There are many software solutions on the market and some of them boast of being DCAA compliant, but several years ago, when I was on the search for a timekeeping solution for a small government contracting firm, I found that BigTime was the best of the bunch. Now, bear in mind that I was a freelance contract professional back then, and not a BigTime employee – in fact, before I was tasked to find a timekeeping solution for this small, but quickly growing firm, I’d never even thought much about timekeeping. However, this government contractor startup was thinking ahead and had a very specific list of requirements that they needed for their new timesheet software:
- It had to be “feature-rich”, that is, it needed to be more than just an online spreadsheet.
- It had to be affordable, and we’re talking about a small company with only three employees at the time, so the indirect dollar was as precious as diamonds.
- It had to be flexible, they wanted room to grow as new requirements came on board and new government and non-government customers were won.
- It had to be customizable, as there were some specific things that the owner wanted to be able to add into the system from time to time.
- It had to have reporting capability – gone were the days of hacking together excel spreadsheet columns and rows and hoping that the numbers were correct.
- It had to have the ability for DCAA compliant time tracking.
Frankly, that sounded like it was going to be a major pain. How was I going to find that in a software package that also met all of my other requirements? The answer: hit the bricks and test some software. After doing the first pass of down-selecting from my initial research, I started testing three different software suites: one of which was BigTime. I wasn’t chuckling long, however, because I soon found that this web-based timekeeping solution did everything that I needed.
How BigTime Works for DCAA Compliance
Not only could I specifically control who logged time on which projects, but I could also require that they enter time in the way I wanted. I could control which hours were logged as direct time vs. indirect time (what the government often refers to as billable vs. non-billable or direct vs. overhead) without the employees having to remember which was which! I could require that notes were always entered for time, which is critical if you want to be DCAA compliant and be ready for the inevitable DCAA contract audit. Also, BigTime had an entire additional layer of software rules and processes that I could turn on to ensure that people were not logging time in the future, that every hour was approved, and that every change to every timesheet hour was documented.
BigTime did not disappoint in the other requirements as well. The software has many customization capabilities, extensive custom reporting, tons of additional features (what, we can invoice out of this, too?), and a level of flexibility that I could immediately see was going to provide solutions to several other problems the small contractor was facing.
I think it’s easy to see which solution I recommended for government contracting. BigTime’s DCAA compliance took the stress out of following the regulations. If you’re on the search for the right DCAA compliant time tracking software, use this checklist or try BigTime for free to see for yourself, by clicking here.
This blog post was updated on November 13, 2020.
