Vital Business
Solutions (VBS) have been responsible for the development of
many custom solutions for our clients over the years.
Adherence to proven project management methodologies and
tools, as well as many years experience in custom
systems development, ensures that solutions deliver
tangible business outcomes.
Each custom system development project is undertaken
based on five primary phases being:- Requirements
Confirmation, Design, Develop, Deliver, Support.
This approach ensures that initial expectations of
budget, time, functionality are consistently met or
exceeded.
Following are some of the software solutions that Vital
Business Solutions have been responsible for:-
Web Timesheets
Company Background
Elders are an Australian ‘agribusiness’ corporation that
have businesses in a number of vertical industries
including Insurance, Banking, Livestock, Wool, Real
Estate, Rural Merchandise and more. The Elders business
is geographically spread supplying services and products
from over 400 Australian branches, agencies and overseas
offices.
The Situation
A large number of Elders casual staff are geographically
spread across Australia including Rural and Regional
Centres. Casual staff working for Elders are required to
submit timesheets for the purpose of payroll due to
irregular hours being worked week to week.
To date timesheets have been manually recorded and
submitted to the centralised Payroll Office via a number
of methods being phone, fax and e-mail.
Business Problems
Problems associated with this ‘manual’ process
included:-
- No way of ensuring that all timesheets had been received
by Head Office.
- Timesheets received in a number of inconsistent formats.
Paper, spreadsheets, e-mails and MS word documents.
- No formal system or record of time having been approved
resulting in the potential for time not being correctly
approved.
- No system based check that the original timesheet lodged by
the employee has not been changed by the employee supervisor
prior to being received by the pay office.
- No simple way of accessing timesheet history for employees and
supervisors to review previous timesheets.
- Employee supervisors having to manually follow up all
employees in order to receive timesheets for approval.
- No system based check that the employee is in fact ‘Casual’ and required
to enter timesheets or are
‘Salaried’ staff and hence should not be submitting a
timesheet.
- Duplication of data entry of timesheet information.
Recorded by employee then entered by
approver in e-mail, spreadsheet or document and then
again by pay office into payroll system.
- Manual calculation of overtime being inefficient,
potential for inconsistency and errors in calculations.
- No system based check on if the particular employee is in fact
entitled to overtime.
- No ability to prevent employees from attempting to submit
timesheets before or after their employment commencement
and termination dates.
- No system based check or record of who actually submitted the
original timesheet for an employee.
- Timesheet approvers not being aware of or forgetting
that they have timesheets to approve.
- If timesheet approver not available then timesheets
potentially
not being approved in a timely manner for inclusion in
next pay run.
- And other problems.
Business Solution
The scope of the project was to solve the above business
problems through the development and implementation of a Web
based Timesheet Entry and Approval system.
The system had to be tightly integrated to existing HR and
Payroll systems so as to not require ongoing management and
updating by the Payroll Office. It also needed to be highly
reliable, accurate and extremely simple to use by employees,
supervisors and payroll office staff alike.
The solution was developed with the following capabilities:-
- Web based ‘centralised’ system with access provided
from within companies Australia wide Intranet.
- Secure user access to system controlled by Windows domain
logon.
- System is integrated to the Human Resources system so that
it is automatically updated with new and changed employee
details, supervisors and business rules, such as authorised
approvers etc.
- Integrated to Payroll system for electronic transfer of
employees, hours and other details for generation of
payroll.
- Rules based employee access privileges to system for both
timesheet entry and then timesheet approvals.
- Standard rules based calculations for various categories of
overtime.
- Management of regional Public Holidays which impacts
overtime calculations.
- Calculate and display Total Hours and various categories of
Normal and Overtime Hours as timesheets and approvals are
being entered and edited.
- System Administrator controlled Time Approval escalation and
e-mail Reminder facilities.
- System Administrator controlled fortnightly timesheet close
offs for timesheet entry and timesheet approvals.
- Automatic accumulation of multiple fortnightly timesheets
for payroll interface purposes.
