Management with Less Effort

Transcription

1 Management with Less Effort Top 7 BillQuick Business Reports A BQE Software Insight Report BQE Software, Inc. (888)

2 Copyrights 2006 BQE Software, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language in any form by any means without written permission of BQE Software, Inc. Trademarks BillQuick, BillQuick Basic, BillQuick Lite, BillQuick Pro and BillQuick Enterprise are registered trademarks of BQE Software, Inc. Other parties trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective owners and should be treated as such.

3 Table of Contents Executive Summary... 1 Work-in-Hand + Staff Billing Performance 2 Cash Receipts Year To Date Comparison... 4 Gross Margin... 5 Project Manager Billing Analysis.. 6 Accounts Receivable Aging.. 7 Work in Progress. 9 Staff Billing Performance Again 10 Bonus Automatically Schedule A Meeting With Your Business Reports... 11

4 Executive Summary Less Time Managing, More Time For Your Passion You have a passion for your business. It s why you do it. The best part, you get paid for your passion. But, compensation carries the burden of managing a business. With success comes greater demand on your time. If you don t spend time managing the business, you may not have a business for long. But practically speaking, most partners, principals and managers also drive revenues. They are the most profitable people in their companies. Less time spent delivering services means lower revenue and profit. You could (and probably do) add more hours to your week to make up for fewer hours of compensated passion. That s time away from family, friends, community, and so on. BillQuick helps you spend less time managing by delivering real-time information. Seven top reports minimize the effort. 1. Work in Hand 2. Cash Receipts Year To Date Comparison 3. Gross Margin 4. Project Manager Billing Analysis 5. Accounts Receivable Aging 6. Work in Progress 7. Staff Billing Bonus: BillQuick also lets you schedule reports, then send them to yourself to prompt a business meeting with yourself! Check out the bonus section. Throughout the entire BillQuick Family of Software, BQE Software designs the features and functions with a key maxim in mind: Maximize billable time, Minimize non-billable hours BQE Software, Inc. Page 1

5 Work-in-Hand + Staff Billing Performance BillQuick s Work in Hand (WIH) report informs you about your work backlog, that is, how much work is waiting to be completed in the coming weeks and months. Using this report plus a few other pieces of information, you can rapidly compute the Key Performance Indicator (KPI): Months Work in Hand. BQE Software s recommended KPI, Months Work in Hand, differs from other Work in Hand indicators, such as Payroll Covered by Work in Hand. If more than half of annual payroll is covered, you re doing okay. In contrast, Months Work in Hand focuses on revenues: Unbilled revenues (WIH) and how many months of billings you have in hand. Note: For the most effective Work In Hand report, you should enter the contract amounts for all contract types, including Hourly and Recurring BQE Software, Inc. Page 2

6 Using the WIH and Staff Billing Performance (SBP) reports on the previous page, Months Work in Hand is calculated as: Total Unbilled Amount from WIH Report * 12 Months Total Amount Billed past 12 Months = ($314,400 *12) / $288, = 13.1 Months What opportunities can you identify from BillQuick reports? Check out Cash Receipts Year To Date Comparison, Gross Margin, and Project Manager Billing Analysis below. These sections continue the example above BQE Software, Inc. Page 3

7 Cash Receipts Year-to-Date Comparison Examining the Last Year and Current Year columns, you can quickly identify how long-standing and newer clients contributed to the company s cash flow. Equally important, when trying to fill the Work in Hand hopper, the Last Year, Current Year, and Difference columns point to clients who may be candidates for additional services. For example, projects for clients that produced cash inflow last year but none this year (Difference negative or low value) point to clients who may be open to additional needs assessment. Perhaps the Client Memo field in BillQuick or your contact manager contains notes about other services you discussed or proposed, but that the client did not want to consider at that time. Maybe you identified other service opportunities, but did not bring them up because they might have overwhelmed the prospect/client with too much at one time. Tapping your client relationship, you can now raise these services and how they benefit the client now. Similarly, current year projects may point to ancillary services or related projects. In short, gaining new business from current clients is the easiest, least costly, and (usually) fastest way to fill the Work in Hand hopper BQE Software, Inc. Page 4

8 Gross Margin Your company does not need just more work, it needs more profitable work. The Gross Margin report shows which clients and projects are profitable. Reviewing multiple clients, you can infer what services are more profitable. Thus, you can gain both a key list of services to market as well as identify the clients which might be candidates (i.e. profitable clients). The Gross Margin report shows the gross margin percentage for every invoice sent to a client for whatever period of time you wish. You can gauge gross margins for a client and their projects. As you scan down the list, compare the margin for each invoice to your company goal (e.g. 40% gross margin to cover overhead + profit percentage). As you review the projects billed, compare their margins too. Taking the example above, you can see that some invoices margins exceeded 50% while others fell below the goal. Two were negative, indicating they ate into profits. With further review (e.g. notes in the Project Memo field or your contact manager), you might clarify the picture: A Demanding Client. You wrote off or under-billed some elements of projects to keep the client happy. The project manager was smart to do so with lower dollar services. You decide it is worth it to go after more business with this client if demands are built into contract amounts and bill rates, and if project managers and others manage demands that impact profit margins. A similar review with other clients helps clarify and prioritize candidates BQE Software, Inc. Page 5

