Tag Archives: multi-use timecontrol

Perspective is so important

Depending on your point of view, how you look at your timesheet system can result in very different requests.  Over time we’ve gotten used to that.  We virtually always ask for a person’s role in their organization and their involvement in the business processes that may be a part of a TimeControl deployment.

One of TimeControl’s greatest advantages is to serve many parts of the organization directly.  Perhaps you are part of a group that focuses on Invoicing.  TimeControl’s ability to create the data for the invoice, adjust the data as need be to make sure the invoice is acceptable or approved and then getting the data into the invoicing system will be critical.  Perhaps you are part of the Payroll department.  Making sure that you know the hours for each person’s pay is correctly authorized, approved and calculated is critical so your focus may be on making sure that rates for overtime, part-time employees, sick leave and such are properly accounted for.  If you are part of the HR department, then it wouldn’t be surprising to see a focus only on time off that is earned and taken and making sure that TimeControl’s Accruals are properly accounted for.  If you are in the project management department then making sure the time that was accounted for is on tasks that are already planned and that projected progress is entered and transferred.

When one person on a team has only one of those perspectives in mind, we can end up with odd requests and it is up to our technical deployment team to help point out the impact.  It’s not uncommon for example to hear from a project manager than only the line-by-line project approvals are important and to forget about any other aspects to approvals in TimeControl.  “Let’s bring in someone from Finance to make sure they’re going to get what they need,” we’ll suggest.  Or “Let’s talk about what happens if the project managers reject lines resulting in a timesheet that doesn’t add up to a full week of work.”  It’s also common for us to hear from payroll that “The timesheet period should be bi-monthly just like the payroll is.”  We’re likely to reply with “Project Management reports that they will need more timely data.”

Someone’s perspective can skew an entire configuration if left unchecked.  When someone says “Perhaps we should just do our own thing.” We might ask how much they’ll like doing two timesheets or three each week to accommodate the different perspectives.

TimeControl’s remarkable flexibility is what makes it capable of serving multiple business process needs at the same time.  For some that may mean extending their perspective to include other points of view.   Let us know at TimeControl.com/contact if one of our TimeControl deployment specialists can help guide your organization through a multi-use deployment of TimeControl.