One effect of the current uncertain economic outlook is that decisions to increase headcount are being deferred. As a result of this unwillingness to commit to full time talent within the finance sector, there is a particularly strong demand for contractors with the pre-requisite skills and expertise to re-build balance sheets.

“The UK may have gone a bit quiet on permanent roles but the contracting side of our business has grown rapidly," says McGregor Boyall Accounts Manager, Kelly Pepperell.    The rapid growth in contracting has meant the manual timesheet system has become colossal – in volume of both time and paper. Processing timesheets for many hundreds of contractors requires a marathon effort.   Kelly Pepperell gives some idea of the situation: “Each month 4 or 5 weeks worth of timesheets had to be dealt with. With duplication this created well over 3000 timesheets. We had to manually identify who to chase for missing timesheets, calculate pay and consultant’s commissions by manual data entry into spreadsheets, as well as into the accounting package.”  

From start to finish the process was labour intensive. End of month on the manual timesheet system frequently involved 4 staff processing from 7 A.M. until 11.00 P.M. The company realised they needed an automated timesheet solution in as quickly as possible. 

  The Solution

 

Hannah Skeels, Contracts Payments Manager at Boyall says, “I undertook a detailed evaluation of our requirements with the IT Manager. Using internet search and word of mouth referrals we located four possible solution providers, opened up discussions and asked them to respond.”

As a result of that process Etz Timesheet Solutions was shortlisted for evaluation against one other competitor. This took the form of a trial that tested both systems using live data and workflows over a period of three weeks.

Kelly Pepperell led efforts to evaluate potential solutions: “Important parts of the testing process included looking at usability, seeing if we could ‘break’ the solutions and assessing training requirements.”

McGregor Boyall opted for Etz because it provided better usability, joined up functionality and carried a much shorter learning curve for the team. “Once we made the decision we issued a tough deadline. The Etz team were very responsive to our needs and the system was in five weeks later,” says Kelly Pepperell.

 

The Results

“Half the staff can now run the end of month payments in half the time," says Pepperell. "From the timesheet form it’s just a click of the button and there’s your invoice, another couple of clicks and that’s the payment. Timesheets automatically attach to invoices, and can now be emailed without scanning.”

Etz is web-based and has little impact on internal IT resources – hardware, software or support. Jenny Pitt, Finance Director says, “As an online solution it got the buy in of IT from very early on. From the perspective of the IT function the advantages are clear.”

“This solution is a revelation in streamlining back office administration," says Pitt. "The system is great and the team at Etz are brilliant. Although we took a long time making the decision, we needn’t have – I wish I had done this sooner.”