Accounting/PM/Scheduling Application for Single and Small Team Engineering Companies 1

[phamENG]

For you solo guys or managers of small companies - has anyone found the "magic bullet" for management applications? I'm looking for something that will let me do in depth scheduling and resource management (this is my major failure - my schedule runs my life rather than me running my schedule), project management to track tasks and time allotments for budgeting and billing, invoicing, and accounting (at least income/expense tracking).

I've been running InvoiceNinja - it's free if you want, or for all the features it's still pretty inexpensive. But they have no scheduling and the PM tools are limited to Kanban style cards.

I've looked into these:
Harpoon - by far my favorite but the scheduling does get any more refined than by the month and I'd like to see daily hourly allotments. It goes so far as to auto-generate project budgets for lump-sum fee projects based on hourly rate settings and desired margins. Pretty slick.
Cushion - nice and simple, does the scheduling REALLY well (that and freelance income forecasting is what it was built for), but doesn't appear to be very scalable (I don't want to be a one man shop forever).
monday.com - good, but lacks the accounting tools
SmartSheet - like monday.com but on steroids, and harder to set up (due to the extra features, etc.). Also doesn't appear to have accounting built in, but could be at least be tracked with custom built tools.
Paymo - this seems like the best one so far, but still not perfect.

Anyone else using something different that they really like?

 

[XR250]

I'm a one-man shop with a full time contract PE helping me.
Between us, we do about 700 jobs per year.

I use a Calender app with a built in ToDo list for my scheduling (BusyCal on my Mac)
Excel for my timesheets
Quickbooks online for Invoicing. I don't use the timesheet feature on this as it is too limiting.

I works for me.

 

[phamENG]

Thanks, XR. That's been my process as well (though I switched from Excel Timesheets and Quickbooks to InvoiceNinja because they combined them nicely and was 1/4 the price of QB, though it lacks the accounting depth). Outlook with the built in To-Do list and Calendar is helpful, but they're too separated. The to-do's don't show up on the calendar, so I have to make "appointments" for all of my tasks, so rescheduling gets cumbersome.

Maybe I just need to refine it, but I've found myself doubling up on a lot of things - entering the same project information into all systems; entering clients across all of them, etc. So my quest is to find something that combines them nicely and gives me a 'dashboard' style view of things so I can grab info as I need it.

 

[phamENG]

Everything falls short...started to set up Paymo...data import is only possible by programming your own tool with their API...

 

[skeletron]

Just commenting to let you know that it's tough to find the magic bullet. My scheduling isn't too intense, but my tracking can swamp me after a week of catch-up. I think you want a tool that's easy enough to pop open update really easily. I've heard interesting reports on Toggle (sp?). It doesn't do the invoicing though.

 

[XR250]

@Pham,

InvoiceNinja looks great. My bookkeeper and accountant want me to use Quickbooks Online, however.. They have easy access to my accounts for reconciling etc. it works pretty nicely and a nice upgrade from the desktop version but I detest Intuit. They are awful.

 

[phamENG]

I've been happy with it, and was just planning to add a scheduler to my toolbox when I realized there are a few that come REALLY close to doing everything I want. I started with QB because it's an Intuit product - I've done my taxes myself with TurboTax for as long as I've needed anything more than a hand filled 1040EZ. But then I realized the mess I'd be dealing with with schedule Cs and S corp paperwork, and all the other stuff I have going, and decided to just get an accountant. She's not particular as long as I give her the information.

The downside to IN is that it doesn't do the bookkeeping. It'll track invoicing and expenses, which is great, but it doesn't sync up to a bank account and keep a detail accounting of the books.

skeletron - I figure the magic bullet idea is a stretch (I have to constantly remind myself to keep perfect from becoming the enemy of the good), but I was curious to see if anyone had come up with or found something that created a nice, concentrated workflow for the business side of things. After all, the number one complaint I hear from most engineering business people is about the business.

 

[glass99]

I would love an expense tracker for tax purposes - Maybe InvoiceNinja is the answer. I can't conceive of useful project management software other than a simple timesheet service telling me how many hours have been spent. One of the benefits of being on your own is that you give Deltek the middle finger as you ride out the door. S curves and all of that are bollocks, are they not?

 

[miningman]

How do you guys manage to find time to do any productive work if you're so busy with time keeping etc?? Dunno how I managed over the last 40 years

 

[phamENG]

glass - not quite looking for Deltek. But a tool to help manage scheduling, billing, etc. all the same. Maybe someday I'll just have nice big projects with enough stretch in the schedule to cushion the overlaps, but right now I'm juggling 16 or 17 small to medium projects and my to-do list has just become this ever growing monster that haunts my leisure time while I try to build Duplos with my kids.

miningman - how did you manage? You probably developed the best system you could with the tools at your disposal and developed a system that you've grown comfortable with. That's precisely what I'm trying to do - but before I decide I want to know what tools are available to me now. Investing a few hours now to figure out the best tool that will save me a few hours every week for the next 15 years seems like a pretty solid ROI.

