Boris Beancounter
"Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a lovely thing to meet."
- Henry James
Sometimes I wish I'd listened to Mother, and become a dentist instead.
But the fact is I always preferred calculus to cavities. Even when Bizco was in trouble last year, I just bore down and did the best work I could.
And what a load of work it was. Billing was a nightmare. Project requirements and deadlines were constantly shifting, and I was always the last to know. I spent half of my time outside my office, tracking people down to discuss confusing expense reports, time cards, and purchase requests. When I was in my office, I was bombarded by customers calling about their bills- and Bizco has a LOT of customers. Sifting through accounts to find customer information ate up a lot of my time.
Fortunately, Victor decided to purchase Tracker Suite, which has made my job quite a bit easier. Any information I need is a mouse click away, no more chasing people down or searching through paperwork! The information is always up to date, and even better than that- I know what's going on. Tracker Suite facilitates communication through e-mail and forums, so now I can see where things are going, how projects are developing and how my company is progressing.
Besides dentistry, I also gave serious thought to becoming an actor. You could see my first attempt on the stage in my Flash presentation. I'll show you how Tracker made my job so much easier. I can tell you about Tracker's Return On Investment. The presentation appears in a new window, so I'll still be here. Unless Hollywood calls, of course.
The applications and features of Tracker Suite I've found most useful are:
Customer
Tracker- Having all of our customer data in one location makes life
much easier for everyone. Not only are all contacts, names, and addresses
on one place, but this tool also stores all of our clients account codes
and billing data. I register all of our customer commitments and track
our activities against purchase orders. It's also up to me to create and
maintain account codes, monitor current PO listing to Billing, and keep
our management updated with days and dollars remaining available for current
projects. I also monitor billing information and backlog.
Project
Tracker- All of the Tracker modules create billable line items based
on projects and tasks that are profiled in Project Tracker. By accessing
this database, I can quickly view account codes along with the status
of the various items that I'm billing out to clients. This way, I can
be sure that my billing information is always valid and correct.
Purchase
Tracker- Like the Time and Expense Trackers, the Web enabled forms in Purchase
Tracker make it easy for our employees to fill out and process purchase
requests. In addition, I can sort all of the requests by vendor, originator
of the purchase request, delivery date, etc. This makes it easy for me
to track how much we're spending and what we're spending it on. When I
review our records, I compare the receiving documents with the invoices,
reviewing each document for completeness and accuracy. Once I'm sure everything
is correct, I submit the completed requests, which are then integrated
into the financial data for our entire organization.
Tracker Data
Warehouse- You can't beat having all of your financial information
automatically in place by line item. Every expense and every hour billed
is tallied into this database, where I am able to review the data in many
useful formats which are organized based upon different variables. From
total cash flow down through line item specifics, Data Warehouse lets
me keep my finger on the financial pulse of my organization. I process
any billing items to our external billing system and send invoices to
clients. I also use it to review all of our cost reports for completeness
and compare them to our client contracts and purchase orders.
Time
Tracker & Expense Tracker- These
modules make it easy for employees to fill out and submit time cards and
expense reports, either through Lotus Notes or the Web. The data I receive is consistent and easy to process. I no longer have to track people down asking: 'What did you mean by this?'
