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Solution
Overview
Customer
Profile
Labour Hire Firm, providing professional
services to
geographically dispersed clients. Most of our
clients and consultants are information
technology and especially Internet aware
Scenario
A
Labour Hire firms business relies on matching
client requirements to the skill sets of
consultants. The best result is when everyone is
happy. While we supplied IT professionals to IT
aware companies, most of our own processes were
manual, and based upon paper or at best email.
We needed an ability to reduce the
administrative burden associated with processing
client accounts, consultant timesheets and
payments.
VillageMall
Technologies Used
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WebLedger Accounting
Services |
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VillageMall Security Services |
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WebLedger Service
Centre |
Benefits
VillageMall provided a completely
integrated, full feature, Accounting solution that encompassed
the services required to run our Company. Native integration
between traditionally separate modules such as general
ledger, payroll, timesheet BAS
processing provided a cohesive management
platform for our clients, and consultants. Without exception,
this is the first time we have had a new
accounting system that required no software
installation or new hardware at our offices.
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Labour Hire Company uses
VillageMall® WebLedger to automate those time
consuming but essential activities, enabling more time to be
spent on the core activities in running a Labour Hire
Company.
WebLedger's superior level of integration
between timesheets, invoicing and payments combined with a
the ability for Clients to view charges and approve
timesheets online, saves us many hours and ensures
accurate and timely payments to both our clients and
contractors.
Overview
Despite its high level of expertise in Labour Hire
Market, and the fact that a lot of our consultants where
information technologists, it faced the same problems most small
businesses face, i.e., the dilemmas and hassles of
excessive paperwork, manual processes and procedures and the resulting inefficiencies.
Their Clients, are particularly sensitive to efficiency and productivity they strive to
maximize their own, in-house workflow.
With margins falling to less than 10%, we like most
other Labour Hire
Companies are always looking for ways to reduce the
administrative burden associated with our activities.
We also wanted to do "more-with-less" so that
we could keep our existing and future overheads as low
as possible.
Business Challenges
Clients require consultants to keep
accurate records for time spend on their
projects, and approve these at the end of a billing period.
Ideally our Clients would like to be able to match
timesheets against their internal work breakdown
structures or jobs. The Consultant needs to meet these requirements
and also to submit timesheet or
invoices to the Labour hire Company for payment. As
there are cases where a Consultant works for more than
one client in a period, the ability to separate the
billings is also required. The Labour hire Company has the job of ensuring an
accurate invoice is sent to the Client and also that the
Consultant is payed.
While each of these are simple
processes they typically are very time consuming, and
due to the lack of integration between the multiple systems supporting the elements of the process, it is difficult to
for us currently to answer even the most basic of Questions such as
"have we billed all the time we have paid a consultant
for in this period?"
The challenge is to automate and provide transparency
to the Client and Consultant, while providing management
control to the Labour Hire firm.
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| VillageMall WebLedger is the
only platform capable of fully automating our basic business services, due to its fully
integrated services architecture. The
VillageMall Web Service-Centre
allows our Clients to view accurate and up to
date job details, while allowing our
Consultants to enter job details as they work. WebLedger, the Web- Service-Centre and the
Internet are a powerful solution that cannot
be matched by Desktop solution providers.
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Why WebLedger
When we searched for a solution, we found many
Internet based timesheet programs, but none were fully integrated
into an accounting system. We also wanted to provide transparency
to our client, but were hesitant in providing unlimited access to
our accounting system or company date.
It become obvious, that at a minimum, we would need to change
our existing accounting system, so one of the key requirements
was the ability to get the new system up and running in
days, not weeks.
With the basics completed, we began the process of selecting technology
solutions. After evaluating several offerings, we determined that
the Australian developed VillageMall WebLedger service provided
the best possible combination of features, security,
integration and design flexibility. We found that VillageMall
WebLedger was the only internet based platform to offer a completely
integrated Timesheet, Payments, Payroll, and accounting functions
that also provided a Service Centre for our Clients and
Consultant access. With a range of security levels and a
separate access method, WebLedger Service-Centre
provided the level of confidence needed to provide
direct access, to a view of our accounting system
functionality and data. In addition WebLedger
incorporated the latest Australian ATO Labour Hire requirements,
and hence allows us to support the full range of
consultant classifications..
We required, and VillageMall supplies a security architecture that was
bullet-proof without being a burden for clients, and consultants
to use. VillageMall technologies provide us with an
ideal mix of security choices to meet our requirements,
from simple passwords though to token
based digital-ID's. The choice is ours and we can change
as our business changes.
Once we decided that WebLedger was the right choice,
it actually took less than an hour from the application
request to having a usable accounting system online, this was
due in part to VillageMall not having to install any
Software on our premises. We did have to upgrade on of
our workstation Web browsers that was operating on Win95 machine to
the latest version, but this was a fee download from the
Internet.
We then transferred our client and consultant records
from our existing accounting system to WebLedger, using
their import facility. By the end of the day we had a
fully working system which supported the process flow we
had been aiming for.
Starting from $20 per month, we also found WebLedger
a most financially
attractive solution. The ability to alter the fees to
met our changing conditions will be an ongoing benefit.
The VillageMall Solution
Once the basic accounting system was set-up, using WebLedger
"Quick start" we
imported the existing Clients and Consultants our
existing Accounting system. We also entered the
Consultants that the ATO classes as
"employees" for tax purposes.
