Last month, Microsoft Dynamics GP team member Pam Misialek published a handy blog entry that covered timesheet best practices for Microsoft Dynamics GP. As noted in the blog, any organization with ongoing projects should have their employees track their time and expenses on a per-project basis for the purpose of project accounting. This enables organizations to see the true performance of each project. The following is a brief summary: for more details, see the linked blog entry.
One recommendation is to increase efficiency by configuring timesheets to track employee time at the individual level as well as by department or organization. By analyzing this information, you can determine discrepancies in job role versus skill set, so if an employee is assigned tasks in one area, but actually completes tasks in another with much more efficiency, you can see that and assign that employee more of the tasks he or she is efficient at.
Another recommendation is managing strategic approvals. Some timesheet systems limit approvals to just one supervisor or administrator. Any organization that engages in any sort of complex activities would do well to set up a system of customizable approvals so that the right people will have access to the right information when needed.
A third recommendation is to automate compliance. Formal policies and compliance requirements may govern employee timesheet usage, but inevitably, mistakes will happen. Reminders and validations should be configured according to your organization’s specific needs. The system can be set up to make some errors impossible. If you limit time entry options to only those that are valid, and have the system automatically reject invalid timesheets, you can save a lot of time and greatly reduce errors.
