This article is about the importance and usefulness of time and expense tracking and invoicing management applications in organizations. It also talks about the emergence of cloud based applications that can offer more flexibility and convenience for such processes.
Over the years, time and expense management systems have become an essential part of all sizes of organizations. Employees need to accurately keep track of their work hour schedules so that the organization gets paid by the clients for the dedicated amount of time and expenses for their projects. As the organization keeps growing, the employee strength increases and so does the number and variety of projects handled by the employees. Inevitably, it becomes a headache for the organization to allocate and optimize resources with considerable visibility to fetch the maximum output as well as to maintain the account receivables with utmost accuracy.
There lies the importance for a time and expense (T&E) management system. This kind of a system can help an organization to effectively manage T&E entries and timely generate the invoices in order to keep the cash inflow running. An efficient application can keep track of all the work hours based on tasks, projects and/or resources for a particular client in order to bill the clients correctly and timely. It can also contribute to streamline the workflow at various levels of running projects. Organizations, big or small, are increasingly turning up to third party providers or for in-house development team to implement T&E management system as per organizational structure and project requirements. AccountSight is example of one such application product that enables single users as well as organizations to manage their project schedules and invoicing data efficiently.
Employees, however, do not always feel free to use these applications. Most of the time, it takes a whole new system for them to understand thoroughly before they can actually fill the timesheets up online. Often the T&E applications are complex and difficult to interpret for the users. It requires a lot of time to first learn the system and then completing the process on a regular basis. Most of the employees consider this tasks as out of their project scope and nothing but waste of time.
Therefore, it is important for organizations to opt for a system that is simple and easy to use. It should have rich functionalities to track time and expenses incurred in projects, separately and together. There should be some efficient tools to analyze the data stored in the system so that it can keep track of all invoiced and un-invoiced T&E entries and accordingly bill the clients for un-invoiced time and expense sheets. For example, AccountSight provides an effective dashboard view which helps to slice and dice all the data and make reports of invoiced and un-invoiced T&E entries based on different parameters. Also, convenience is very important for such a system. As employees have to submit timesheets on a regular basis, it is essential that they can add, save and submit T&E entries as well as upload any necessary document/file without any hassles.
Currently existing web-based or browser-based systems have some restrictions when it comes to convenience and user experience. Such a system asks for certain hardware and software requirements. Employees can full up timesheets only while working in office network. But if an employee is working out of office or in some other remote place, he/she may not be able to login to the system and submit timesheets.
This difficulty can be overcome by newly emerging cloud based systems. A cloud based system requires no upfront investment. A computer with internet connection will suffice. The system can be accessed anytime anywhere as it demands no software or hardware. All the data is stored in the cloud and can be freely accessed. Employees, irrespective of where they are working from, can simply login to a computer or a mobile and can submit timesheets on regular basis. AccountSight being a cloud based application offers all these advantages in order to optimize the time tracking and invoicing process with minimal complexity.
Organizations of varied sizes are increasingly adopting time and expense management applications into their systems. Even individual professionals and freelancers who work alone or in small groups are understanding the importance of such a tool that can help them to collaborate more effectively with the clients and keep the payment system more transparent. And with the ever growing complexity of organizational hierarchy and increase in clientele, cloud based applications are sure to make a big impression in near future in addressing the timesheet and billing management issues in organizations.