Setting up Consultants, each consultant was either
a Supplier or an Employees. Each Supplier within
WebLedger can have a "type" one of the
predefined types is "Labour Hire" which tells WebLedger
that this Supplier needs to have the labour hire
business rules applied. The "generate bill"
option was selected to enable the automatic generation
of a "Tax Bill Payment" to pay the Consultant.
Setting up Employees, the remaining
consultants which were classified as
"Employees" were set-up, and the hourly rate
and associated tax scales entered. Additionally each
labour hire employee was selected to be paid from a
Timesheet.
Setting up client jobs, ( these will appear in
the consultant timesheets). WebLedger Jobs provide for
different types of changing, an hourly rate, fixed
amount or non-billable. Costing and duration details
were also entered.
Setting up chargeable items, WebLedger support
a wide range of item types, we entered a set of
non-inventory chargeable items for each of the
consultant tasks, these were entered using the predefined
"services" item type. Service items will appear in selection
lists within the consultant timesheets. We entered the charge out
and also the consultant payment rates for each job, and
also the accounts that will be used for tracking costs,
and reporting profit s etc. Different tax codes can be
applied to each of the rates to handle even the most
complex taxation arrangements.
We added some additional General Ledger accounts to
the WebLedger defaults to give us the right level of granularity.
Providing Internet Access, as each company
within VillageMall has a completely separate database,
there is a need for each person to be given explicit
access to company information. In fact the access is
totally under the control of the company and can be
disabled by checking the "inactive" box for
each Employee, Consultant, or Client. The VillageMall account
details are entered against each person requiring
Internet access to the company.
There are three types of security available and each
is transparent to the Company, the first level, which we selected,
provides each user with a password, the next level
provides each user with a software DigitalID in the form of a
X.509 certificate that is used to provide integrated
logon to the company, the highest level requires each
user to hold a VillageMall token which physically protects their
DigitalID. While we did select the password based
access, it was comforting to know we can transparently
change our security requirements to meet changing
conditions.
The Solution in Action
Beginning of period
The Client can optionally via the Service Centre,
enter a work order and submit for processing ( each
order appears in a queue, within the Sales screen for
processing). The Client
has real-time information on the status of the Order
from acceptance though to his payment being cleared at
our bank.
Each Consultant, creates a timesheet for the
billing period. Once created, customer line items can be
entered. Each line item has a date, the selected
customer, a billing method and number of hours entered,
and the calculated chargeable costs.
There is even a inbuilt stopwatch to
time line item activities. The billing method can be selected on a
line item basis to be either; Job rate, Employee
rate, Item Rate, or non billable, all of these are taken
from the set-ups above.
The Client via Service Centre access, gets
a report of all changes being applied to each of their
jobs for the current period, as they are entered by the
consultants. If there are expenses associated with a job
(such as travel etc) these will also be visible as the
Consultant enters them in the expense section of the
timesheet module.
End of the Period
Each Consultant "submits" the timesheet, and
any expenses for approval.
Each Client will have a list of timesheets and
expenses that have been submitted for approval.
WebLedger supports "drill down" on all
timesheets so the actual line items are available for
the client to review. The client can then approve each
timesheet, once they are approved, they are removed from
the approval queue. The consultant and the
Labour Hire company gets a real-time status of each
timesheet or expense.
Once approved, all line items for each Client are available
within Client invoicing. The line items can be selectively applied to the client invoice. The
completed client invoice can be printed or emailed to the Client
using WebLedger email facility.
At the same time, the approval has generated a
Purchase Order for each Consultant. This is payed using
the WebLedger Bill payments module. If the
Consultant is a "employee" then the approved timesheet
details, will be used to calculate the payroll payment
as part of the normal payroll run.
The Consultant can query the progress of each
expense or timesheet though to the Check or Electronic Payment
detail, each activity has a displayed date stamp.
Finally the Labour Hire company can view all
of the information that the Client and Consultant has
access to, plus the all important ability to view the profitability
of the total exercise.
Summary
The robust integrated accounting services supplied by
VillageMall, proved to be the perfect out-of-box solution
for our Labour Hire business. We only hope our competitors don't
move as quickly onto this solution as we have.
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| We have been extremely
pleased with the ease of implementation and minimum time taken
to get a working solution, it typically takes
longer to install a windows operating
system onto our computers. The entire
solution was implemented without a single major
set back.
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WebLedger provides a selective view of the
information within our accounting system, so our clients
and consultants always have accurate and up-to-date
information. We have total control over who can access
to our information, and can change the level of security
as required. We have found a significant reduction
in "service or query" calls regarding payments
and approvals. We find that we are spending more
time working on meeting client requirements rather than
billing enquiries.
We see an improving bottom line, and have
the option to pass the savings on to our client and
Consultants. The VillageMall distributed architecture allows
use to grow and select services that match our business
needs. The significant reductions in administrative
overheads will allow
us to look at increasing the clients and consultants
that we can service with our existing staffing. Also we
only need to make additional expenditures when we achieve
additional income, VillageMall even allows us to reduce
our costs when things get tight in the industry, this
approach is more like a partnership than service supplier. Our
implementation success has given us a
solid foundation for supporting the rapid growth
anticipated over the years to come.
For More Information
For more information about VillageMall products and
services, go to: http://www.villagemall.com.au/ | 
