We’re in the era of connected and intelligent systems. This is not running past the project management and accounting teams either. At least not if you take action and choose the best solution for your company.
This article will list some of the most important factors when selecting a good project, resource management, and accounting combo to make billing your clients and staying on-track of invoices easy and effective.
Projects & Resources
First of all, to have a fully integrated project management and accounting solution - the two tools need to be able to integrate on the project and resource level. Combining data from both your project and resource management software, and integrating that with your accounting solution lets you easily transfer financial data and calculate costs and price.
In other words, your project management solution should be able to handle both projects and resources at the same time - and connect the two for a better overview and more reliable data. More reliable data means better business insights to make the right decisions. Moreover, the solution should be integrated with your accounting system of choice for a seamless billing and accounting experience.
Billable vs. Non-billable Time
To keep track of billable hours, your project and resource management solution should be able to handle and administer time registrations. Also, preferably, it should save time registrations on a task or project level, and be able to distinguish between billable and non-billable time. Naturally, only billable time should be transferred to the invoice in your accounting system.
Expenses
Managing expenses, besides time registrations, should be easy and transparent. Often, other expenses are going into your projects, and the system should be able to handle these costs. Whether you bill the client for these costs directly or manage them internally, the project management system should still be able to handle the data in the budget and transfer to your accounting system if needed.
Insights
Getting an overview of the profitability of your projects, or the portfolio altogether is crucial for a healthy and growing business. Thus, the project management solution should be able to collect all the data available from your projects, resources, budgets, billed invoices, and outstanding revenue. Collecting all data and presenting it in a visually pleasing and comprehensible manner is paramount.
Insights into your portfolio can help you prioritize and select future projects based on your own true data. Giving you the one-truth to make better decisions.
Status Indicators and Warnings
Managing the status of your billed projects on various invoices can be tricky. Project managers and accountants are often working in separate departments, but both need the information of the current status of your outstanding invoices. A great project management solution should be able to dig into the data of your accounting system and show you the current status of each invoice under each project. Showing you the status and alert you if anything seems to be wrong, e.g., an invoice passing the due date.
These are some of the factors that we recommend you to look into when looking for an integrated project, resource management, and accounting system for your business. An integrated solution allows for an easier and more effective administration of invoices, billing, and reporting.
Easily integrate Forecast with your favorite accounting system. Read more about the integrations here.
