We are happy to debut a new AbaKast training session in May: Security!

• Learn how to setup security groups
• Understand how to control access to specific information, for example cost information
• See real-life examples – you can even submit your own before the session

May 31st, 2012, 1:30pm Eastern Time
Only 99$
15th anniversary special – FREE

Register now!

The fact is, very few people enjoy logging their time. It’s often perceived at a clerical activity that is not productive to the employee, and provides a sense of “being controlled from above.” Not every part of one’s job can be fun, and we have to live with that.

However, as managers, we can use strategies to motivate our employees to hand in their timesheets. Here are five of them:

1. The hard line: No timesheet, no pay.
   Pros: It’s highly effective. If someone misses a paycheck once because they forgot to submit their timesheet, it certainly will be their last.
   Cons: Repressive strategies tend to breed discontent in teams.
2. The positive reinforcement: Get a perk every week the timesheet is filled on time
   Pros: Getting the perk is a positive motivator and people will enjoy it.
   Cons: No perk comes for free: allow to the additional cost in your budget.
3. The nagger: Automatically (or manually) tell your employees when they have not filled out their timesheet
   Pros: This method works well with the forgetful employees
   Cons: Most employees will become accustomed to the reminder over time, and the method may lose effectiveness in the long term.
4. The gamification: The first timesheet submitted gets a prize.
   Pros: Gamification of the workplace is all the rage these days. It’s especially effective with younger employees.
   Cons: As the article suggests, making a game out of timesheets does not make up for bad management. Plus, the game needs to be kept interesting, so it requires frequent updates and changes.
5. The social reinforcement: Teams who submit timesheets on time get recognition, team who don’t lose a perk.
   Pros: This strategy promotes working as a team and may improve team cohesion.
   Cons: A non-compliant team member might be ostracized and experience adverse effects from his or her colleagues, creating more conflict in the workplace.

What are your strategies for getting timesheets done in your organization? Tell us in the comments!

In the world of a service-based business, like any business, you have to know where the money is coming from. More than that, you have to know where the profits are coming from. After all, running a charity is not the intention, so why take on contracts for clients that are barely breaking even? Why work with clients that always end up costing more than they bring in revenues?

With project-based accounting, knowing where the money comes from and where the money goes can be done in real time. With a centralized time and billing system like Abak, you can charge all costs to the proper project or contract. You can also attribute all revenues to the relevant project. Once the data is there, figuring out where the margins are highest is kid’s play.

When costs and revenues are associated with a project, a client, an account manager, a project manager, a business line, or even a partner, it becomes easy to analyse your business performance. For example:

• Do margins differ significantly from one project manager to the next? What about account managers? Partners?
• Is there a specific client type where margins are higher?  What about project types?

With quality business performance data on project margins, our clients were able to identify where they were successful financially, and where they were not. The next question would then relate to business strategy:

• Are you willing to tolerate a lower margin on some projects, because they bring in other higher-margin project?
• Are you willing to keep a low-margin client because of the visibility it brings to the business?

What do you think? How to you evaluate profit margins with your projects and clients? Tell us in the comments!

On August 1^st, we’ll draw one lucky client amongst our Facebook friends, who will save 500$ on their next renewal invoice!

What are you waiting for? Like us now!

In April, our AbaKast online training session is all about supercharging Abak with Pivot reports. Pivot reports let you slice and dice Abak’s data any which way you like. If you want to move beyond our transactions list report, this is the training for you!

AbaKast 202: Pivot Reports

April 26th, 2012, 1h30 – 3h30pm, Eastern Time

Only 99$

Register here.

The launch of Abak in 1997

Abak started out in 1997. That’s in that last century! We created Abak because, as an IT consulting firm at the time, we could not find a good product to connect timesheets from our employees to invoices sent to our clients.

Soon enough, our clients got wind of our home-grown time and billing system, and they wanted in on it! We started out with a few clients, who became our partners (and most constructive critics), and built an integrated time and billing system for small businesses in the professional services industry.

At first, we worked with accounting firms and architects, but soon engineering firms and consulting businesses of all kinds wanted to track project costs, revenues and margins automatically with Abak.

Today, over 25 000 people use Abak every day to log time, invoice clients, and make their business more profitable.

To celebrate this milestone, we’re offering our new clients 15 months for the price of 12!

This offer ends May 30^th. Hurry before it goes away!

Try the demo, or request a quotation now!

Would you like to try it? We’re offering Abak Mobile for free until January 2013. This means you get to use Abak Mobile for months without having to pay for it! In January 2013, if you decide to keep Abak Mobile, you’ll need to purchase the licence upgrade.

Interested? Contact sales.

Here’s what we have in this issue:

• Abak celebrates 15 years of helping businesses grow!
• What’s new with Abak
  • Abak Mobile for free in 2012
  • Abak 7.4 available for download
  • Coming up in Abak 7.5
• Join us on Facebook, you could save 500$!
• Want some free training time?
• New documentation
• New report: monthly billings
• Upcoming AbaKast online training sessions
• The Pro’s corner: email many invoices in one click
• Easter: open or closed?

E&I wanted to expand their services to offer procurement consulting, and they needed a system to manage the timesheets and invoicing functions for this new business unit. The solution also needed to be easy to use, from both a timesheet entry and administration perspective, but also needed to support corporate and field-based consumers transparently.

They chose Abak because we were able to support the full client lifecycle and offer a hosted architecture (SAAS), at a very affodable cost. As Jim wrote, our “qualified and attentive teams” also helped make the choice.

Thank Jim and E&I for such kind words!

You can read the full review here.

Abak is a gold mine of data, do you know how to leverage that data to better manage your business? Would you like to transform Abak into a decision-making tool?

Then this online training session is for you!
AbaKast 102: Efficient reporting

March 22nd, 2012, 1h30 – 3h30pm, Eastern Time

Become a master of reporting:

• Standard reports
• Custom reports
• Parameters

Only 99$

Don’t wait, register here!