We have recently become acquainted with a clever little product which seems to take most of the “heavy lifting” out of mobile time tracking, and runs right from your smartphone (Blackberry, iPhone, Droid, etc.). WorkTRAKR, from Proximiti Communications, installs right on your phone and runs in the background, waiting for you to make a call, send an email, or schedule an appointment. When you do so, you can choose to be prompted for a billing code, and the transaction is then automatically loaded onto a secure server at Proximiti, from where it can be quickly and easily merged into your Timeslips billing system, typically with a single click from the website portal.

The app runs not only on smartphones, but right on your desktop or laptop, as well, capturing information from Outlook, office copiers, landline phones, etc. – any tool you use for communication (except a typewriter!) is fair game to be integrated for time and expense capturing purposes to bill from Timeslips. The application is sold as a service, allowing the user to “tailor” what communications applications are to be integrated, and is priced accordingly.  A basic subscription for smartphone-only integration can be as inexpensive as $25.00 per month.

There is a link on our website from which you can explore the various pricing options, receive a ready-made quote for the services you elect to purchase, and even try out the service for 30 days at no cost. Click here if you are interested in taking WorkTRAKR for a test drive.

Time Entry
The old way: Timekeepers fill out paper timesheets and hand them to an assistant to enter into the computer. 

The paperless solution:  Timesheet Slip Entry.

Timekeepers can now enter their time in a traditional timesheet format, instead of having to enter individual slips.  Clients and tasks can be pre-filled so that the timekeepers need only to enter the number of hours worked in the appropriate box.  They can make life even easier by using the timer to keep track of the time as they work. 

 Pre-Bill Worksheets
The old way:  The billing clerk prints out a stack of pre-bill worksheets and then gives them to the boss to review and mark up before the final bills are generated.  

The paperless solution:  Interactive bill preview with drill-down capability

The boss can print the pre-bills to his/her display and click on-screen to drill down and make the changes right in the program. 

 Billing
The old way: Print out the bills.  Stuff them in envelopes.  Stamp the envelopes.  Put them in the mail.  Wait a week for the client to receive the bill and another week (hah!) for them to pay. 

The paperless solution:  Send bills via email

Timeslips allows you to email bills right from within the program, via a connection to Outlook.  The client receives the bill as a PDF file.  You can create an unlimited number of email templates with different message bodies and subject lines.  You can even embed tokens like the invoice number and amount into the message and subject line.     If you prefer, you can also print the bills to PDF files and then email them manually. 

 Reporting/Data Analysis
The old way: Print reports to paper

The paperless solution:  Print reports to display, PDF file, Excel or Word

The added bonus to viewing your reports on screen is that you can click on the data elements to drill down for more detail.  Sending reports to Excel gives you extra functionality and flexibility.  With Timeslips 2010, all reports now have a print to Excel option and you can choose to send the data over in columns, or as it appears in the standard Timeslips report format. 

Cash Receipts
The old way: Open the mail. Enter checks into Timeslips.  Take checks to the bank. 

 The paperless solution:  Unfortunately Timeslips has not yet developed a way to receive payments other than to enter them manually.  However, there are many ways that you can receive payments from clients over the internet or phone without using checks.  We would be willing to bet that, before too much longer (Timeslips 2011?) Timeslips will incorporate a way to import payment transactions from the website, that you can then use to process client payments. 

 So there you have it.  Not only do these solutions save paper, they save time, resources and money.

For more help with configuring Timeslips for a paperless office, contact one of the experts at TriStar Data Systems.