Full Sail Partners Blog (50)

For project-based firms, timesheets are essential to ensure that an employee’s time is reflected to a specific project. I’m sure you already knew this, but do you manage timesheets correctly in Deltek Vision? Here are some facts and best practices for different scenarios to help you better manage timesheets in Deltek Vision.

Intro to Timesheets in Deltek Vision

Hopefully, one of the first things your Deltek Vision Consultant explained to you about timekeeping is that timesheets create payroll cost not payroll. As a “nuts and bolts” accountant, at least one side of our brain struggles with processing this information. So let’s break it down: 

1. The employee’s job cost rate on the accounting tab of their info center should represent their rate of pay. If they are true hourly, this is quite easy to determine. On the other hand, if they are salaried the hourly rate should reflect their annual salary divided by 2080 hours.
2. If adjusted salary job costing is used, the amount should reflect their salary based on the configured interval. For example, weekly, biweekly or a set number of days.

How Timesheets Work

When a timesheet is posted an amount based on the hourly rate multiplied by the hours charged is applied to the selected projects. Thereby creating direct or indirect (overhead) labor/payroll cost in the General Ledger. The credit created by the timesheet can go to either one of two places: 

1. The Income Statement as job cost or payroll variance - This account is an overhead line item used to adjust the total of the timesheet posting to the actual payroll distributed. Furthermore, amounts that remain in this account after the payroll journal entry has been entered reflect a net of uncompensated overtime (OT) for salary staff (negative amounts), and based on this process, the premium portion of OT for hourly staff (positive amounts).
2. The Balance Sheet as a payroll liability - After the payroll journal entry has been entered, the remaining amount needs to be reclassified to the Income Statement as stated above.

Accounting Tip for Paid Time Off

Have you ever noticed your Paid Time Off (PTO) balance not being relieved even during peak vacation periods? You might want to consider booking PTO taken to the Balance Sheet. To do this, you need to configure timesheet postings for PTO to go to a PTO liability account. Then when time off is taken and posted, the debit entry reduces the liability. Based on a true computed liability, an entry can be made on a pre-determined interval to accrue additional PTO and book the expense. If you are using benefit accruals in Vision, the entry can be taken from that report.

Handling Leave without Pay

Many firms fail to account for leave without pay (LWOP) properly. Sure, there is a need to track hours for statutory purposes when employees are on leave, however, no payroll cost should be recorded. The simple fix is to enable cost rate tables and attach one to LWOP projects. The table should contain either a labor code(s) or a list of employees with a ZERO job cost rate. This will override the employees default job cost rate and avoid any recording of payroll costs.

Punch the Clock

Some of this might seem complicated at first, but these best practices should help keep your books in order. I hope that this has taken the mystery out of Deltek Vision timesheets. Now punch the clock and update your timesheets.

Let’s admit it, running a business has plenty of challenges. Why create more by overlooking the critical connections that support your business? Throughout my tenure as a business owner and entrepreneur, I have found three connections a business must have to reduce the challenges. These are connections with employees, clients, and technology. Let’s take a look at the importance of these three connections.

Connections with Employees

For starters, firms need to create a workforce that are driven to work hard and are enthusiastic about their jobs. To achieve this, employers must find ways to create connections with employees that shows them you see them as people, not just employees.

The easiest way to show an employees you see them as people is to engage them. For example, use meetings as a time to let everyone express their ideas. Ask for their opinions, and ask them to think critically about things. At the end of the meeting, people walk away feeling as if they contributed to the better good of the organization. For more about connecting employees, check out the “9 Ways to Connect with Employees” blog.       

Connections with Clients

For project-based firms, it’s important to connect with clients throughout the entire project lifecycle. Ponder this question. Have you ever completed a project for a client and you believe they are completely satisfied with your services, but find out later that they were not happy? Sometimes even a client you know may feel uncomfortable telling you something is bothering them. So how do you identify there is an issue?  

