Posted by Sean MacKenzie on Thu, Jul 22, 2010
Small business owners often wonder why they should be using an online hours collection system like the one we have here at www.billzone.com. In fact, most owners
know they need a system like this but only some take the step.
Opportunity Cost The biggest reason is simple. If you are spending valuable time collecting hours from contractors and/or employees for billing to your own clients, then you are
not spending time either doing billable work for your clients, managing, or selling your product.
Usually the monthly cost of using BillZone to automate a 10 person team is less than a few hours of billing for one of the team's members, compared to one or two days worth of work for that member to do the task manually. For large enterprises, the benefits are even greater.
Accuracy If you are consolidating a whole bunch of time entries from a variety of sources like paper timesheets or Excel workbooks, then your chances of creating an error during this double-entry process go up. When collection is centralized, data is only entered one time, thus reducing errors.
Timeliness Speed up payment on your accounts receivable. Want your bills to go out on the first of the month instead of the 10th? Automate your process.
Posted by Sean MacKenzie on Mon, Sep 21, 2009
These days everything is mobile, and mobile device technologies are
changing small businesses because it enables them to extend their data
capture into the field like never before.
Forget about just sending emails or making calls while in the field.
Whether it is consultants, home care workers, electricians, or architects,
they are entering time, expenses, distance to the job, and product sales
on their mobile devices while at the site instead of waiting to use a
computer.
Most people have a mobile device, and in many cases they use a mobile
device more than they use a computer because they are always in the
field. Contractors and installers are receiving workorders and
instructions on their mobile devices while sitting in their truck, and
no longer have to wait for phone authorizations, printed instructions,
or other things that waste time. Technology project managers are
running quick reports and receiving automatic notifications while at the
airport.
On the other side of things, small business owners or project team leaders are
getting the benefit of real-time oversight of their billings and
resource usage, when they need it.
Posted by Sean MacKenzie on Fri, Sep 18, 2009
Say you're a bookkeeper; why would you want to change your small or
medium sized business over to an automated time entry or time-tracking
system? Well, you're going to get some of the biggest gains when it is
switched over.
How many timesheets do you manage in a month? Do you use paper
timesheets? An excel sheet; maybe one with a macro? How much time does
it take to finish it each month?
The amount of time saved in automation grows as you handle more and more
people. Say you have a company with 25 employees and contractors
working for you. A short month might have 21 workdays in it, so if you
are doing a manual sheet every day, you might have 525 sheets to
process, plus comments and dozens of expense entries. Even if people
only fill in a sheet one time per week, it is over 100 timesheets to
process.
Feedback from our customers tells us that, even for a company with only
25 people, this manual process can take over a week when you include
processing the invoices. Customers with the best success in converting
time entry have seen their time committment go from 5 or more days to 1
day (80%+ reduction in effort and cost). Numerous other benefits, like
the speeding up of receivables, have also followed successful
implementations.
So, we ask you: Are you a bookkeeper in a small or medium size business?
How many timesheets do you process? How long does it take you?