When you own a business...

Time Sheet Stress - When you own a business, it's hard enough parting with cash when pay day comes around, but it needn’t cause so many headaches.

The Problem

Julie needed to manage payroll and payments for over 50 engineers and subcontractors each month; a task that was taking longer, and becoming more stressful. ?

Engineers submitted their timesheets in different formats and at different times and the lack of consistency meant that the task of collating all the data was time consuming and problematic to say the least.

Julie also had no real way of checking that the timesheet submissions were accurate and honest, and it was truly testing her memory trying to recall the hours involved for jobs that were completed at the earlier end of the month. Having to question the engineers often led to heated conversations; an added stress to her already demanding schedule.

?Julie finally resolved to the fact there must be a more efficient and less stressful way of doing things, so she contacted us for help.

The solution

After our discussions with Julie and some of the engineers, we could see the challenges they faced. There were inconsistencies in the whole job handling process, and it came to light that the problems Julie faced with payroll was due to a culmination of many issues further up the line.

Taking Julies whole process flow into account, we presented her with a proposal to enable her to hand the engineers their jobs electronically via a mobile app, suggesting that as part of this we give them an easier way to record the amount of time spent on site.

After reviewing the designs, Julie was keen to proceed fast, realising that the benefits would be recognised immediately both with her payroll and in other areas.

We agreed a phased approach so that we could quickly implement a solution that would address some of the more stressful issues, then we'd build additional features in as required. ?

Phase 1

Following delivery of Phase 1, Julie can now create and assign jobs to each engineer. The engineers can access the job on their mobile device and see where they need to be and when. Once on site, they click to confirm the time of arrival and then click again to capture the time of completion. They can even get the customer to sign electronically to confirm the recorded hours, and agree that the job has been completed.

These updates feed through in real time to Julie in the office. At month end, all it takes is a button click and all the recorded times and hours worked are presented in a bespoke report for her to use for payroll.

Julie has been so impressed with phase 1 that we've already discussed and agreed ideas for phase 2 which will provide her with the ability to record hourly rates of pay against individual engineers. With this in place, when she runs her month end reports, not only will it calculate the hours worked but also the payment due. Integration with her accounts package is also on the agenda.

Her engineers are also happy to be using the new system and they too are suggesting enhancements to make their processes even more efficient.

Phase 3 looks focused on exploding an engineer's ability to record their work. It will involve capturing photos relating to jobs, along with adding parts and costings.

Julies feedback confirms that this project has bought about so many improvements for her business and aside of saving a great deal of time and money, it’s greatly increased her working relationship with the engineers.

Solving problems is what we do best so if you have areas of your business causing you stress, contact us for a free, no obligation consultation. Tel. 01255 830113