First, work with the client to setup expectations before a project starts. Secondly, continuously check-in with a client on a regular basis during the project lifecycle to manage expectations of the entire team. One of the best ways to do this is through an automated feedback process. Watch this vlog, “Client Connections – Create Unique Client Experiences” for more ideas about connecting with clients. 

Connections with Technology

Most if not all businesses use technology to support their operations. The question here is, how many different systems does a business use and how do they connect? In reality, they usually don’t seamlessly connect and share information. As a result, critical business data is stored in multiple systems, making it difficult for business leaders to make informed decisions.

For businesses to be successful, systems and applications must be in place to support all departments. Although each application is designed to support a specific function of the business, the data for these systems should start with a core ERP system and have the ability to connect to other critical systems. This allows for clear visibility throughout the entire organization. Interested to learn how you can connect to other external systems? Watch this vlog, “Systems Connections – Is Your Critical Technology Connected?” to learn more.    

Connecting It All Together

A project-based firm is so much more than the service they provide; rather, it is a network of connections that require special attention. It is important to connect and communicate with employees and clients in order to build a sturdy foundation for your business to grow from. Connecting with technology is equally as important, as doing so can maximize efficiency in operations while also providing an edge against competitors. Ensuring that these three critical connections are a priority is simultaneously ensuring your business will be successful.   

Can you name a single business that does not use some form of technology? From our personal lives to our professional lives, technology is engrained in everything we do. Firms are investing in technology at a rate never before seen. Yet, many of these critical system connections are siloed and do not talk to each other. Watch the video below to see how firms are connecting their critical business systems to get more out of their investment and share information between disparate systems

Is your business focused around your clients? While some readers may be quick to answer ‘yes’, and others quick to answer ‘no’, the truth likely remains somewhere in-between. Foster more meaningful client connections by understanding client expectations or concerns. Watch the video below to see how your firm can create a unique client experience to differentiate yourself from the competition.

What is the lifeblood of your business? Some might say clients and others might say employees. I tend to agree with the latter. Every company needs employees that are enthusiastic about their job and care about the company. Additionally, employees need to bring excitement and drive every day they show up to work in order for companies to be competitive. But how can a boss or employer create driven workforce? Simply by connecting with their employees. Let’s take a look at ways to connect with employees so your company can thrive.

Nine Ways to Connect with Employees

1. Create Dialogue – The act of conversation in itself is a way to stay connected with employees. Far too often though, bosses find themselves leading conversations and doing most of the talking. As a result, employees are not engaged and the conversation is one-way. This doesn’t have to be the case. Whenever you are engaged in conversation with employees, it’s important to ask open ended questions to encourage employees to express their ideas and opinions.
2. Keep Your Ears Open – You have two ears and one mouth for a reason. This might sound cliché, but it’s still a good thought to keep in mind. In reality, many people don’t understand how to listen. A good listener remains patient, absorbs what other people are saying, and ask engaging questions for clarity. More importantly, some people express ideas better than others, but that doesn’t diminish the value of their ideas.
3. Give Ownership to Employees – I’m not saying give them actual ownership, although that could be appropriate at times. What I mean is to allow employees to own responsibilities and tasks within the organization. Give them the power to make decisions that truly affect their job and performance.  
4. Provide a Career Path – Words and actions are two different things. Telling an employee they are doing well and they have a promising career with the company sounds nice, but it lacks an actual roadmap or path to where they are going and how to get there. Instead, find out what the employee’s career goals are and figure out a way to get them there. Put this in writing, and include challenging responsibilities to drive their personal growth. Additionally, include clear milestones that allow the employee to see they are achieving their goals.
5. Educate Employees – Education doesn’t stop when you leave school and start a career. Even more, the skills we learned in school might not be exactly applicable to where your career path is going. Any company can train their employees, but how many of you educate your employee beyond their job responsibilities? Spend time educating about soft skills and even topics that help employees grow as a person. Investing in employee education provides a path to connect with your workforce. It also shows you care.
6. Provide Guidance to Employees – One of the best learning opportunities for employees come from their boss. Furthermore, bosses provide more than explicit knowledge; they also provide a great deal of tacit knowledge. Here’s the difference. Explicit knowledge is formalized and documented. Whereas, tacit knowledge is more situational based knowledge. This experienced based knowledge is hard to teach, but as a boss, you’re in the perfect place to teach this based on your past experiences by applying this knowledge to current situations. For more about knowledge sharing, check out this whitepaper.
7. Be Flexible with Employees – Technology has changed the way we work. The good thing about this is that many professional jobs can be accomplished from nearly anywhere with an internet connection. Additionally, these roles are no longer working from to 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday and some days are longer than others are. Value your employee’s time and recognize the need for positive work to personal life balance. This allows you to connect with employees through trust, and that you know they will manage their responsibilities.
8. Honesty is the Best Policy – Honesty is a powerful personal characteristic to exemplify. In fact, honesty is a characteristic that most, if not all leadership guides list as a key characteristic of a good leader. The reason for this is employers that are honest build confidence and trust with employees.   
9. Always Remain Calm – Keep calm and connect with your employees. In other words, overreacting to stressful situations builds a wall between bosses and employees. By remaining calm and not screaming, employees find bosses more approachable and open minded.

