{"id":10074,"date":"2020-09-28T15:22:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T19:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/?p=10074"},"modified":"2023-04-04T06:33:19","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T10:33:19","slug":"a-new-era-in-time-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/a-new-era-in-time-entry\/","title":{"rendered":"A new era in time entry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStrategy, Legal & Operations<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tA new era in time entry\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"Brian\t\t\t\tBrian Siefkes<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s 4 o\u2019clock on a Friday and about a dozen of your employees still haven\u2019t submitted their timesheet. You know that once you get them, you need to get them approved and then you\u2019ll probably need to recheck them just to be sure. You don\u2019t want another invoice to get kicked back or need to unwind a transaction after you\u2019ve closed the books. Margins are tighter now, so time entry is more heavily scrutinized, and your team is still leaving billable work off of their timesheets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are age old problems in the Professional Services industry. It\u2019s unrealistic to expect your team to reconstruct their work week (or month) with any degree of accuracy. Your never-ending role of playing timesheet cop is the weekly office joke, but we accept it because \u2018it\u2019s the nature of the beast\u2019. It\u2019s estimated that service-based businesses experience about 3% revenue leakage<\/a> due to things like poor time entry, reissuing invoices, and project scope creep. We\u2019ve accepted these challenges because it\u2019s always been that way. People can\u2019t be expected to be perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sage Intelligent Time is changing the game<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not often that an advance in technology provides an immediate impact to an old challenge. These things usually take time. The Sage Artificial Intelligence Labs (SAIL) team is ignoring that trend and delivering a leap in time entry technology<\/a> that is as big as the move from paper time slips to digital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Sage Intelligent Time<\/a> users are provided with a virtual Time Assistant that suggests time entries based on a person\u2019s activity. The Time Assistant gathers calendar items, emails, desktop applications, and collaboration tools like Slack, and makes those activities available for drag and drop onto the timesheet for unprecedented speed and accuracy in time entry. Sage Intelligent Time\u2019s machine learning helps simplify the process even further as it learns what project, task and client the activity typically belongs to and refines the time entry suggestion. That means your time entry gets faster and more accurate every time you use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine a meeting with a project team. The first person from that meeting fills out their timesheet and classifies the project, task and client for that event. For the rest of the team, their timesheet will automatically update the time entry suggestion with that information so they can simply approve and submit. Imagine a project manager gets an email from a customer to evaluate a project change on a Monday. After an hour of looking into it, the issue is dropped. At the end of the week, that project manager would have long forgotten that unplanned time drain. The power of Sage Intelligent Time puts that event on the timesheet to remind the project manager of how they spent their time on Monday. That time may not get billed, but by accounting for it, you have a much more accurate understanding of the true cost of your projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patricia Wakim, SVP of finance for M\/A\/R\/C Research, a marketing research firm, commented: \u201cOur project managers are typically very busy and required to juggle multiple projects, which can make time entry delayed and often less accurate. We depend on that time entry to get an understanding of the financial performance of our projects and catch any revenue leakage before it gets out of control. To streamline the process, Sage Intelligent Time helps suggest what should be entered instead of forcing our project managers to dig through their calendars59io and email to reconstruct the workweek. The automated alerts are also helpful for me, so I don\u2019t have to play \u2018timesheet cop\u2019 as much \u2013 but I will miss the opportunity to wear the badge every Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How AI timesheets can impact your bottom line<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Whether your work is billed by time and expense or fixed fee, there are a number of impacts better time entry will provide. If you bill for your time, missing billable time hits you straight on the margin. Harvard Business Review recently conducted a study<\/a> that shows troubling timesheet accuracy based on the time entry frequency. If you talk with any finance team, it\u2019s an easy approximation to say that each team member is missing a half hour to an hour of potentially billable time per week. It\u2019s usually the higher billable employees that are the most likely to miss capturing the time. If you are able to recover one hour of billable time per week, at an average to $200 per hour and 50 weeks per year, that\u2019s $10,000 per employee annually. This is an eye-opening example of how Artificial Intelligence can provide significant impact on your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On fixed-fee work, the value is seen in the accurate project costing. Not only are your project managers making more financially sound decisions with better data, but your business development team is also setting projects up for success with better up-front estimates. Having a better understanding of the time commitment your customers demand, and the various project types that leak revenue in forgotten activities, will plug the holes of revenue leakage, and give you a better handle on your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With an industry average of 3% revenue leakage, it can be easy to see where the improvement will show up. But that\u2019s just a part of the story. With employees accounting for every minute of billable time, your utilization rates will increase. With more accuracy on your project costing, your future project estimates will be better. With consistent time entry, your project managers will be better equipped to control scope creep. With automation, alerts, and mobile access, you can stop playing timesheet cop, and start focusing on your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sage Intacct is the leader for digital transformation bringing AI to finance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It can be easy to dismiss a new innovation as just another feature. Sage Intacct takes a different approach. AI and innovation are key components of the Sage Intacct DNA. A true cloud product, Sage Intacct is focused on delivering tangible value to customers through industry leading financial management solutions. As a testament to that philosophy, Sage Intelligent Time isn\u2019t some expensive add on feature for enterprise businesses, it\u2019s the standard timesheet available for companies of all sizes. This unique approach is a clear example of how Sage Intacct stands apart from legacy vendors trying to sell legacy products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To hear more about the Sage Intacct AI strategy, check out the recent Forbes interview with Aaron Harris<\/a>, Sage\u2019s CTO and leader of the Sage Artificial Intelligence Labs team. To learn more about Sage Intelligent Time, please click below.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Subscribe to our Sage Advice Newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Get our latest business advice delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Working\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 4 o\u2019clock on a Friday and about a dozen of your employees still haven\u2019t submitted their timesheet. You know that once you get them, you need to get them approved and then you\u2019ll probably need to recheck them just to be sure. You don\u2019t want another invoice to get kicked back or need to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1464,"featured_media":9090,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sage_video":false,"post_featured_image_hide":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,48],"tags":[4,420,168,154,250],"business_type":[40,41],"lilypad":[],"context":[418,429],"industry":[55,450],"persona":[100,99,98],"imagine_tag":[209,436],"coauthors":[851],"class_list":["post-10074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy-legal-operations","category-technology-innovation","tag-business-intelligence","tag-cloud-financial-management","tag-sage-accounting","tag-technology","tag-workplace-of-the-future","business_type-small-business","business_type-growing-business","industry-professional-services","industry-software-saas"],"sage_meta":{"region":"en-us","author_name":"Brian Siefkes","featured_image":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/04\/GettyImages-1136194984.jpg","imagine_tags":{"209":"Accounting","436":"Intacct Accounting"}},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Sage Advice US","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1464"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/9090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"business_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/business_type?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"lilypad","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/lilypad?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"context","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/context?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"persona","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/persona?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"imagine_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/imagine_tag?post=10074"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}