The Internet has made it possible for employees to "telecommute" to their offices by accessing systems and information in the office from their homes. This is one way technology has created more flexibility for workers that don't always need to be in the office. It also helps them stay on top of their assignments if they can't make it to the office due to circumstances such as inclement weather or family emergencies.
For workers in service businesses such as engineering, consulting or temporary placement agencies, their "office" is usually a client's location. They may seldom, if ever, show up at their employer's office for work. Because these "remote" employees bill most of their time and travel expenses to customers, they need to complete timesheets and expense reports to document how much time they worked, on which projects, what expenses they incurred, what time and expenses are billable to the client, and what expenses are reimbursable to the employee.
It can be difficult for employees to submit their time and expenses on a timely basis if they hardly ever get to their employer's offices. More importantly, managers need to know the status of projects or jobs to see if they are within budget, and which employees will be free to work on other jobs.
Keeping track of multiple employees working on multiple projects for multiple
customers can become an administrative nightmare. Fortunately, the Internet
has made it possible for "remote" employees to submit timesheets and expense reports on a timely basis (daily if necessary), and for managers to be able to track and approve time and expenses online.
Time and expense applications are available for every size organization and can automatically consolidate employee timesheets by job and client. You can organize clients, projects and employees in a central database and report work and costs in many different ways.
Typically, they will consist of 4 key modules: 1) Timesheets; 2) Expenses; 3) Leave and 4) Billing and can be integrated to your accounting modules including General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Project and Job Cost, Payroll and Bank Services. Integration to Payroll service providers and other back office systems are available, if necessary.
A Timesheet module will allow employees to enter time in whole or fractional
amounts against specific tasks on a job, based on their role on that job.
Since each role is defined with both a billing and cost rate, the time entry
becomes the basis for generating invoices to the customer, as well as timecard
entries for payroll or project and job costing.
If you are doing job costing, you will want to pay particular attention to
how a job is set up since this will directly affect what employees see
on their timesheets and expense reports. Tasks associated with each entry
may allow both billable and non-billable work, or an employee may have
multiple roles and rates. If a task allows both billable and non-billable
work, the user will be required to select the appropriate billing option when
entering timesheets for employees.
Reports are helpful for determining how time is utilized throughout your
organization and for reviewing job costs and client billing. Standard and
customizable reports are generally available to review detailed
or summarized data.
The Expense module typically allows you to track individual expenses for
each employee by dollar amount or by quantity (i.e. mileage allowance based
on the number of miles driven.) If the size of your organization dictates
that particular managers or departments approve various expenses, make
sure you select a package that can support different approvers.
A Leave module can track vacation and sick leave for employees based either
on the number of days taken or the number of days remaining.
Lastly, the Billing module generates time and expense billings to customers
either in detail or summary, and creates the appropriate detail invoices
in your Accounts Receivable subledger.
As a general rule, you will want to create standard workflows for online
submission, acceptance and approval of timesheets and expense reports by
Job Managers, Supervisors, Line Managers and even Clients. Depending on
the selected approval process, Job Managers, Department Heads, Clients,
and Supervisors may approve, reject and/or comment on timesheets and expense
sheets.
Internet access allows you to send e-mail notifications
(if you wish) to inform approvers when an employee submits timesheets,
expense reports or leave requests. This also allows users to view their
timesheet/expense/leave history at any time, including comments
and approval details.
For the company, this audit trail keeps a record of every timesheet,
expense report and leave request submitted, who submitted it and when it
was submitted. It also tracks each time the timesheet, expense report or
leave request is approved or rejected, and which approver performed the
edit/approval/rejection.
For those times when Internet access is not available, a user can authorize
another user to manage his/her tasks by assigning a substitute user. It
is also not uncommon for each user to have multiple substitutes with
different permissions. Each substitute user's permissions are determined
by the user who sets up the substitute. For example, if John Smith assigns
Martha Brown as his substitute and gives Martha the right to enter his
timesheets, Martha will be allowed to log in to the system as John and
enter the timesheet on behalf of John.
In summary, timesheet and reporting applications can make tracking,
billing and reporting of time, expenses and leave requests more efficient
and cost effective for organizations of any size. If you are a service
based business that works on projects or jobs for your clients or a company
with employees who travel to conduct their work, this may be the right
solution for you.
As an organization that deals with these same issues every day, we'll be
happy to share our knowledge and expertise. Contact
Laura Kasman at 215-702-8155 or lkasman@kastechco.com to address any questions you may have.