Make It about the Employee

What this all boils down to is that employees want to be seen as people and to know that the company is invested into them. So in order to connect with employees, your goal should be to create a culture that empowers employees and shows you value them. After all, you want them to value the company as well.  

Welcome to part two of our Marketing Automation Series. In the last blog we looked at how automation tools can impact your SMB. In part two of this series we are going to dig further and examine the Deltek Vision marketing automation tools available to you within your system.

Deltek Vision Marketing Automation: Marketing Made Easier

1) Merge Fields & Templates

If you produce a lot of proposals or documents that follow a defined format (think SF330!), you will love merge fields and templates. Use this functionality to merge data directly from your Deltek Vision system to Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Word. Not only will you greatly reduce the time dump required to create these documents but your marketing efforts will gain a level of accuracy and consistency.

Use merge templates to create:

• Statement of qualification responses
• Letter proposals
• Resumes
• Cover letters
• Project cut sheets
• Reference pages
• And more!

Check out this webinar to learn more about creating proposals with Deltek Vision and Adobe InDesign.

2) Workflows

Deltek Vision workflows can greatly reduce the manual processes you manage in Deltek Vision on a daily basis. Workflows are a series of actions that your Deltek Vision system will execute based on events and triggers that occur within a specified Info Center.

For example: A workflow could be used by a proposal manager to notify a project team when a new project has been created in Vision.

Check out this webinar to learn more about Deltek Vision workflows.

3) Integrations and Connectors

Allow your marketing efforts to go further than ever before by opening your Deltek Vision system to outside software and applications. Eliminating manual processes associated with disparate systems allows your marketing team to focus their efforts on creating a quality client experience for each customer.

For example: Integrate your Deltek Vision system with your website Content Management System to capture valuable lead and customer data in your Deltek Vision CRM. Once a website contact fills out a form on your website they will be automatically added to your Deltek Vision system. Your marketing team can then implement a series of workflows to generate a personal email follow-up note a week later. Additionally you may want to consider scheduling a workflow to notify your sales team of lead activity on your website.

View this webinar to see how Deltek Vision users are creating User Defined Info Centers to create dynamic workspaces within Vision CRM.

Learn More About Deltek Vision Marketing Automation

Want to see what real users are doing automate marketing and streamline processes with their Deltek Vision CRM system? Sign up for our webinar, ‘Let’s do this!’

Creativity, when used in the accounting world, is usually considered a “no-no”. However, I am not talking about misrepresenting the state of affairs. In fact, I am talking about the exact opposite - providing the client exactly what you told them to expect at the beginning of the proposal process. Let’s take a look at how setting client expectations early can improve your firm’s cash flow. 

