Time Sheets in Microsoft CRM for Professional and Consulting Services Notes
In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (as well as 3.0) there is natural way to track consulting or field service time logs - in Task, associated with the Case. When you close the case - you will have to specify billable time (and you will see summary time rolled from Tasks for your reference).
The best results could be achieved if you setup Contract and Contract Lines (in Contract Line you can specify budget in minutes,
obviously not very convenient, but you can easily convert them into hours) and associate the Case (or it could be considered as Work Order) with the Contract Line. In theory it is very elegant solution just out of the box, however it is quite complex for consultant or technician to browse Microsoft CRM user web interface to find the Case, where he or she is supposed to create new task and log time there. We suggest several improvements:
1. Open Task Greed. This is custom Microsoft CRM SDK programmed windows, where you as technician see all your open task and you can create new task on the fly from there, where you will be suggested to pick one of the cases, owned by you or shared with you. This greed should improve your performance dramatically and make it similar to old-good-days online text Unix based applications
2. Management Approvals. You manager sees all your tasks and her or his duties is to review, modify and approve your Timecards. When your time logs are approved by manager - they are ready for export into the text CSV file. At this point - your IT people should be able to integrate your timelog export files into your Accounting Application. It could be Microsoft Dynamics GP (integration via Integration Manager), SAP Business One (via Data Transfer Workbench), QuickBooks, MYOB, PeachTree or any generic Accounting application, supporting text files import into Sales module
3. Openness for further customization. This Microsoft CRM Project Tracking modules is very simple and ready for being tuned for your specific business needs. For example, we can create custom UserId for your numerous technicians, associated with only one MS CRM user - in this case you do not have to purchase thousand of MS CRM user licenses (your technicians do not really need to work in Microsoft CRM, the only duty for them should be logging the time). We have proven codes integrating into Microsoft Dynamics GP via eConnect (which could be set to work in Real Time) or into SAP Business One via SB1 SDK
4. MS CRM Timesheet reporting. Reports are available or could be created or modified in MS CRM SSRS report wizard (and you can further tweak them in Microsoft CRM Visual Studio)
5. Please, call us: 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com
