Following on from last week’s blog post about Reporting using Cloud Accounting software, this week we are looking in more detail at Projects, Timesheets and Classes. We do not typically add these three features for newer users, but will normally allow clients to get more comfortable with the system before implementing them. They are extremely useful tools and can help streamline the running and finance side to your business.
The Projects module allows you to create a project for whatever task you wish, and then enables you to assign costs, income and time to that project. By doing this, you can collate costs and time before invoicing to ensure that you are making back costs and making a profit margin. As an example, some of our engineering clients find this feature very useful as they can develop a project with costs that go back months or even years. This means that they can easily keep all these costs in one place and ensure they are invoiced out.
Finally, this module offers an overview of projects and their status. This allows you to quickly and easily assess ongoing and completed projects at a glance and spot profitability issues before they arise.
The Timesheet function is a simple yet effective tool to allow you to keep track of your employees time. Using this module, you can invite employees to log into their own timesheet, without giving them access to any of your other functions or information. They are then able to input their own hours. This can be used for simple employee hours or fed into the Projects module mentioned above.
This can be done remotely but does need done from a computer rather than the phone (although there is another app, TSheets, which allows employees to use their phone). The time system is simple and has no approval process so once time is entered by an employee it will run straight into the system. The system administrator can of course amend later.
Classes can be used to categorise types of income or expense with what it is and where it comes from.
For example a garage may want to know what portion of their income comes from specific activities in the garage or a business with multiple locations may want to use the tag to report on income/cost from each location. You can go one step further and apply what’s termed a ‘location’ and a ‘class’ – essentially two levels of tag. This allows you to combine the above and report on the specific income/cost breakdown from each of your locations.
Combining Projects, Timesheets and Classes is where the Cloud really comes into its own. We can use the above systems to report on pretty much anything going on in a business as long as it is monetary (although again there are apps which allow you to track more intangible aspects of your business). The three features all tie in with the Reporting feature as all of this information can be pulled in reports and analysed later. It all contributes to the smooth and successful running of your business.
As always, if you have any questions, please get in touch.
