, auditing or payroll, this feature is rarely used at all. If your company is only interested in using timesheets to track internal progress and time spent on corporate projects, then the billable/non-billable distinction will not be a “must have” feature for you. Other examples of organizations that do not need to distinguish between billable/non-billable time include government agencies and non-profit bodies. For these organizations, although it remains important to track time spent on projects, time is not billed to clients so distinguishing between billable/non-billable is less relevant.
Also, the billable/non-billable distinction can be foregone when working with an understanding client or a fixed price project. Not all clients operate the same way; some companies simply don’t care what you do with your time so long as you deliver a great end-product at a reasonable rate. Of course, when performing contract work, you are bound to run into all sorts of clients so getting a product with billable/non-billable distinction is still advisable for all companies that perform contract work.
In Conclusion
Like most other timesheet software features, being able to distinguish between billable and non-billable time is a feature that may be indispensible or completely irrelevant to your company. For almost all companies that bill time to clients, the ability to differentiate between billable and non-billable time will probably be the most important feature to look out for when shopping around for a timesheet product. On the other hand, for companies that deal solely with internal or corporate projects, this feature will rank pretty low in their books.
As it turns out, billable/non-billable time distinction is a fairly common feature. Of the 21 timesheet products reviewed by Software Shortlist’s panel, 17 products include this feature. I hope this article has helped you gain a better understanding of what billable/non-billable distinction actually does and why it is such a popular feature amongst timesheet software users.
Software Shortlist is currently counting down on a list of 13 “must have” timesheet features for prospective timesheet product buyers as suggested by our search data so stay tuned for our upcoming reviews!
