Managing tasks, projects, and a workforce can be challenging, even more so for time and expense reporting. As the production and service delivery industry has undergone significant sophistication, it is only fitting that the associated processes undergo a turnaround just as profound. This is why traditional Excel and time tracking spreadsheet Google Sheets cannot keep up and sustain the level of delivery businesses and project managers require to keep up with the times.

You may argue that these older methods are cheaper and more profitable than paid solutions like BigTime — but that is not at all true. The biggest advantage of BigTime over spreadsheets is the automation of business operations tracking and documentation, which can be a critical factor in large companies and fast-moving industries with clients demanding timely updates.

Other advantages of BigTime over spreadsheets include:

Accurate Measurement of Success

With Proof of Value being a critical component in client acquisition processes, businesses can accurately trace and measure the impact of their deliverables on their clients’ business and their satisfaction altogether. The effect can be documented and presented as proof that your services are credible.

In addition, your ability to track your operation enables you to manage resources better and provide insights into the future of your business. This way, you can tweak your service delivery for better results.

Point Source Management

It is tedious utilizing several applications for different aspects of a process. For example, as a project manager, you are required to use a calendar, accounting software and CRM software to capture the majority of your job description. With your attention divided among these apps, it is easy to miss a figure or a key variable when entering values into the monthly timesheet. Marginal error is increased as a result.

Improved Customer Relationship

Because every part of production and service delivery is monitored, you are able to identify point failures in the system rather than rely on intuition alone. With the workflow efficiency of your organization visible in charts and graphs, it makes improvements more apparent and deducible.

You need to understand the concepts of time and expenses with which we discuss the limitations of project time tracking Excel templates to appreciate these advantages.

What is Time and Expense?

The timely completion of a project and client satisfaction are pivotal in return business transactions, as every structure depends on the efficiency of the workflow resource management. Profit is key to the sustenance of your business, and expenses can shift the margin in any direction. With the cost of running your business in complete control, you have the power to determine how everything fares.

Time and expense are managed processes in which time and resource utilization are recorded and processed concerning projects. This practice aims to improve workers’ productivity and assign tasks according to the strengths of your workforce. Regardless of the type of business you run, time and expense tracking systems can turn your business around in terms of workflow effectiveness, employee collaborations, real-time reports, and profitability.

It is not uncommon for employees to submit a false time and expense report for increased pay — especially when utilizing a manual time and expense tracking spreadsheet. Recent time and expense tracking apps have eliminated such occurrences. Project managers can monitor employees’ activities as they carry out their assignments, ensuring that they log the correct numbers. As a result, business operations are more transparent.

Improving workers’ productivity is always viewed through the lenses of task allocation, ensuring proper rest time between projects, and setting realistic deadlines. However, little attention is paid to the timely payment of wages and salaries. Time and expense ensure workers are paid what they are owed when due because the arsenal of tools integrated into the BigTime software makes it easy to automate bookkeeping calculations.

Time and Expense Management

For large organizations with several departments and complex interactive processes, it can be tedious to manually input the timestamps of each employee or compute the different metrics that make up the framework of your business. These automated solutions and an all-in-one tool like BigTime can be a gamechanger for your business.

According to SPI Research, organizations that use paid automated software and services have superior productivity rates of up to 71%. While the users of the time and expense tracking spreadsheet are not so far behind at 68%, you must understand that marginal differences in returns may be all that is needed to scale your organization. BigTime helps you zone in on the individual components of your business, identify the shortcomings and amend them. You can accurately determine and measure expenses and profit per project type and restructure your pricing models to align with the current trends and market situation.

However, the number of software applications popping up has made it challenging to tell which is worth investing in. Certain factors must be considered in your hunt for the best time and expense tracking app, and they may not be deal-breakers for other prospects.

The best time and expense management apps can handle bookkeeping fundamentals, facilitate multiple finance reporting options, offer cloud support, and are practicable. If all of these basics are integrated, you may have found the right time and expense tracking app for your business.

Some apps like Expensify nail these points but fail to consider the lives of their clients outside the workplace. Client reviews of the Expensify app on Trustradius center around overzealous and political marketing, website bugs, and overpriced plans compared to BigTime.

Time and Expense Software

Time and expense software are applications businesses use to track time spent on a given task and the cost of its actualization. A good time and expense software solution must be capable of collating expense receipts, processing associated claims, and paying back staff for debt incurred during a task. Even better, these processes should be automated, not require manual inputs, and be able to be seen and measured in real-time.

Organizations use time card software to monitor project costs, allocate tasks and projects, and track productivity and strategy effectiveness. As time and expense reports are sensitive and can impact growth projection and perception, expense tracking apps have built-in artificial intelligence components to mitigate errors due to human intervention (like multiple entries of timestamps).

Though businesses and corporations may share similar usage and app utilization, the results are never one-way. Invoice and payment tracking can improve client communication and cause them to do repeat businesses. Others derive satisfaction from their business operations, relative seamlessness, and efficiency. The satisfaction spectrum is endless when using time tracking and billing software for consultants.

An advantage that is often overlooked when you use BigTime software is the ease with which your business can run without administrative overhead limiting and restricting operations. Expense trackers can be integrated with credit cards, meaning that expenses can be tracked in real-time and on the go without manual entry. In addition, the software is business-specific and allows you to apply your organization’s policy to hasten the verification and approval of expenses without needing to follow “due process.”

Time and Expense App

One of the most prominent features of any time and expense software you will find today is cloud support. It is amazing how you can access the data, info, and files on these platforms from anywhere in the world with the internet. However, some portion of the client base needs an on-the-go variant for smartphones where a quick login into the app can be used to track productivity and assign tasks. Unlike smartphones, workstations are chunky and immobile -- a definite disadvantage in today’s fast-moving business world.

BigTime caters to this subset of clients needing a more pocket-friendly variant of the software. The app is lightweight and efficient, ensuring that it runs smoothly on phones with the barest processing power. Except for the bigger screen of a work PC; the smartphone app possesses similar features and has the benefit of being much more portable and convenient for everyday use. Having the app close to hand helps ensure that employees are capturing the necessary information in a timely manner.

This provision makes time and expense jobs and related tasks easier to complete. This includes but is not limited to comparing the project costs, expense sorting and assessing potential and future strategies to improve business operations. While these tasks are extremely important from a business tracking perspective, employees might find them tedious and mind-numbing. Providing tools that allow your employees to maintain accurate business records while still feeling productive throughout their day is a win-win scenario.

Request a Demo Today for Improved Time and Expense Reporting With BigTime

With the growing need for improved profitability and efficiency levels among businesses and large corporations, time and expense reporting is fast becoming one of the most critical aspects of business operations. BigTime provides accurate but automated measurement and tracking of time and expenses for each project. Request a demo to learn more today!