Ever wonder if an employee is scheduled for tasks next month? Or next week?
How would you know? Ask them?
There’s another way. Schedule some tasks, assign employees, and then open this resource availability window. You’ll see a graph of all the hours an employee has available to them. If there are gaps, schedule more tasks. Maybe you should ask them first, but then do it, and you’ll have some nice documentation that shows who is scheduled and who is not.
And, there’s a flip-side to this.
Resource allocation is the flip-side to employee availability. In other words, an employee is available when they are not allocated to tasks.
You might have a need to find resources by their skillsets. Looking for an ‘Engineer 1’ or ‘Engineer 2’ qualification? Use this tool to find them. You can then assign them to your project… after asking them first. (People aren’t machines. And you probably shouldn’t call them ‘resources’ either. They are human beings and like to be consulted before blindly signed up for anything.)
Watch the video to see if this might be useful to you and your project.
With Standard Time® an administrator can predict how much a project will cost. The dates for the project are sometimes far enough into the future that you must set future rates. You can create date ranges that contain future billing rates.
For example, suppose you needed to predict project costs into 2017 and 2018. (still future at the time of the article)
The salary and billing rates are likely different for those future years. You may not know exactly what they will be, but you have an idea. The software lets you enter your predictions, and uses them for tasks that are scheduled to begin then.
So, back to our 2017 and 2018 example… your future rates will be used for tasks that are scheduled on those future dates. Each task has a starting date. Each task is assigned to users. So, the user rates for those dates are incorporated into the cost of each task.
A task in 2018 may cost more than a task in 2017. The software knows this.
Standard Time® allows you to put notes in with your time. Keep track of projects and remind yourself along the way!
These timesheet notes can serve many purposes. They can find their way onto client invoices. They can act as project status in a report. Or, they can simply remind you of what you did. Consider this the biggest project communication tool you have. It is your memory… it is your direct communication to clients and consumers of your project work… and it is historical documentation your organization can rely on.
All that from a simple edit field in a project timesheet?
Not really… there are other time log fields that serve the same purpose. Don’t overlook the start and stop times. Those simple fields mean a lot to consumers of your work. The date alone is big. The timestamp is better, but not always necessary or used. And consider that the project, subproject, client, and category all help to categorize the work you do. All that is collected without a lot of effort, but those who view your historical records find it invaluable.
Standard Time® lets you see revenue estimates for your projects. Project revenue estimates are like Win/Loss charts. Another analogy is the traditional sales funnel. You win some projects, you lose others. And when predicting, you set a percentage of likely win. This chart shows the possible outcome over the next 12 months.
Manage the projects and tasks that show up in the timesheet. Employees only see tasks that are assigned to them. That makes collecting time for tasks easier. Employees aren’t so barraged with projects and tasks that they can’t find the ones they are working on.
Group your projects into portfolios and get reports, graphs and metrics.
Grouping projects by portfolio is a simple way to perform operations for like projects. What does that mean? It means if you want a report for a certain group of projects, put them in a portfolio and run the report on that portfolio. Or if you want to see tasks allocated to users on just a certain group of projects, again, put them into a portfolio and view the resource allocation window. Other such operation might be viewing a project revenue chart, or viewing resource utilization reports for a certain portfolio of projects.
Project portfolio management is built into Standard Time®. So whenever you need a see a report or chart or graph, look for the option to view only the projects in a chosen portfolio.
Project revenue by portfolio
For instance, project revenue is a great use of portfolios. Lets say you need to view project revenue estimates for the consulting jobs. Or a certain manufacturing process. Or geographical region. Just put the projects that matter into a portfolio, and your revenue chart shows only them. Nice!
Project resource allocation by portfolio
Another great application for portfolios is viewing project task allocation by portfolio. Let’s say you want to see how tasks are assigned to the consulting projects, or by type of project. Again, portfolios work great. You see only those tasks assigned to projects in a selected portfolio. So, group up your projects and give it a try!
Customers can now see the status of their projects without bugging you! They just log-in to Standard Time® and get an update. Or use Android app called ProjectBot.
Customers want project status. And they sometimes want it frequently… like every day!
