An Excel list per project - This is how project controlling is still frequently structured in many management consultancies in 2022. As the volume of projects increases, the recording and accounting of time spent on projects becomes more and more impenetrable, error-prone and imprecise until the entire construct of Word and Excel collapses at some point.
In many project-oriented management consultancies, the consultants are mostly active on-site at the client's premises. For entering the respective project times, ZEP offers a reliable facilitation of your project business and simple controlling with the web-based user interface or the mobile app for Android and iOS. In order to facilitate the administrative and organisational tasks in everyday work, numerous management consultancies already rely on ZEP - especially when it comes to detailed processes such as travel expense reimbursement, resource planning or the use of freelance consultants. Manual and offline data entry is a thing of the past. You decide how much you want to digitise.
With the Travel expenses module your consultants record their travel data together with the project times. Receipts such as hotel bills, taxi receipts or train tickets can be easily assigned to the respective projects or clients. You determine the travel expense regulation for further charging per project. Recording is also possible on the road: Simply photograph all receipts and assign them to the respective project in the app. ZEP then creates the complete expense report, including additional expenses for meals. Your consultants can define their work locations with the corresponding flat rates in ZEP, the 70/30 rule for the deductibility of entertainment receipts is integrated and even the midnight rule for business trips lasting several days is automatically applied. With ZEP, you always have a digital overview of your travel expenses and the standardised export to accounting, including the receipts, even makes your work easier for your accountants or tax consultants.
Especially as a management consultancy, you plan your projects with foresight. But how do you keep to time? Do you always have an eye on the workload of your consultants? Do you know what tasks are coming up next? With a growing number of employees and multi-faceted long-term projects, the overview can sometimes get lost. So that you are always up to date on who is working on which project, ZEP offers you the Resource planning module. Here you have the possibility to map the real allocation across projects. Project assignments and on-site days of your consultants are thus clearly documented and you always have an overview of how busy and available your consultants are. The module also offers you the option of assigning concrete tasks to consultants. The advantage: Your consultants can book their working hours directly to the respective tasks. By using these so-called work packages in individual projects, you and your project managers can always keep an eye on the workload of your consultants at a very detailed level. Graphics help you to schedule your consultants in such a way that they neither have too little to do nor are overloaded. The possible uses of resource planning and staff scheduling offer real added value, especially for medium-sized and larger management consultancies.
Do you regularly use freelance consultants for your projects? Your cooperation can be simplified considerably with ZEP. If you work together as a team in one and the same ZEP, it is possible to pay out recorded time spent directly as credits. With the "Freelancer" Module you can directly mark freelancers, store internal hourly and daily rates per external consultant and/or project and select whether a freelance consultant invoices or receives credit notes. With credit notes, you bill freelance consultants directly from ZEP and thus save the paper-heavy invoicing process for both sides. The appropriate evaluation in ZEP then gives you a detailed overview of all created credit notes when the project is completed.
A system with which you and your consultants work every day should of course function intuitively and offer a certain "ease of work at the push of a button". Depending on the project effort and number of consultants, ZEP can be individually and flexibly adapted to the needs of your consultancy.
And with our 30 days trial version you can put ZEP through its paces, test all the add-on modules that are relevant for you and, if you have any questions, contact our free support contact.
Inaccurately recorded working hours can lead to unfair pay, compliance risks and inefficient workflows, so it pays to rely on modern software solutions like ZEP that enable accurate time tracking, effective project management and improved transparency.
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