A professional services accounting firm is looking for a time entry solution that seamlessly integrates time entered by the accountants for the invoices sent to their clients. Historically, the firm would invoice for their services in quarter hour increments. However, the firm’s accountants would enter their time in the system without using any standard increments of time. This resulted in the billing clerk manually changing the accountants’ time to the nearest quarter hour increment. In addition, the billing clerk spent time reviewing each accountant’s time sheet for a minimum number of hours worked each week to ensure the accountant recorded all of their time.

The firm needs a solution that only allows accountants’ time to be entered in quarter hour increments so that the time can flow into an invoice without manual manipulation. The firm also needs the solution to require a minimum amount of time be entered each week to ensure all billable time is recorded.

 

The Solution

To address these needs, the timesheet was customized in Business Portal for Microsoft® Dynamics™ SL to only allow time to be entered by accountants in quarter hour increments. When submitting time, if the accountant enters a time other than a quarter hour increment, an error message will occur that reminds the accountant that only time entered in quarter hour increments are acceptable. After clicking “OK”, the error message will release and the time entry field will be reset to 0.00 so time can be entered in the correct increment. The timesheet was also customized to require a minimum number of hours each week. The project manager, or the billing clerk, has control of setting the minimum number of hours the accountant must enter per week. When the accountant goes to submit the hours for the week and it is lower than the minimum hours required that week, an error message will occur. The message notifies the accountant that the minimum number of hours that must be submitted has not been reached and it will let the accountant know what the minimum hours should be for that specific week to reflect a valid submission.
 

The Benefit

By working with their Microsoft Business Solutions Partner, who “partners” with Plumbline Solutions to augment their service offerings surrounding Microsoft® Dynamics™ SL, the accounting firm was able to standardize the time entry process. This process would only allow time submissions that were in alignment with their invoicing practices and was deployed across all of their accountants. By adding the new functionality to the screens, the billing clerk no longer has to expend time to manually update time submissions to reflect what should be invoiced to their customer. It also saves the billing clerk time in reconciling hours submitted to the required minimum hours worked each week and helps the firm increase revenue by ensuring all billable time is recorded.