How much time do you spend each day filling out timesheet, and how quickly can you transfer reported statements to client invoices? Do you work as an individual consultant, or do you have colleagues with whom you create company revenues?

Freelancer vs. company

If you work as an individual freelancer, you probably do not need to prove the efficiencies of your work to your direct client. You need only to print and send an invoice, which can be done with any solution based on Excel plus or a free invoice tool. You may get stuck when you want to retrospectively check your own work results, but with a little Excel literacy, you should be fine. However, this solution will not work for commercial companies in which human time is the most valuable resource.

Effective reporting to higher profit

Once the contracts for clients include a larger number of workers (two is usually enough), with simple Excel records you will run into problems. Why? Because Excel does not provide data sharing and reporting that companies need to evaluate the effectiveness of time spent on a contract.

The more people involved in the process of time-sheeting, reporting, and invoicing, the harder it is to get meaningful output for managerial decision making. In companies where the human component equals a high proportion of the costs, a lack or delay of timesheet reporting can negatively affect the company’s profit. The difficulty level of processing individual results using Excel can be so high that it can lead to outright rejection. If you can’t measure, production, managing, evaluating, and motivating staff becomes very hard to do.

Reducing administrative burden

If the company tries to secure contract reporting using Excel, how much manual effort does it take to check data consistency? What about the program’s reporting ability to capture data transmitted by individual workers? What amount of errors occur in this manual process? All manual work associated with programs like Excel increases the demand on the operating costs for timesheet tracking.
With Atollon, all the above-described work is not necessary. Managers and administrative staff can thus concentrate on providing more value to the customer instead of working on paperwork. In the Professional Atollon Edition, it is possible to completely automate this entire process.

Fast invoicing for improved cash flow

As soon as the team ensures in-time submission of timesheets, with the Atollon solution it will be much easier for companies to quickly invoice clients, regardless of how the work is invoiced (i.e., according to hours, number of items, flat rate, etc.). Atollon’s invoicing solution clearly shows all work measures, making it clear to clients all human capital costs and related productivity.

Links to other databases and processes

Imagine that you would be able to work really efficiently and that you only need to enter data into an information system once. Imagine that you can affect all processes within a single system, from the client acquisition process — through entering contract/project data and individual work task — to individual timesheets and invoicing within the Atollon system. Also imagine that you do not have to worry about filling out appropriate timesheets by individual workers with the correct rates and the fulfillment of all contract terms negotiated with the client. This scenario is possible with Atollon.