TimeControl is often selected by owners or prime contractors who are trying to get consolidated actuals for both categories of workers.  This can be a real challenge for a number of reasons but not meeting the challenge can result in a project being tracked by multiple labor tracking systems that are not in the same format, don’t automatically reconcile with each other and which cause enormous efforts every week and month to try to understand how the project is progressing and what the true costs are.

Some of the challenges we’ve heard from clients include:

Authentication

Clients report that to use their existing corporate timesheet solution, they would need to add all users from each contractor into the corporate authentication mechanism.  This can result in hundreds or even thousands of people having to get a Corporate ID, Corporate email and trigger all kinds of other onboarding processes even if that contractor will only be on a project or with the organization for a short time.  Using TimeControl can circumvent this challenge as corporate authentication for TimeControl is done per user.  So, some users can be using the LDAP or Active Directory for one company and other users can be using the LDAP or Active Directory of another company and still other users can be using TimeControl’s internal security password and protocols.  The corporate finance system can then be fed data from completed and approved timesheets without ending up with multiple timesheet entries.

Separate data but still together

Clients report that they wish to have a central repository for project actuals but that each contractor needs to collect time also so they can invoice and track their part of the project for their own needs.  TimeControl manages this by allowing users to be segregated by any criteria you wish and then allowing all the data to come into one place and be separated for each contractor company so they can download extracts for their own billing process.  This can make a massive impact on how data is reconciled between the different contractors and the owner/prime when the end of the month comes.

Central and Distributed approvals

TimeControl’s approval mechanism is extensive and known as the most flexible in the industry.  We often hear from clients that they need to create an approval flow that will involve both the contractor’s representative and the prime contractor or owner’s administration at the same time.  TimeControl is designed for this kind of challenge.  Using TimeControl’s line item approvals and Matrix Approval Process for Labor Actuals™ approvals can be created for both streams at once and this can revolutionize the invoicing approval process at the end of the month because hours being invoiced have already been approved by the client.  We have seen client situations where invoice reconciliation drops from weeks to hours.  We’re not kidding about that.
From weeks to hours.

Flexibility is your friend

When you are merging the work of multiple contractors into the same system, clients often explain that the blending of corporate processes is a large barrier.  TimeControl’s remarkable flexibility makes the difference here.  TimeControl’s timesheets can appear one way for one group of workers and very differently for other groups of workers and, once entered, the data can be split, shared or divided up as need be in exports, reports and more.

HMS maintains a solution portal with questions and answers about how TimeControl can make a difference when you are planning to integrate the work of multiple contractors and internal workers at the same time.  You can find out more at: TimeControl.com/use-cases/manage-contractors.