4 Ways Financial Accounting Software Improves Project Billing For Services Companies

4 Ways Financial Accounting Software Improves Project Billing For Services Companies

The faster you can bill your customers, the faster that revenue is available to use as working capital. This is why streamlining billing processes is critical for services companies.

But the reality is that many smaller companies struggle with this because they use slow, unreliable manual methods for tracking employee time, approvals, expenses and cash flow.

The best way for services companies to effectively manage project billing is to use a tool that improves accuracy, reduces the need for manual data entry and eliminates redundancy. These companies need quality financial accounting software.

Of the many ways these tools improve billing processes, here are the top four.

  1. Improve accuracy: With software tools, companies can capture time spent on a project and related expenses the moment they occur. For businesses that charge by time and expenses, this is particularly important. If you miss logging even a few minutes of work — and this is easy to do when you’re tracking time after the fact — the lost revenue can really add up. For example, if you’re creating a financial report for $150 an hour to cover writing, design, editing, approvals and executional time, and a step that required two hours actually took four hours, you’ve lost $300. If you capture the time and expense immediately, you’ll be able to bill faster and get paid faster, improving your cash flow.
  2. Determine profitability of jobs by tracking time and expenses at the project or job level: When you track all of your time and expenses for each project, you can easily go back to the software and see if you made any profit on a particular job. If you discover that you took a loss, you’ll need to find out where you spent too much time or too much money for expenses. With that information at your fingertips, you can adjust your price to cover any potential loss in the future. That’s the value of financial accounting software — you can figure out if something’s not profitable and fix it for future projects.
  3. Personnel can eliminate the need for data re-entry and any collection of data on paper forms: Maintaining paper forms requires significant resources. It takes time print them out, fill them out and send them in. And that doesn’t count the cost of postage. It’s much more efficient to perform all record keeping online. By imputing data directly into the system, you also don’t have to pay someone to look at the form and retype it, which is a big waste of time.
  4. Improve cash flow and speed up payments: Because time and expenses can be captured as they occur, billing doesn’t have to wait for these items to be updated in the system. As soon as the project is completed, the information about time and expenses will instantly be available for your accounts to send an invoice. And just like that, you’ve shortened your time to payment. Cash flow is better because no one is sitting around waiting for information. Accounting doesn’t have to call project managers for more information, only to discover they’ve gone on vacation for a week, letting even more time elapse between completing the project and billing for it. The sooner you send the bill, the better your chance of getting paid on time.

You need to bill your customers faster to sustain optimal cash flow. The key to this is eliminating manual processes for dealing with your bookkeeping by using financial accounting software. These systems allow you to streamline your operations, eliminate errors and improve productivity.

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Steve’s been with SMB Suite since 1998 and has been involved with nearly every aspects of the Company’s business as a strategist, professional services executive, cloud solutions architect, and senior consultant. In his current role, Steve is responsible for SMB Suite’s revenue and oversees the execution of ERP, CRM and BI projects for customers across a broad range of industries. Steve combines his expertise in MS Dynamics GP, CRM and other Microsoft products with a strong foundation in accounting and business to identify gaps and streamline customers’ processes. Prior to co-founding SMB Suite, Steve was previously Corporate Controller for MEHLE Behr and, prior to that, Audit Senior for Ernst & Young. Steve holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Jeremy is responsible for SMB Suite’s technology vision, strategy and implementation and is the architect of the Company’s Dynamics Cloud Platform. Highly adept in every facet of managed services, ERP systems and e-commerce platforms, Jeremy’s expertise spans the implementation and support of business and financial software solutions, as well as the customization and integration of SMB Suite’s cloud ERP technology stack. He holds numerous Microsoft and industry-related certifications, and was primarily responsible for designing the Company’s progressive business services platform in the early days of the Cloud. Prior to SMB Suite, Jeremy served as the financial analyst, systems administrator, and information systems liaison for a $2 billion financial services corporation.

Monty is responsible for SMB Suite’s day-to-day operation and, most importantly, its customers. As a leader, motivator and mentor, Monty creates loyal high performance teams willing to “walk through walls” to accomplish their goals. Prior to SMB Suite, Monty served as President of The Bradshaw Group (TBG), a global distributor, manufacturer, and repair facility for digital printers. In this role, he was the Company’s ambassador to its most important domestic, European and Latin American customers and TBG achieved a best-in-class Net Promoter Score of 74 for its superb customer satisfaction. Prior to TBG, Monty served as the General Manager of Sam’s Clubs three highest grossing U.S. stores and was named Regional Operator of the Year in 1999. Monty holds a BBA in Marketing from Texas Tech University and is an active member of Business Navigators. He has been active in Vistage International, Executives in Action, the Dallas/Fort Worth Retail Executives Association, as well as, A.P.I.C.S., the leading professional association for supply chain and operations management. Monty also volunteers with Hunger Busters and ManeGait, a therapeutic horsemanship organization.

David is a proven financial and information technology professional with expertise in providing business accounting software and computing solutions. He began his career by starting and managing a successful independent consulting practice for several years. He then launched the local systems consulting unit of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneurial Services Group, leading the office into the hi-tech consulting arena. After successfully developing the unit for Ernst & Young, David founded NextCorp (which became SMB Suite in 2013) to serve the business software needs of clients throughout the US. David has made SMB Suite one of the best cloud ERP providers in the industry. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur and leader, he is a software and technology specialist, holding certifications in various Microsoft and other technologies.