
Time recording with Excel: That's enough
NWS was founded in 2010 and was officially launched in October of the same year. “To be honest, you don't even think about time recording at the beginning. ”, NWS managing director Christoph Stiens remembers the beginnings of his company. In addition, the majority of shareholder projects were carried out at the beginning, so that time recording in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets appeared sufficient.
“If ZEP hadn't existed, they would have had to develop it for us! ”
Christoph Stiens
management
This changed in the following year. Christoph Stiens explains: “With a continuously increasing volume of projects, it quickly became clear that the solution used would not be sufficient in the long term to ensure seamless and accurate time recording and billing. ” The use of various tools and Excel extensions available on the Internet for time recording also did not prove effective and so it quickly became clear to Mr. Stiens and his employees: A new solution was needed.
“Using an appropriate interface, we can now transfer the invoices into the SAP system not just as an invoice item, but broken down by ledger account. ”
Christoph Stiens
management
Search for “better Excel tool” leads to ZEP
“In fact, our web research was originally about finding a better Excel tool”, admits Christoph Stiens. In the end, the search led to ZEP from provantis IT Solutions. ZEP stands for time recording for projects. The web-based solution has been on the market since 2000 and offers project-oriented companies a complete solution for time recording and reporting, travel expenses, project management and controlling, and invoicing.
After an initial online presentation by the software provider, NWS decided to use the option of a free 30-day trial account. “This was very important for us because it gave us the non-binding and free opportunity to check whether the solution could even meet our specific requirements. ” After completing the test phase, it was clear that the solution was right! In the early days, NWS used ZEP exclusively to record project times.
Transfer of ZEP data to SAP results in use of the billing module
By the beginning of 2012, the project times recorded in ZEP were exported via the solution's CSV interface, processed and sent to the accounting service provider, which was responsible for the transfer of the data to the NWS SAP system. The invoices were created in MS-Word and the ZEP time recording data was added as an attachment.
With the aim of streamlining and at least partially automating this process as well, NWS decided to use ZEP's billing module at the beginning of 2012. “The solution simply convinced us”, Christoph Stiens explains the decision.
In summer 2014, the Billing module was expanded to include accounting export. “Using an appropriate interface, we can now transfer the invoices into the SAP system not just as an invoice item, but broken down by ledger account. ” The transfer is carried out “semi-automatically” using a “translation list” and a corresponding SAP macro. Christoph Stiens confirms: “All you have to do is press a button again. ”
The customer-specific fields available in the SAP instance of NWS, which are not included in the standard ZEP Billing package, were amended accordingly in ZEP and replaced the previously required manual adjustment.
Implementing customer-specific requirements
In addition, further adjustments were made in ZEP to meet the specific requirements of NWS. One keyword here is “key projects.” Christoph Stiens explains: “Key projects is the NWS internal term for projects that have been commissioned jointly by several customers. It is of course important that the recorded working hours for billing are distributed proportionally among these various customers. When ZEP was introduced, this function was not included in the range of functions and was therefore implemented specifically for us by provantis. ”
“If ZEP hadn't existed, they would have had to develop it for us! ”
provantis, Christoph Stiens concludes, was also able to prove that even with a cloud-based solution, customer-specific adaptation is easily possible. What's more: The rapid integration of these adjustments into new versions of the solution means that ZEP is continuously developed together with users.