Full Sail Partners Blog | Amanda McClain

The Full Sail Partners’ Vantagepoint Readiness Report remains the essential launchpad for any firm transitioning to Deltek Vantagepoint. This comprehensive tool is your guide to cleanup efforts and strategic planning as you consider the upgrade from Deltek Vision to Vantagepoint. It’s the perfect starting point for firms aiming to navigate the complexities of this process with confidence and clarity. 

Where to Begin 

Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) and professional services firms increasingly focus on Deltek Vantagepoint. The mix of excitement and hesitation surrounding the upgrade is palpable. At Full Sail Partners, we’ve developed solutions to help ease the transition. Our clients frequently address questions like: 

• “What do I need to do before the upgrade?”
• “When should we plan the upgrade?” 
• “How will the upgrade impact our business operations?” 

The answers vary based on your Deltek environment and the state of your data. That’s where the Vantagepoint Readiness Report comes in. 

Start with a High-Impact Tool 

As a Deltek Partner with over two decades of experience, Full Sail Partners has guided countless firms through upgrades, implementations, conversions, and migrations. Many firms begin their journey by exploring resources like our Preparing for Deltek Vantagepoint webinar series, the Deltek Readiness Portal, or the Client Assistance Program (CAP). While these are helpful, the Vantagepoint Readiness Report offers unique insights into your specific database. The report provides clear insights, identifies potential issues, and offers a detailed plan to address data cleanup and strategic planning before the upgrade. Here’s why this tool is invaluable: 

• Alleviate anxiety: Gain a clear plan for areas that need cleanup and attention, allowing you to start with confidence while managing other responsibilities.  

• Quick and easy database inventory: In just 30 minutes, the report highlights potential duplicates and irrelevant records, saving countless hours of manual effort.  
• Consulting time included: A Full Sail Partners’ consultant will spend an hour reviewing the report with your upgrade team, helping you digest findings and plan the next steps. 
• Eliminate manual steps: Save time with an automated inventory script, allowing your team to focus on preparing data and preview environments.   
• Tailored insights: Get a detailed view of your specific Deltek environment, going beyond generic resources. Your Full Sail Partners’ consultant will develop a customized plan based on your goals.  We will discuss what items are crucial to address before the upgrade, while other topics can be completed at any time, and sometimes helpful to revisit after the upgrade. We will also discuss opportunities to save the work created in your test environment and apply it to your live database. 
• Uncover hidden data: Identify data from unused modules that may require cleanup before upgrading.  
• Customized next steps: Every firm’s use of Deltek is unique; our consultants help prioritize actions specific to your needs. Learn what modules are included and those that are no longer available in Vantagepoint, and how to best move forward. Discuss the merging of several Vision info centers into Vantagepoint Hubs. For example, the merging of Vision clients and vendors into Vantagepoint firms. We provide best practices combining these info centers.  
• Trusted expertise: Count on Full Sail Partners to guide you through your Deltek journey with proven strategies and support. 

Maximize the Results 

The Vantagepoint Readiness Report identifies key areas that need attention or discussion before upgrading, ideally before obtaining a preview environment. The simple process involves running a script to generate a detailed Excel report. Here are some of the insights it provides: 

• Identifies potential duplicate vendors and clients
• Produces a list of workflows
• Compiles user-defined fields and grids
• Highlights custom report files in use 
• Flags duplicate columns across vendors, clients, leads, and contacts 
• Displays key formats for various info centers 
• Details labor cross charge, overhead allocation, and revenue generation settings 
• Shows database table sizes 
• Identifies unposted transactions, including timesheets and expense reports 
• Highlights plans non-compliant with Vantagepoint (iAccess) requirements 
• Flags info center numbering inconsistencies

Leverage Your Resources 

Investing in the right resources can transform a daunting project into a manageable task. The Vantagepoint Readiness Report is a prime example. With a typical turnaround time of about two weeks, depending on schedules, this tool provides clarity and direction. By rolling up your sleeves and letting the report do its magic, you can confidently identify and prioritize the next steps for your Vantagepoint upgrade. 

Let’s Get Started 

The Vantagepoint Readiness Report is just the beginning. Full Sail Partners offers a suite of additional resources to assist with your transition to Vantagepoint. Ready to take the next step? Let us know how we can help you make this year one of seamless upgrades and enhanced efficiency! 

I believe we could all say, we question what gets put into the ‘snail mail’ these days. Especially if it is a sizeable check for your professional services firm. Will it arrive on time? Will it be lost? Will the check end up in the wrong hands? So many variables!

Not only are you concerned with the ability of the check to show up at its destination, but the timeline of when the payment will clear the bank. Sometimes this can take weeks, which might affect how fast you can reconcile your books. Add in the influx of employees working from home, and now you have even more concerns with printing the actual checks.

Accounts Payable (AP) as a manual process increases the likelihood of potential fraud and creates uncertainty, which could eventually affect your professional services firm’s cash flow. So how does a company simplify this process, alleviating the longer timeline and potential for discrepancies? You automate your Accounts Payable process!

Benefits of Automating Your AP Process

The AP process is one of the most important tasks a professional services firm performs daily. Automating it allows you visibility into every vendor payment easily to see its status, and an automated AP process can be fully integrated and streamlined to your preferences.

Although AP automation is not a recent technology, it has come a long way over the years. It is surprising that so many firms have not embraced this technology. Maybe it’s because they feel doing it manually will be more accurate, or they think their current process is efficient and cost-effective. So, let’s look at the benefits of automating the AP process and see if these preconceived notions have merit.

Going Paperless and Reducing Error

Accounts Payable is a paper-intensive process that requires printing, copying, storing, and retrieving paper. Additionally, manual processes are slow and are prone to human error rather than being more accurate as one may think. The paper-based process of printing and mailing checks can be transformed into a digital process of selecting, processing, and scheduling your electronic payments against your AP.

