Reduced billing cycle time:
One of the common situations a Professional Services firm finds themselves in with a customer (often without warning), is when a customer calls the Project Manager or company owner and wants to know whether or not they have been invoiced for all of the expenses to date. This usually happens at the most inopportune time for the Project Manager/owner. Depending on your company procedure for time & expense entry/approval, your Project Manager may or may not be able to pull up the account and answer the question. Take for example if your resources are entering time daily (as the work is performed) and approved on a weekly interval. If the customer calls in the middle of the week, will your lookup and reporting capabilities take into consideration the logged time pending approval or does the time need to be approved before it counts against the project plan?
Flexible project accounting software allows the PM/owner to view logged, unapproved time as well as approved time. Once the time is approved and invoiced, the PM/owner still have the same visibility into what hours were worked and what hours were billed, enabling them to present up to the minute details on project status with confidence. Timely entry and approval allows your Project Manager to present invoices in a reduced billing cycle, minimizing the number of inquiries between billing cycles.
With a solid billing procedure, customers know when to expect to be invoiced, as well as, where their project is in the project cycle. Should the customer call any time during the project, the Project Manager can easily see how the project is progressing.
How does Beyond Software keep you up to date on billing cycles and project progression?
Looking up information at any time is made easy by Beyond Software’s reporting consoles. The Project Transaction Pending and Billed Console displays the current status of time entered; regardless if the time has already been billed or is still pending approval, making it easy to know the progress on a project and quick to answer customer billing questions with up to date information.
Project Transaction Pending and Billed Console
Want to learn more about how reports and consoles in Beyond Software can help reduce billing cycle times? Watch this video or contact us!
