In TimeLog we are often asked:

How can a company like ours use TimeLog? Is it really necessary for a small (consultancy) company like us to invest in a complete business system?

The questions are relevant. Many companies with about 15 or less employees are challenged on finances, effectiveness and sale. The focus is to a great extent on creating enough turnovers to have a steady revenue and realise growth goals.

What can TimeLog do for you in this process? Is it necessary to have a business system after all? Read and judge for yourself:

10 advantages of business systems for small and medium sized (PSO) companies:

• From time to invoicing: Consultants have time as an off the shelf item. The collection of hours is therefore the central focal point. The easier it is to track time, the more hours will be tracked, which you can invoice. In TimeLog Project you have tools for both: You register the time and invoice tasks by means of our integrated invoicing tool. We offer 7 different tools for time tracking. In this way you can track everything, regardless if you are online or offline.
  
  

• How much time have we used on tasks/projects? When you see how much time you have spent versus budgeted time, you can correct tasks and notify customers about potential moved deadlines or budgets. When you have tools to calculate the progress on the project and budget discrepancies, it will over time be easier to estimate projects and tasks: Is it in the planning process you use more or less hours? During conduct? Or by delivery? You will know that with a system that collects project data in real time across the organisation.
  
  

• Documentation is in place. If disagreements occur about e.g. budgets, worked hours or similar, you need documentation to proof when and why the budget or tasks were moved or overrun. Instead of entering this in an Excel sheet, you can use a professional system and enter your comments to each time registration in the system. It can be used to settle disagreements between you and the customers.

   

• See the cost price on all projects. In an effective project management tool you can see the price for a project by entering a cost price for each employee. In this way you can quickly and easily calculate the contribution ratio per project/employee/customer. This is important knowledge to see where you earn your money, regardless of selling your work on time and material, fixed price or as a voucher.
  
  

• User friendliness. When it is easy to track time, you will experience less internal opposition. With exact time tracking you can invoice ALL hours and see how much time you use on running your company.
  
  

• Find forgotten revenue. Some of our customers are looking forward to invoice each month. It is because time tracking in TimeLog Project is simple and it is easy to track time on the way. The result is that more hours than first anticipated are collected. The result of this is larger revenue!
  
  

• Pipeline administration. Get an overview of potential sales of the month and see the probability of winning the sale. It makes you able to focus your efforts on sales with the biggest potential and best opportunity to be successful. Weighting of the different opportunities helps you get an overview and prioritise your (sales) work and at the same time see if you have gaps to fill in the coming period. 
  
  

• Customer Information. By having a system that handles customer and contact information, you can always search for the information. A CRM-system can make good sense, because you know that the most recent information about the customers are found here. The challenge is to update and maintain the information – do you remember to enter new information once received?
  
  

• Salary management and bookkeeping. If the hours can be transferred to the financial system and be handled externally, you can save time and money, e.g. on the salaries for external consultants. TimeLog has developed integrations for Navision and e-conomic, which many customers have chosen, among others Frankly and Ecomentor.
  
  

• Better process optimisation. When you have used a business system for a while, you have enough data to start a business analysis: What is the invoicing % per employee in the company? How much did we earn per customer last month? What profit ratio do we have on the projects? On which tasks do we have the biggest earnings potential? How should we focus our sales efforts in the future? With all the data available, you can start growing...

Where are you?

Do you need to track (more) hours? Do you need the real time overview? Do you already know the cost price on your projects, but need a method to analyse your profit? Do you wish to use the data to react on time or do you ONLY need to track time? Do you want to invest now or do you need more time for your considerations?

Yes, that is a lot of questions and in the process much more than you thought can arise. This is completely natural. We could advise you to use as many discussion partners as you want – but instead we advise you to use the right ones. It is important to know the needs of all stakeholders in the company to avoid unpleasant surprises at a later stage. You have more support for the new system, when all departments take part in the process. You will therefore be better suited for the further process – namely the selection of systems!