 

[KootK]

Moving over here as, apparently, I did not get the gist of the other post. This is an interesting conversation to be a part of.

First, some philosophy.

As a small enterprise, I've found that most attempts at resource scheduling are pretty futile for me. I don't exert much control over when projects start or when things go wrong. So sophisticated project management is wasted on me. Worse, it tends to take up a lot of time and leave me frustrated when things don't go as I've planned. I've come to the conclusion that there are are only two ways to resolve scheduling problems as a small/solo enterprise.

1) Do only small projects that are over quickly and/or;

2) Expand your team to make it easier to smooth out workload humps.

Both of those strategies, fundamentally, amount to increasing the size of your "team" relative to your projects. I've not yet been willing to do either in any meaningful way.

What I'm currently doing (and liking)

1) On Monday I try to plan out what I'll be doing for the week in broad strokes.

2) Each morning, I try to plan out what I'll be doing for the day. Then I do my darndest to actually do some of these things.

3) I use Basecamp as a rudimentary project management app.

4) I use Harvest for time tracking and hourly invoicing. I got the recommendation from member Ron here and agree that it's a useful tool. It also integrates with Basecamp somewhat.

5) I use Quickbooks for general accounting. Here, I'm am still duplicating information.

 

[KootK]

- For many firms, the silver bullet ends up being in house software. But, of course, you need scale for that.

- Back around 2005, I made my own version of Deltek before I knew such a thing existed. It was great, especially for me. A year after I left, the firm I was with ditched my system for Deltek which, of course, makes all kind strategic sense.

- My wife's firm has awesome, in house software. The only drawback is that they are a multi-discipline firm with a lot of different business units so there's some structure side clunkiness there.

- I interviewed with an Berkely structural firm once that had off the hook good, internally developed software that they started in the late 90's and still use to this day. Full on job tracking on you phone and everything. No doubt this had a little something to do with proximity to the silicon valley mindset.

...ever growing monster that haunts my leisure time while I try to build Duplos with my kids.

You need a superhuman ability to compartmentalize your life. I get better at this every year but it's a struggle still. The best advice that I ever got is this: don't work weekends, ever. Otherwise, you'll never have weekends and your life will pass you by. I give it all that I've got MTWTF and, often, work weekend mornings still. But once I can smell that 11AM bacon cooking and my dog starts to bring me old tennis balls, I shut her down no matter the consequences. Worse come to worst, I'm sure that somebody would still let me design roof trusses.

 

[phamENG]

Thanks, KootK. Moving my response in response to your moved response:

RE: Philosophy - I agree, but I'm still idealistic/naive enough to think I can change the world and the fundamental operations of the AE industry. This is me trying...

I looked into BaseCamp and Harvest. They look like good tools, but fell short of the unified approach I was looking for. If you're only using BaseCamp for PM and paying for it, you may want to check out FreedCamp. Same idea, but the free version is designed to give more functionality. (Not sure if the succeeded.)

I'm 90% sure I'm going to go with Harpoon for invoicing, accounting (I can get away with single entry bookkeeping for now), and PM, and use Float for time tracking and scheduling. Zapier is a nifty inter-app integration tool that automates data transfer, and for my purposes the free tool should suffice.

 

[phamENG]

Good call on not working weekends. Just need to tactfully lose the clients who call at 11am on Saturday asking for something to be ready by Monday morning.

 

[kipfoot]

I've been using quickbooks forever and it handles all my timekeeping, billing, expenses, payroll taxes, invoicing, etc. I can keep track of outstanding invoices, list my clients by billing, categorize my billing by project type. It does basic financial statements. I see that they're now on a subscription service that would cost me $20/month if I wanted to update, but I'm fine with the 7 year old perpetual license.

I can't help with your search for scheduling software. I use an Inamio weekly planner. I like it because it has thick paper, is a convenient size, and starts the week with Monday.

 

[phamENG]

kipfoot - right now I have a legal pad on my desk with a handwritten to-do list, so your suggestion is more helpful than you think.

 

[kipfoot]

phamENG - I put my to-do list in my planner each week (office/projects/proposals) and things that I don't get to get transferred to the next week. I usually have not had clear visibility out beyond a month or so, though right now I'm feeling the weight of the backlog.

 

[Retrograde]

I'm also a fan of the handwritten to-do list. Apparently there is scientific evidence that handwriting is more effective for memory retention.