Small Firms Ideas Exchange

I've been using a program called Timeslips. I believe it was originally designed for the legal profession, and is primarily a time keeper. It has grown to include other professions and particularly has Architecture pre-loaded.

The billing choices include hourly, fixed, percentage etc. It takes a bit of learning and getting used to, but works and is a lot less expensive that some of the proprietary architectural accounting / office management programs. It is much more flexible that Quickbooks with regards to the ability to bill for specific tasks, additional services, etc.

Most beneficial is it's ability to log information. I've found it to be a great replacement for the old manual diary. It has saved my a-- on many occasions with respect to litigation and being able to organize and review what we did or didn't do right. With billing conversations it's reporting capabilty has helped to organize the billing information to explain where the time went for both client and internal review. It really shows how and where we our time gets spent on fixed fee jobs helping us to be more productive and efficient.

No, I am not a rep for the company. I recommend giving it a go.

Lisa, I use Orotimesheet, a very friendly software of around $100 to do all our timesheets, invoicing, as well as project tracking.

I'm going to learn QBook in the fall as we are expanding our business. No more excel mania.

I use Quickbooks Pro and have a bookkeeper running it for me. Takes a while to learn how to run reports, we have a bunch of memorized ones. My only real complaint about it is being held hostage for rather expensive "payroll update" fees each year to keep it going. For what its worth I have used two other very expensive, complicated and clumbersome accounting programs set up for AE firms and ditched both when it became apparant that they were for very large offices with a dedicated IT and accounting staff. I was spending to many hours each month on the phone with tech support just to keep them running, let alone give me good information.

QuickBooks is the way to go in my opinion! But when I want to procrastinate on a job, I do my accounting, so maybe I am just into that sort of thing. Dennis - I am happy to email you a pdf (and electronic export if it let's me) of my chart of accounts.

I HIGHLY recommend "Radical Accounting” by Madeline Bailey. It is an easy read and will help explain a lot of the finance talk we don’t learn in school (or even in personal financing).

For keeping track of time & invoicing, I use Archioffice and export to QuickBooks. There are advantages and disadvantages to this and I am happy to talk to you individually about them (email Lisa for my email if the link doesn’t work). At this point, I can’t live without it, but if I had to do it all over again, I might do things differently!

The big diffrence between Quicken and Quickbooks is quicken is a leger (like a checkbook register). Quickbooks is double entry bookkeeping. Unless you really want to know how much money you have earned but not yet received or how much you have spent without paying, stick to Quicken.

Most of my clients wanted fix fee including expenses accounts, so I pretty much stopped tracking reimbursable expenses.

Hey, maybe you guys can help me out. We still do time sheets by hand and transpose (yes, by hand) to project logs for project management and invoicing. What system can do both?

(But I need to admit I like that the handwritten log sheets don't "crash" and when they show their age with different pen colors and penmanship. They are hard to "fake.")
I have scanned them and e-mailed to clients if they have questions on their project... very effective.

Patrick,
I struggled with the decision between QuickBooks and Quicken for a while. I had been a Quicken user for years and wasn't sure that I would be able to get time cards, invoices, etc. dialed into one system. I used QB Simle Start for a few years for another small business and other than learning the very basics of how QB works, it was useless.

It sounds like you made that work with Quicken. Since I've already plunked down the $$ for the QBooks, that's the way I'll go, at least for now.

Meanwhile I'm trying to set up my list of accounts, thus the question to those of you whom are further down the path than I.

Thanks in advance to all who are able to help. Thanks top you, too Lisa.

Denis Dunderdale,
Cotter, AR

I, too, am a sole proprietor (with no employees), but I keep it even simpler. Instead of Quickbooks, I use Quicken. I have "categories" set up for the usual business expenses and "classes" set up for each client with a "subclass" for each job. I can easily track costs for each job, my accounts receivable register tells me exactly what is owed, etc. It really is simple and effective -- my accountant loves me at tax time.