Setup a Project Process

I am not saying that project management and marketing get to dictate accounting functions, but I am saying that it is imperative that accounting work with project managers and marketers to ensure the signed agreements match the accounting schedule and billing possibilities. To do that, accounting needs to understand the needs of the client and the project managers, as well as the functions and limitations of the software they use for accounting and billing.

From there, you can create a project set up process that easily allows the project managers to see where they are in the project in relation to the budget and plan. This ensures the invoices match what the client was told to expect. As a result, clients are more likely to pay on time and you can count on the cash flow coming in from your clients.

Understand Reporting and Timing Requirements

In many cases, clients have specific reporting and timing requirements – some are reasonable and some are not. Involving accounting at the front end of the project to have discussions with the clients about what is possible and not possible will go a long way to ensure a smoother billing/collection process down the road.

However, accounting can’t become obstinate with the “we don’t do things that way approach.” There has to be a willingness to work with the others to solve the issues between the client desires and the current accounting process. Having he accounting staff work directly with the client to resolve the issues will ensure both understand where the other is coming from.  

Have the Right Accounting System

Understanding what the client needs and understanding what is possible in the billing system allows accounting to bridge the gap. Of course, having a system that offers many options to bill the client helps too. At a minimum, your system should allow you to create billing cycles that allow for most client timelines.

The better systems will allow for billing to be prepared with multiple options for the way the labor and expense are handled. Additionally, they have ways for managing fees and additional items such as credits. The best systems allow for changes in the invoice format so the final product has the required information in more or less where it is needed. Again, flexibility, creativity and patience are often needed.

Let the Cash Flow

Remember that a good collection process begins by communicating with the client - take the time to understand their needs and explain what is possible. Create a billing process that is flexible enough to support client expectations and is efficient enough to be managed internally. Doing so will go a long way in avoiding issues down the road.

Often times, upper management views the proposal process as a “cost of business” and don’t put forth a concerted effort to control proposal related costs. There are several ways to increase the cost-effectiveness of your proposal process, and starting with a bid/no bid process is the first step.

Did you know that 40% of AE firms have no formal bid/no bid process? This is according to the 36^th Annual Deltek Clarity AE Report. For that reason, I’m going to focus on the importance of the bid/no bid process. More specifically, why the decision can be made during any phase of the proposal process. 

Notification of New Opportunity

Let’s start by saying that if you’re receiving notification of a new opportunity within your industry when the request for proposal (RFP) is issued, your business development team is already crippling your chances of winning that opportunity. This is a huge red flag to include in your bid/no bid process. On the other hand, if they have a great relationship with the prospective client, they probably have a decent understanding of the scope of work and the project requirements. Either way, this is the first opportunity your company has to decide whether to bid or not to bid.

Honesty is the best policy, so be honest with yourself! If you specialize in building parking garages and the RFP is for a bridge, your chances of winning are already slim. Sure, you want to branch out and do more than build parking garages, but is this client the one that’s likely to give you that chance? Odds are, probably not.

Release of the RFP

Now you have the RFP that in a perfect world has a detailed scope of work and all the requirements. This is when the page turning begins with a detailed review of every word. Does your proposed solution work within the stated budget? Have you revealed any obscure requirements that are red flags? When evaluating your solution and the requirement, create a risk management plan and think about how your company has managed similar risks in the past. 

There’s the old adage, you can’t fit a round peg in a square hole. In other words, if you can’t provide a solution within the requirements of the RFP, your chances of winning are already greatly diminished. Instead proposing on this opportunity, utilize your resources on an opportunity within your company’s skill set.

During the Proposal Preparation Process  

As you begin to develop your solution, keep in mind that it’s still not too late to abandon the RFP. In some cases, the client may issue amendments or provide clarity that changes the scope of work. Other times, the proposal preparation team may find that the proposed solution has become more complex than originally thought or certain costs were overlooked. 