9 Project Manager Billing Analysis Project managers in some companies are responsible for proposing new business. After identifying clients to approach about additional services, you want to identify who are the best project managers to go after the business. In other words, you want to check the track records for getting the business and for the company getting paid. One source of information is the Project Manager Billing Analysis. Sorted by manager, you can quickly see credits, write-offs, paid and billed amounts by invoice. For Project Manager AM, of the projects billed to-date, all are paid in full. There are not credits or write-offs that eat into profits. While other factors play a part, generally the better the individual values and the totals, the more likely this project manager will bring in substantial, profitable business. In many cases, paid and billed amounts on this report are not equal. Higher volume billings is a good sign, but you need to know how long it takes to get paid. For this, you would check Accounts Receivable Aging reports (next section) BQE Software, Inc. Page 6

10 Accounts Receivable Aging Aging Summary lets you see at a glance how much of your investment in clients is at risk. The older receivables are, the greater the likelihood they will not be paid in full. In some industries, over 60 days old is a danger signal. In others, over 90 or 120 days means heightened risk. (BillQuick also includes a 120 day aging report.) Be sure to review this report in conjunction with the Work in Progress report (next section). Aging Summary is a good starting point for prioritizing collections effort. Then you can go to the Aging report for the detail needed when staff and managers make collection calls BQE Software, Inc. Page 7

11 Following from the example in the previous section, identifying project managers to propose new business can also utilize the Aging Summary. Filtering the report for a single project manager quickly tells you how well collections are going on their projects. At first pass, totals for JA s projects show more than two-thirds are over 90 days old. Closer inspective makes it clear that a very high percentage are government clients. In your company slow collection of government invoices may be normal. Other clients also show over 90 day balances, though the magnitude is relatively minor. Reviewing these amounts along with the Project Manager Billing Analysis would provide a better picture whether JA should be proposing new business BQE Software, Inc. Page 8

12 Work-in-Progress Work in Progress (WIP) shows how much unbilled time and expense are invested in projects and clients. Company WIP accumulation guidelines would be compared with these numbers. If necessary, the review would prompt an immediate call to the client to post a retainer or to pay down the investment (bill it and get prompt payment). In addition to the WIP report, BillQuick s Agent (add-on module) can also monitor WIP against a user-defined threshold. When the threshold is reached, you receive an alert on your BillQuick screen, by , and/or as a text message. To gauge the full magnitude of investment how deeply you are financing client operations, review the WIP report with the Aging Summary. WIP + AR represents your total client investment BQE Software, Inc. Page 9

13 Staff Billing Performance Again Staff Billing Performance shows reported hours, amounts billed, and effective hourly rate. First, the report makes it easy to compare hours for staff and managers. For example, when looking at differences in year-to-date billable versus non-billable hours, questions like why prompts drilling down to additional information. An employee with higher non-billable hours may be on your company s short-list for promotion, and thus, racked up more training hours than normal. Similarly, drilling down into differences in year-to-date total hours may bring out reasonable explanations one employee took a leave of absence and another started in the second quarter of the year. Comparing the Hourly Rate (Effective Bill Rate) can help identify employees who need training and/or additional support or tools to be more efficient BQE Software, Inc. Page 10

14 Bonus Schedule A Meeting With Your Business Reports Agent, an add-on module for BillQuick, performs three critical tasks that save you time: 1. Automatically generates and delivers reports 2. Automatically alerts you to changes in your company database 3. Automatically monitors and alerts staff and managers when reported hours are tardy or falls short Schedule and Deliver Reports In Agent s Report Scheduler, you select any standard or custom BillQuick report and apply filters as needed. Each report can have its own frequency: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and so on. You choose the start date for the scheduled report and its frequency. Next, you choose how you a report delivered. To ensure you are reminded of the business meeting, send the report to yourself (and others for a group meeting) via . It arrives as a PDF attachment. Its presence in your Inbox reminds you to set aside time for review (often immediately after it arrive). Agent s Report Scheduling capabilities extend time-saving, client relationship-building, and other benefits by putting information managers and owners need in their hands in a timely manner. With timely information, other company procedures often improve as well. For example, because project managers and owners need timely budget-to-actual information, this drives staff 2006 BQE Software, Inc. Page 11

15 and managers to enter their time and expenses daily. Even at the highest levels of a company, this drives home the fact that everyone drives company revenues. The old adage, No profit, no firm, is quickly internalized at all levels of the company. Note: As noted above, Agent is not limited to report automation. It also monitors time entry to ensure staff and management record their hours in a timely manner. You can see tardy timekeepers at any time. If desired, you can automatically send an enter your timesheet reminder . Also, Agent Alerts monitor values in your company database, such as budget used, project percent complete, and total work in progress, against thresholds you define. For more information about benefits gained from BillQuick Time Billing and Project Management, contact us at: BQE Software, Inc. (888) (310) Sales@bqe.com Please visit our web site at and sign up for a live, FREE, online product presentation. You can also download a free trial copy BQE Software, Inc. Page 12