TRACKING PROJECT

COSTS & TIME:

A SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE
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TRACKING PROJECT COSTS & TIME: A SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE
Introduction
Whether youre an IT manager at a midsized company or
a global enterprise, you need an easy, clear way to track
your projects costs. Without it you cant know with any
precision your productivity and employee utilizationthe
keys to controlling those costs.
In many organizations, tracking time and employees proj-
ect-related expenses is still done manually, often across
fragmented systems. Thats a recipe for inaccurate data
that lags actual work. If that sounds painfully familiar,
youre a good candidate for moving those processes off
your desktops and onto the Web. But the means for doing
that are decidedly not equal. Many companies have strug-
gled with solutions that featured confusing interfaces;
inadequate confgurability; diffcult integration with other
applications; and maintenance headaches.
All of those shortcomings can be avoided. In fact, with little
or no conversion hassle and a remarkably short transition
time, you can begin enjoying the productivity, cost, and
convenience advantages of an online time and expense
tracking system for your projects. This guide shows you
what to look for in eight key areas, as you evaluate pro-
spective solutions that could make your project tracking
easy.
1. Get accurate project costing with real-time views
into your data
If you cant easily see the up-to-the-moment status of a
project, then you almost certainly cant steer its productiv-
ity. With a manual or paper-based system, your view of a
projects progress and time costs is limited and always
out-of-date. By their nature, manual time and expense
tracking systems introduce signifcant administrative
costs, and the potential for error and omissions is very
high. But in automated, web-based systems, information
about your project is available immediately, and is updated
in real-time as users enter their data.
So its easy to see the productivity of your projects team,
compare actual costs versus your original budget, and
quickly understand overall status. Employee expenses
can be processed and approved immediately. And as you
proceed with new projects, historical data is readily avail-
able to help you make more accurate forecasts.
Best practice: Get a project time tracking system that
arms you with timely, easy-to-see, and accurate cost in-
formation.
2. Replace paper and Excel-based tracking with a
specialized solution
Best practice: Use a system in which all tracking data
is entered just once, and project administration is per-
formed uniformly via web-based software. (This data
should be easily shared with your other applications as
wellsee Integrate your data below.)
3. Get a cloud solution for better effciency and cost
of ownership
If youve followed the trends toward cloud computing,
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and web-based business
systems, you know that the traditional way of running busi-
ness applicationson expensive, internal hardware that
you monitor and maintain yourselfis becoming a thing of
the past. That model is being overtaken by cloud-based
applications because the advantages are too great to ig-
nore. You get much more than gains in billable productiv-
ity. You also get predictable operating cost and lower total
cost of ownership. Your time tracking system becomes an
operating cost rather than a capital expense.
The less time that people spend gathering project data, the
more effcient theyand your projectsbecome.
TRACKING PROJECT COSTS & TIME: A SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE
Theres no need for new hardware or other IT infrastruc-
ture costs, and theres minimal implementation timejust
hours or days instead of weeks or months. A web-based
system means theres nothing to maintain or upgrade: You
always have the most recent version of software. And all
your data is available from anywhere with an Internet con-
nection.
Best practice: Go with a web-based solution to ensure
high productivity and low operating cost.
4. Get software that is easy for employees to use