Usually people say “better late than never” as an excuse. However, in this case, it’s absolutely honorable to walk away from an opportunity before committing your company to something it might have difficulty delivering. In the end, winning the work doesn’t guarantee a profit or a happy client. 

Winning with a Bid/No Bid Decision

In the proposal world, there are always two winners for each RFP. Obviously, the company that wins the bid, but the less obvious is the first company to decide to focus their resources on other business opportunities. As a proposal manager, you want to increase your win rate, and at the same time, upper management has the need to win more revenue. While this puts the two sides at odds, agreeing to an effective bid/no bid process can significantly increase your proposal cost-effectiveness and possibly increase revenue for the company.   

 

    

 

 

Full Sail Partners, a Premier Partner for Deltek and the Client Feedback Tool, is pleased to announce the hire of Amy Balassone in the role of Direct Marketing Associate. In this role, Amy will work with the marketing and sales team to communicate the value of Deltek Vision to the professional services industry. With more than 12 years of customer service, sales, and marketing experience, Amy will conduct market research on management consulting firms to extend the Full Sail Partners brand beyond the AE industry.

“What has impressed me most about the company is their customer service and dedication to their clients, “ says Amy Balassone, Direct Marketing Associate. “I feel privileged to be a part of a company that takes a consultative sales approach to ensure prospects are the right fit for the software. That customer focused mentality is what makes this company great and easy to work for.”

Amy will support the company’s growth goals and provides the firm with the brand awareness development experience needed for Full Sail Partners to help project-based firms develop their systems and processes.

“Amy’s tenacious, yet easy-going personality combines the right touch needed to target new verticals,” said Sarah Gonnella, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Marketing and Sales. “We are extremely honored to have Amy join our team. What is most impressive about Amy is her drive and resourcefulness. Her varied experience with marketing and sales along with her previous experience in the Navy as a data systems technician brought the right mix for this position.”

2016 seems to be the year of the buzzword. Everywhere you look you see a new trendy term: Contextual marketing, growth hacking, marketing automation... the list continues! This blog is here to clear up the confusion and help your SMB get started with marketing automation.

  1. What are Marketing Automation Tools?

Marketing automation tools streamline tedious procedures, eliminate manual processes and give the entire organization insight into results of marketing efforts. Marketing automation tools allow us to find out more about our audience and enable marketing teams to create more impactful campaigns. Additionally, automation tools enable SMBs to do more with less resources.

  2. What is the Value of Marketing Automation Tools?

One thing to note is that marketing automation by no means replaces your marketing staff. These tools simply allow them to do more for your organization; providing your team intelligence and time saving mechanisms to make a greater impact on your organization.

Marketing can often be a love-hate relationship for many SMBs. Many firms view marketing as a hit-or-miss type of function. Either marketing positioned the firm to win the job, or they failed – there is often very little grey area. Marketing automation tools introduce a level of analytics and metrics associated to the cost of marketing efforts… bringing everything back to the almighty dollar!

  3. Won’t Automation Remove the Personal Touch?

Understand that there are varying degrees of marketing automation that can be established, and It’s important to take things one step at a time. 

Some people fear that marketing automation tools are going to remove the personal touch from marketing campaigns. Marketing automation tools often add MORE personalization to marketing efforts. These tools simply remove the time intensive processes out of the way, allowing you to spend more time creating a dynamic experience for each customer.

  4. What are Some Examples of Marketing Automation Tools?

These days there are dozens of marketing automation tools. HubSpot, Act-On, TweetDeck, Hootsuite… the list goes on and on.  These tools can help you manage tasks ranging from social media publishing to inbound lead scoring. But to get the most out of these tools you need to make sure that they connect and talk to your CRM system. Doing so will give you one centralized location to manage all of your marketing tools.

As you can see, it is important to invest the proper time and planning to think through your marketing and sales process and develop an automation plan that fits your organizational goals.

We would like to learn more about what your firm is using for marketing automation. In exchange, we will provide you a free download of the Vision Mail Management Info Center. Also, be sure on the lookout for our next marketing automation blog.