With AP automation, invoices are stored digitally, and paper, shipping costs, and manual entry are eliminated, saving money and ensuring accuracy, while also speeding up the entire payment process. Your increased visibility into payment status will also help simplify reconciliation and help to avoid duplicate entries.

Improving Employee Productivity

The AP process is a repetitive and time-consuming manual task. For instance, processing an invoice manually requires a person to copy information from an invoice and add it to the accounting books. There is no longer a need to manually reenter information for ACH payments or to recreate a physical check with automation.

When a professional services firm automates the AP process, employees are relieved of doing these tasks and can focus their efforts on more profitable pursuits. The opportunity for error is lessened and more time is available for your employees to be more productive in other areas of business.

Getting Insight into Your Firm’s Finances

It’s difficult to manage your professional services firm’s finances if you can’t see them. Solutions like spreadsheets or pen and paper hinder your firm’s ability to generate accurate financial reports. With automation, digital audit trails for all payments whether it be a physical check, credit card, or an ACH are available to ensure you clearly see what stage each of your payments is in.

You can immediately offset the liability and reconcile payments versus waiting for them to clear. Furthermore, being able to see who you owe money allows you to predict future firm spending and avoid late payment fees and penalties. With AP Automation, your firm’s financial picture is easily accessible and therefore manageable.

Gaining Control of the Procurement Process

Procurement policies are hard to enforce if you do not have a way to approve a purchase before it’s made. Using an automated AP solution allows firms to set up an approval process that ensures purchases are in compliance with firm policy. Professional services firms can gain control of their spending by knowing when a purchase is made prior to being issued an invoice which promotes transparency.

Automating AP is a Win-Win Situation for All

With actual reduction in errors, cost savings and a clear view of firm finances, the preconceived notions of not using AP automation are certainly without merit. And there’s even more benefit to automation. An automated AP solution allows vendors to submit invoices to a designated email address or webpage which reduces the risk of losing invoices.

With the opportunity for error decreasing and your employees' productivity increasing, it is a win-win situation for everyone involved. AP automation also ensures you pay your vendors on time, which makes them happier to work with your firm. Not sure if your firm is ready to automate?

The necessity to turn in timesheets every two weeks is never at the forefront of your employees' minds. They are focused on their day-to-day tasks. Some employees stay ahead of the game and create their timesheets as they go. Others are swamped with their workload and struggle to keep them current and completed on time. However, it is essential in nearly every industry to keep the circle of business moving and income coming in. So features are needed to make the timesheet process seamless and most efficient.

Poor timesheet management inherently leads to inefficient processes later. Miscoding timesheets may cause imprecise reports and incorrect invoices. It could also require additional time to correct and transfer time to the proper projects. Most importantly, incorrect timesheet entry affects the cash flow of your company, due to delaying the processing of client invoices.

In Deltek Vantagepoint, the process has been simplified and made more user-friendly for the end user. To start, timesheets should be entered daily and submitted on time. Secondly, project managers must always ensure they are reviewing the timesheets. Timesheets should then be corrected before they are posted to the project.

Features of Timesheets in Deltek Vantagepoint to Improve Efficiency

Accurate and efficient timesheet management policies and procedures are necessary and should be incorporated into your culture. This, along with daily entries and strict deadlines for timesheet submissions. Fortunately, Deltek Vantagepoint has a variety of tools to help assist project managers in this process.

• Floor Checks can help you ensure that your employees complete their timesheet entries on time. You can do a floor check to review the status of time entries for your employees for a specific period or day. This will show the employees’ expected hours versus the actual hours that were entered. Additionally, there is email functionality available, so you can email your employees directly and let them know to complete their timesheets. You can enable notifications within the system or create email templates for the reminders.
• Unposted Labor Report is a standard project report that shows all timesheet data in unposted transaction entry files and all timesheets that are in progress, submitted, or approved but not posted. This enables project managers to see what has been charged to their projects before they are posted. It is preferred to correct the timesheets before they are charged to the projects.
• Project Reports with Unposted Time can be included in project reports by using the unposted time option. Project managers can then see the labor that is charged to their projects throughout the time period.
• Line-item Approval allows project managers to have control over their project labor costs to make sure labor is posted to the correct project. It allows project managers to only see their projects when in the approval stage. Vantagepoint will let you know if only part of the line items subject to line-item approval have been approved, yet others have not been approved or have been rejected.
• Timesheet Audit Trail allows you to see if there has been a change made to the timesheet after it has been saved or submitted. You can make timesheet comments required, or just track the change without additional explanation. Audit trails can be used to track billing transfers. You may find the timesheet audit trail in employee reporting.
• Copy from Prior Timesheet option allows you to copy projects you have previously or frequently charge time to. You can select this option once in your current timesheet. This option saves you from having to create your project list repeatedly for frequent projects. Timesheet comments are also saved in a drop-down box to select from. So, if you have used the same comment previously, you may select that option versus having to write the same thing repeatedly.
• Deltek Time & Expense for Vantagepoint app is now available to access your timesheets when you are on the go. Not in front of your computer? No problem. You can capture expenses from anywhere and upload receipts immediately. Approvers may also approve timesheets and send reminders to employees via the mobile app. Keeping up with your timesheets has never been easier!

Get Your Timesheets Done with Deltek Vantagepoint

With all of these amazing features in Deltek Vantagepoint at your fingertips, timesheet management is within your grasp. Keep the circle of business moving, and that income coming in. Start with daily timesheet reminders, and eventually, you will develop a plan that makes timesheet management best practices part of your firm’s culture.