When The Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Smarter.
There's a great tendency, especially in smaller practices, to concentrate on getting the work out on time, and catching up on the business side of the business when time permits.
While that's a laudable client-oriented attitude, it doesn't help pay the bills, an increasingly important consideration in today's tough economic environment.
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Making the most out of scarce resources is paramount to surviving when things are tough. That means not only making sure that your staff is being used efficiently and effectively, but that your clients are getting the most for their money.
Revenue management is an important part of that equation. Without adequate cash flow, you simply can't run your business. And unless your clients are doing much better than most these days, they are also looking to stretch their dollars, putting them only where they have to and letting payables go for as long as possible.
Keeping tabs on your practice's receivables, making sure that clients are billed quickly and accurately, and do not fall too far behind in their payments, not only helps your practice, it also prevents your clients from getting over their heads in their payables to you, which often results in losing clients and large receivables write-offs.
Not every practice needs a full-blown practice management solution. And in these tight times, you don't want to pay for more than you really need. For many smaller or more straightforward practices, a time and billing package is a good solution. Not only is it usually less expensive than a full practice management application, often times it is easier to install, easier to configure, and easier to use day by day.
As a bonus, many time and billing applications can provide you data on staff utilization. While unpopular with staff, this information is necessary if your practice is going to survive and even prosper.
What You Need Is What You Get?
At its core functionality, time and billing applications are somewhat generic. They capture time spent by staff on a per-client and/or per-project basis, apply an applicable billing rate, and collect expenses appropriate to those tasks. That data is invoiced to the client where billable, and the receivables due or received are applied against the appropriate balances due.
Where differences in software packages become important is in how a particular package fits in with the way your practice works. Does the package accommodate the way that your practice bills fees? Most time and billing systems let you bill on an hourly or flat-fee basis, but some practices bill some or all of their clients or projects on a bill against a retainer or value billing basis. If your practice uses a less common billing method, you'll need to determine how easily a particular software package can handle this.
Data capture is another consideration. Many accounting practices have very mobile staff. Data entry is most efficient and accurate when it is performed as the service is rendered or the expense incurred. Selecting a package that supports remote data entry from a laptop or even smartphone will be a consideration for this type of practice.
