THE ULTIMATECHECKLIST

BUYING BUSINESS SOFTWARE FOR CONSULTANTS

We know there is no shortage of project management

platforms and time tracking software in the market. It is

difficult to get a complete overview of the market.

We wish we could provide that overview for you, but the

truth is, we don't even have one. Everyday, new players

comes in and old players leave the market.

Instead we want to give you this - a checklist with questions

you can use to discover what you need in the ideal platform.

It might not be TimeLog you

are looking for in the end,

but even if it is not, we 

hope this checklist

will help you find

what you need.

Søren Lund

CEO at TimeLog

INDEX

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TIME TRACKING

EXPENSE MANAGEMENT

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

INVOICING

REPORTING

THE ORGANIZATION

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

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No Yes Critical

1

TIME

TRACKING

Do you need to enter comments for your time registrations?

Do your employees do many different things, or do they concentrate their work on one project for many hours at a time?

Do your employees need to be able to register time via smart phones?

Do you need to be able to track time on other mobile phones than smart phones?

Do you want to track time in time (1:30) or decimal numbers (1,5)?

Do your employees use Outlook frequently, and do they need to be able to register time from Outlook?

Do you need the possibility to register time for other employees?

Do you need to be able to move wrong registrations from one project to another?

Do you need to be able to split a time registration into two different registrations sometimes?

Do you need to be able to track time while offline?

Do you need an approval process for reporting of hours?

Should both project managers and line managers approve time registrations?

Should both project managers and line managers approve time registrations?

Do you close your time sheets weekly or monthly?

How do you manage overtime today?

How would you like to register absence?

Do you need to manage vacation/holiday time?

Would you like to be able to support payroll calculations for your payroll system?

Do you need advanced overtime calculation for people with different flex rules?

If yes, which overtime rules do you work with today?

Do you need the possibility to register time for other employees?

Do you have different rules for different employee groups?

What would you like to have improved in relation to your current method of time registration?

Will you register all of your time (internally and externally), or just project time (external)?

2

Do you need an approval process for reporting of hours?

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No Yes Critical

Do you need to register purchases/ expenses?

Do you need to register travel expense accounts?

Do you need to register allowances?

Do you need to register mileage?

Do you need to track expenses in different currencies?

Should the entries be invoiced to customers sometimes?

Would you like to be able to add a profit to your expenses?

Do you need an approval flow for employees' expense registrations?

Do you need to be able to separate expenses on a company credit card/ invoice and personal employee expenses?

Would you like to be able to import/export expenses between different itsystems?

EXPENSE

MANAGEMENT

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No Yes Critical

Do you need any of following contract type: time and material, fixed-price?

Do you need any of following contract type: on account, voucher agreements, service agreements, volume invoicing?

Do you ever use different contract types on the same project?

Do you have different costs per employee?

Do you have different hourly rates per employee?

Do you have customer- specific hourly rates?

Do you regulate your hourly rates e.g. yearly?

Do you use different hourly rates for the same project?

How do you budget your projects today?

Do you budget in both hours and value?

Do your employees have a personal budget for their work on differentprojects?

Do you budget on a task level, or only on an overall project level?

PROJECT

MANAGEMENT

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No Yes Critical

Do you budget your projects in different currencies?

How many task levels do you use in your most complex projects?

Would you like to allocate specific resources for your projects, or should everyone be able to see all projects?

Would you like to be able to calculate work in progress?

Is it important to know appreciations and depreciations on project invoices?

Would you like to have a Gantt chart on a project level?

Do you work with milestones on your projects?

Do you work with the ETC (Estimated Time to Completion) principle?

Would you like to use project templates?

Do you use Microsoft Project and would like to import project plans?

5

Can the value/hours on your project budget and project contract differ?

Do you want to see the value calculation

from an average hourly rate for fixed priced?

Do you want to see how much you could have

sold the project for on time spent for fixed priced?

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No Yes Critical

Do you need an overview of how stressed your employees’ workload is?

Do your employees plan their work on a daily or weekly basis?

Do you follow-up on the planning of your resources?

Do you need to have an overview of employee vacation/absence in your resource planner?

Would you like to be able to search for available resources based on specific competencies?

Would you like to see the estimated revenue based on your planned projects?

Would you like to see if you have free resources to take in future projects?

Do you need to be able to move allocations between different employees from time to time?

RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT

A SYSTEM BUILT

FOR CONSULTANTS

GO TO TIMELOG.COM

6

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No Yes Critical

Do you invoice customers per project, or together on one invoice?

Do some of your customers have different mailing and billing addresses?

Would your customers like a detailed invoice, or a very simple invoice?

Do you invoice in different currencies?

Do you need invoice templates in different languages?

Do you need several invoice templates with different information?

Do you ever use upgrading and downgrading on invoices?

Do you need to be able to make registrations non-billable?

Do you have a special workflow for approving invoicing and billing potential?

Do you send invoices to the public sector?

Do you have a financial forecast overview of the coming period based on your project contracts?

Do you need several invoice number series?

INVOICING

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No Yes Critical

Which key figures do you work with today?

Which employee reports do you need?

Would you like to cover level of completion per project/customer/employee?

Would you like to be able to see employees' billing rate and external %?

Would you like to see an analysis ofwhat you’ve used your resources on?

On which customers have you used the most of your time, and which have been the most profitable?

In which business areas have you used most of your time, and which have created most value?

On which projects have you used the most of your time, and which have been the most profitable?

Would you like to compare your projects' performance regardless of the project's size?

Would you like to be able to report on department and team level?

If yes, how many department levels do have today?

Do you work with EU-projects so you need special EU-reporting?

REPORTING

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No Yes Critical

Would you like to be able to divide the system into departments, on several levels?

Do you have international employees, or offices abroad that require that you have a system in several languages?

Do the international offices have their own specific services, so you need several different pricelists in different currencies?

Do you use bonuses in your organization – if yes, which key performance indexes are used to calculate bonuses?

Søren Lund

CEO of TimeLog

To be successful in consulting you need to have the right information at hand to make informed decisions

THE

ORGANIZATION

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FURTHER

CONSIDERATIONS

Do you need integration to other systems e.g. payroll or finance system?

Do you need to export your data into Excel, Word, XML or .txt?

Do you have resources in-house who can work with an API, or do you need help?

Would you like the sales department to be able to manage their pipeline in the system?

Would you like to be able to segment your customer database with your own criteria?

Do you support your customers today using a help desk system?

Would you like to share information with your customers via an extranet?

Do you need document management through Office365, SharePoint or e.g. Dropbox?

Do you want a copy of your production system to test new processes?

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No Yes Critical

11

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HOW MANY

DID YOU GET?

IT IS HARD

TO SAY GOODBYE

12

We sincerely hope you found this checklist helpful, and that you feel equipped to navigate the jungle of time tracking and project management systems. Here on the fall bite, we just want to give you quick preview of TimeLog's Products.

If you live by invoicing your time, this version

will make your life easier. Like, a lot.

Run your project, large and small, in a tool built

to support your processes.

Time is money, but where does the time

go? Find out by using our free time tracking.

INVOICE PROJECT TIME

F R E E

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