Best practice: Get employees involved in the assess-
ment process for every system youre considering.
Theyll be a great barometer for the rate of adoption you
can expect. And you should set that expectation high.
5. Get software that makes your administration and
reporting easy
As mentioned above, many companies have stumbled
with project tracking software because it was hard to use.
When you try a new system, its workfow and confgurabil-
ity should feel intuitive. It should even have built-in intel-
ligence that anticipates what you need to get your work
done. The best project time-tracking software gives you
a comprehensive set of functionssuch as highly fexible
and easy-to-run, real-time reportsand makes it easy
to expand upon them by adding things that suit your re-
quirements. Do you need to apply special billing rates to
a group of contractors or even an individual one? Setting
them up should be easy and obvious. Do you want to base
a new project on a prior one? It should be a simple mat-
terand a big time-saverto make it so by pointing-and-
clicking. In short, using your project time and expense
tracking software should be easy and hassle-free.
Best practice: Give your prospective system a thorough
test-drive. See whether you feel confdent that you can
do everything you need, intuitively.
6. Integrate your data wherever you need it
For most companies, capturing data in dedicated project
time tracking software is only part of a total solution. Shar-
ing that data with other applications completes the pic-
ture. This can be critical for project management, expense
reimbursement, payroll, and other processes. The ideal is
a seamless exchange of data via an open API (application
programming interface).
Some web-based project tracking software includes out-
of-the-box data sharing that is based on this. Typically
this is supplied for applications such as Microsoft Project,
QuickBooks, and others. If your company needs to inte-
grate with other applications, investigate carefully whats
required for that to happen. The best project and expense
tracking software includes an API that facilitates data ex-
change via standards-based integration (such as XML
web services). You should have the option of developing
the integration yourself, or working with your software ven-
dor to implement it.
When employees can enter their project time and expenses
quickly, their adoption rateand your datas accuracy
rises dramatically.
The best project costing software makes it easy to share
data with billing, payroll, and other applications.
TRACKING PROJECT COSTS & TIME: A SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE
7. Ensure that your data is safe, secure, and available
When you choose a web-based project tracking solution,
you pass the responsibility for safekeeping your data to
a third party. Its extremely important that your vendor is
equipped to ensure its security, integrity, and availability.
This is accomplished via a combination of physical secu-
rity and environmental controls; independent certifcation
that adequate data protection processes are in place (the
industry standard for this is SAS 70 Type II certifcation
insist on it).
Other considerations include frewalls and antivirus protec-
tion; encryption of in-transit data; and offsite data backup
with tested disaster recovery provisions. Also very impor-
tant: Your vendor should have a service level guarantee
for the availability of your data and the software you use.
Best practice: Be sure that the vendors you consider
can document their means for supplying all of the above.
8. Automate compliance with regulations
If your organization performs work for government agen-
cies, you may already be familiar with requirements for au-
tomated timekeeping. When you search for a web-based
project tracking solution, it can be vital that the one you
select supports the requirements you deal with. Govern-
ment contractors are subject to audits of their employ-
ment practices and accounting, and within those, systems
for tracking and billing must conform.
DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) compliance is a
good example. To comply, your system must have, among
other features, the capacity to limit access and report on
users activities with the system; it must include proper
setting of roles and permissions; it must support unique
project and task names with discrete identifers for each
work item; and it must have the means for notifying work-
ers electronically about certain details of the work they are
assigned.
Further, a verifable audit trail process must be in place to
collect all initial entries and subsequent changes.
Best practice: Be sure that the vendors you consider
can document their means for supplying all of the above.
Conclusion
To control project costs you need a centralized way to
get accurate, timely data. Traditional, manual methods for
achieving this are yielding to online systems that make it
easy for employees and managers alike to account for and
view time and expenses.
The best of these systems are easy to confgure, readily
share data with other applications, and provide low cost
of ownership by offoading responsibility for hosting and
security. Select one of these web-based systems and ev-
eryone touched by your projects will work easier.
TRACKING PROJECT COSTS & TIME: A SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE
About Replicon
Founded in 1996, Replicon, Inc. is the world leader in
web-based time and expense management software.
Replicons fagship application, Web TimeSheet, provides
professional service organizations with quantitative, real-
time analysis of workforce productivity and a way to set
employee productivity goals based on bottom line rev-
enues.
Replicon has more than 1.5 million users in 7,300 compa-
nies worldwide.
For more information, please contact:
Replicon Corporate Headquarters
Suite 800 , 910 - 7th Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
T2P-3N8
U.S. Offce
951 Mariners Island Blvd, Suite 130
San Mateo, CA 94404
Toll Free:
North America 1-877-662-2519
Global +800 6622 5192
info@replicon.com
www.replicon.com