We are a 20 person consulting shop. Our business is very simple. We have consultants that need to track time and billable expenses by week and we need to put them on an invoice and send it to the customer.
In order to do this we need to have the following
1. The project
2. Employees that are working on the project
3. The bill rate by employee by project (it is possible to have multiple bill rates for one individual)
4. The ability to capture expenses and mark them as billable or no billable to a client
We originally thought QBO would do all of this. But after going through all of our implementation we found out that QBO could not handle this.
Thus we are looking at 3rd party apps.
We need the ability to capture hours and expenses as we thought QBO could handle the invoicing. It would be better if QBO did the invoice was our theory.
We looked at TSheets and minute7. Tsheets does not capture expenses so we went with minute 7. Minute 7 captures our hours and expenses just as we thought they would. It sends the hours by person to QBO. When QBO gets those hours (even though it has a bill rate in QBO) it put zero as the bill rate in the weekly timesheet. If you look at the weekly time sheet there are generally 3 lines. All 3 lines on a time sheet with no hours has a bill rate. When minute 7 sends hours QBO does take the bill rate and put it on the timesheet.
Thus for our 20 timesheets each week we would be forced to go in and add the bill rate to each one. I believe that is what the person on this time sheet called "clunky". Besides being "clunky" it also is a control issue and adds the risk of mistakes. Once we get the bill rate in on a year long project we should never have to have the risk of it being entered wrong every week. The system knows the bill rate and should be able to put it on the timesheet.
Please help me understand if I have this wrong.
I would expect the projects section to be the central hub of this part of the system. The projects section should have the employees and bill ratees and cost for the project. Those bill rates should drive invoicing.
