A crucial part of any timesheet & expense management system is that it provides a complete set of standard management reports based on real time information. These reports should focus on the main metrics you use to manage your business, such as the following:
* Time Off reports detailing holiday and sickness
* Timesheet Exception Reports detailing missing and incomplete timesheets
* Project Cost Reports broken down by resource, activity, cost rate, role, department, task or any user defined variable
* Invoice Reports detailing invoiced vs. chargeable vs. non chargeable work
* Billable Time reports comparing chargeable vs. non chargeable effort by project and resource
* Invoice Reports detailing invoiced vs. chargeable vs. non chargeable work
* Project Cost Reports broken down by resource, activity, cost rate, role, department, task or any user defined variable
* Invoice Reports detailing invoiced vs. chargeable vs. non chargeable work
As well as providing reports access via the menu system, the more superior time and expense management solutions such as Atlantic Global OnDemand give you access to reports from specific dashboards and screens.
Context Sensitive Reports
Vital to the adoption of any system is that you make the system as easy to use and as relevant to the end user as possible. Tools like Atlantic Global OnDemand achieve this by offering context sensitive reports. Context sensitive reports enable users to run a report with a single click from any screen in the application without having to specify any filter criteria. For example, a user can easily run a timesheet detail or utilisation report directly from the timesheet entry screen. This functionality enables us to provide each user with access to their most commonly used reports directly from the views they use the most.
Dashboard Reports
Atlantic Global OnDemand’s ability to provide access to reports directly from dashboards is another example of improving the ease of use and access to data. For example, a project manager has quick access, directly from their project status dashboard, to all project management based reports. This means you are able to provide a user with access to all of the status information from one single entry point to the system via the dashboard. The user can then access all views and reports they required for their role in the organisation. By keeping them hidden from any irrelevant functionality it makes it far easier to train people to use the system and to provide them with focus on the information they should be maintaining & updating.
A key aspect of Atlantic Global OnDemand is allowing each user to print their own reports easily with a single click from selected dashboard elements such as status.
Custom Report Writer
To aid your reporting needs it is crucial that your time and expense management solution gives you the ability to produce your own improvised reports to cover any extra reporting required which are not covered by the standard reports the application provides. To make things easier, the report writer should provide the user with a graphical user interface that requires no prior knowledge of coding languages. The report writer should also offer the options to generate text, column, cross-tab and graphical reports. Solutions like Atlantic Global OnDemand also give the ability to manipulate and clone the standard reports so that you can add additional fields or filtering options to meet your individual reporting needs. With SaaS solutions enable you to constantly extend your system reporting capabilities with a strong user community and product road map. This also means that these type of systems offer the ability to load or import additional report definitions.
Export Reports
The final aspect of reporting that your solution should offer, is the ability to export data so that you can use and manipulate it in other systems. In order to do this, you should be able to export data directly from reports in common data formats such as MS Excel, XML, PDF and HTML.
If you have any opinions on the importance of Real Time Management Reporting then let us know by leaving a comment.
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