Engineering Software: Managing projects, time, and full financials

Encountering industry specific obstacles on a daily basis? Finding it hard to overcome these challenges without exhausting both resources and time? Ask yourself this, does my engineering firm have the right software tools to more effectively and efficiently solve these challenges? With a variety of software now available on the market, there a multiple modules designed to aid your company in day to day operations. From estimating software packages to time and billing modules, there are numerous tools that can extend the ability of standard financial management packages to help your engineering firm lower operational costs and operate more efficiently.

What to look for?

If purchasing software for the first time or looking to upgrade, there are a number of key features that a good software package should include that are specific to the engineering industry. These are;

• Customization – ability top pick and choose different modules to best suit the needs of your firm.
• Easy to understand and use.
• Easy to access whether onsite or in the office.
• Support.
• Client-centric modules to help in making the customer a priority.
• Basic financial management - ability to print checks, pay bills, track expenses, manage payroll, create orders and invoices, manage receivables, establish budgets, perform bank reconciliations, and create top level financial reports.
• Work order management or job costing module.
• Time and billing module.
• Expense tracking capabilities.

Benefits of engineering software

Investing in software will have different benefits to different firms; however it will always be beneficial in some way for e.g.

• A time and billing modules provide a way to track time spent working for clients. A time and billing module will support time-tracking where entries can be assigned to specific clients or projects, as well as marked billable or non-billable. Time and billing is typically the easiest way to bill for work that is primarily based off of time. Summary views in time and billing applications help service businesses analyze the work they've performed on particular projects. Basic expense tracking capabilities provide a method for charging incidental costs back to the client. A job costing module will also track labor, but it provides additionally capabilities for tracking things like equipment use, subcontractor usage, and materials.

Engineering software will overall increase both the effectiveness and efficiency of your work force which in turn will increase; cliental, customer satisfaction and profitability.