Fortunately, there is a simple solution. Standard Time has a simple client login page where your customers can log in to get their status. All their projects are listed. They can see how many hours were allocated, and how many hours were logged. Simple.
Android ProjectBot
Plus, there’s even a simpler way. There’s an Android app called ProjectBot that does the same thing. Except that it does it automatically. Every 15 minutes, ProjectBot syncs with the cloud and pulls down all the project information for that client. The client can simply look at the app for the status. That makes things pretty simple!
Is it time for this project manager to take a plane to Mexico or Cuba? No, he can redeem the project with Standard Time®. Enjoy the lighter side of project management!
All kidding aside, any project can be resurrected from the dead. But some are not so easy. Some organizations have so much politics and infighting that their projects are doomed from the start. Resurrecting a project in one of these organizations sometimes means changing the way people think. That’s sometimes not so easy. Everyone is right in their own eyes. They can’t see the trouble they’ve made for themselves. And the project manager doesn’t always have a clear vision, or even the means to inspire others to follow it. Implementing a nice project tracker like ST doesn’t always do it. You need a true visionary to pull projects out of the ditch.
So sure… it’s easy to poke fun at failing projects. But not always so easy to resurrect them. But why not try? Put a good timesheet product in place, and see what happens!
Standard Time Timesheets can import Microsoft Project MPP files. Actually, ST talks directly to MSP and brings down tasks into the ST database. Technical talk… sure, but that really just means that you can see your MSP tasks in the ST timesheet. Watch the video and scroll down to read more below.
Standard Time connects directly to MS Project. That allows it to pull down tasks and resources into it’s own database. The end-result is that you can see tasks in the Standard Time employee timesheets. Each employee sees their own tasks. They enter hours into the timesheet. And those ‘actual’ hours can then be sent back to MSP.
What value is this to project managers? It means your actual hours from employee timesheets ‘activates’ your MPP file. With actual work hours, your project comes alive. Tasks may be pushed out because employees are taking longer than expected. Or, they may be pulled in so others can begin. In either case, actual hours affect your schedule in real-world ways.
MSP Task Usage
Need to see how actual work affects task usage? Watch this video below. You’ll see the actual hours from the Standard Time timesheet overlaid on your MSP tasks.
Here is a utilization report that records the number of hours employees spent working on projects in a given date range. You see how many of those hours are billable verses non-billable. That results in a effective billing rate. I.e. the true rate you are getting.
Why is a utilization report important?
Utilization reports tell you how effective your business is. They tell you how much you are earning.
Let’s say you have ten consultants on staff. They all bill out at about the same rate. Nine of those employees have an average of 20% administrative time. The other has only 15%. Nine of them are working about 40 hours, while the tenth one is consistently working 50. Sure, not all 50 are billable hours. But still, 50 is huge.
You can easily imagine that the ‘star’ employee is pulling down a lot more dough than the other nine. But how much? Run a utilization report and you’ll see.
Here’s an example of two consulting scenarios below. Your star consultant is banking a lot more than the other nine. And the effective billing rate is higher.
180 hours
150 billable
$100 per hour
$15,000 revenue
$83 effective rate
225 hours
191 billable
$100 per hour
$19,125 revenue
$85 effective rate
But do you know the utilization and rates your consultants are working at?
It’s real easy to find out. Just run one of these reports. When you do, you must choose a date range. Try running monthly reports, and then try quarterly, and finally yearly. You’ll learn a lot about your actual track record.
There’s just one thing… people are not machines. Don’t expect to measure things like horsepower and mean-time-between-failures and such. If you want higher effective billing rates, more hours, and more revenue, you’ll have to inspire employees to want to do more. You can’t wave a utilization report in front of them and demand more. It doesn’t work; they’ll probably quit unless they really need the work.
Employees want to be inspired and be part of a cause. That cause often includes stepping stones to more responsibility and promotions by becoming an integral part of the organization. It involves fulfilling the long-term goals of the company and securing long-term viability in the marketplace.
So… utilization reports are nice. And probably a requirement for viable consulting firms. But are you using them to inspire, or just to demand more? Something to consider…