- System Administrator is able to set rules that control if
timesheets may be entered and approved for prior and future
fortnights. This control also extends to new employee start
dates and terminated employee termination dates as well as
controlling which fortnights timesheet entry and approvals
are allowed by which business units.
- Provide a range of on demand reports to give the Payroll
Office visibility and control over the timesheet entry and
approval process. For example: Exception report of
timesheets changed by approver from that originally entered
by the employee.
- Retain a complete audit trail of all timesheet data entered,
amended, deleted and other events such as employee and
calendar updates, payroll interfaces, escalation, e-mail
notifications and more.
Business Result
Staff that either submit or are involved in the
process of managing timesheets and payroll for Casual
employees have reported significant benefits resulting
from the development and implementation of this system.
While there are a number of direct and indirect
benefits the following are the primary ones:
Improved Employee Satisfaction
Employees are grateful of streamlined process,
improved visibility, access to information and less
payroll errors and queries.
Reduced Cost
Through removal of manual tasks and inefficiencies
prevalent in previous process and ensuring correct
calculation of normal and categories of overtime.
Reduced Time
By reducing the time taken to process fortnightly
payroll.
Improved Accuracy
Through online entry, by employee, of hours worked and
improved accuracy in calculation of normal and
categories of overtime.
Auditing
Full auditing of all transactions, updates and processes
where previously there was little.
Solution Screenshots
(selected examples)

(click to enlarge)
E-mail
Invoices System
E-mail Invoices
One of Alerts strengths is it’s Billing facilities. Alert is
used to manage the high volume billing requirements of large
organisation’s. Types of billings include both Agreed Charge and
Time and Material. Organisation’s that have a high number of
staff and bill largely on a Time and Material basis can result
in a high number of invoices being generated by Alert.
Alert provides tools to assist with, and automate as much as
possible, the process of recording and approving timesheets and
generating invoices.
The Problem
The last step in the process is ‘Invoice Delivery’. Previously,
organization’s either printed and posted invoices or generated
invoices as PDF files and then manually created e-mails,
attached the files and sent the e-mails. Both approaches are
manually intensive and prone to errors.
The percentage of invoices now being delivered by e-mail is
increasing and is now the preferred delivery method by most
organisation’s using Alert. The process of sending invoices by
e-mail to date has been a manual one as follows:-
1. Invoices are generated as electronic files in PDF format
2. An e-mail is manually created for a particular recipient of
invoices. Text is added to the Subject line and Body of the
e-mail.
3. One or electronic invoice files are attached to the e-mail
4. The e-mail is sent
The above process is time intensive and prone to errors. It is
important that invoices are only sent to the correct authorised
recipients as sensitive, confidential information is contained
within the invoices.
The Objective
The business objective therefore was to automate and streamline
the ‘Invoice Delivery’ process of sending invoices
electronically resulting in cost savings, greater customer
satisfaction and more timely delivery of invoices.
The Solution
A facility has been developed in Alert (V5r2) to automatically
generate and send e-mail invoices to those customers that choose
to receive invoices this way.
The facility assist the user to ensure that all invoices have
been sent and that they have been sent using the customers
preferred method of delivery. The ‘e-mail’ invoices facility
therefore allows the user to define which invoices are to be
delivered by post (hardcopy) and by e-mail (electronically).
The facility has been designed to be flexible enough to cope
with the different needs of different customers and different
billings. For example some billings for a customer may need to
be sent to different recipients for different projects or
orders.
The facility allows the user to review and change aspects of the
invoice e-mails prior to e-mails being sent. This ‘confirmation’
step is extremely important due to the confidential and
sensitive nature of invoices.
Scope
The scope of the solution is:-
1. The solution has been developed and contained within Alert
2. Invoices to be e-mailed are limited to those that have been
generated or manually entered in Alert
3. The solution uses data that is contained within the Alert
system only i.e. e-mail address are required to be within Alert
and are not be read from an external source
Benefits Provided
The solution proposed in this document provides the following
benefits and value to Alert users:-
- Improved Productivity
- Streamlined ‘Invoice Delivery’ process
- Automation of previous manual task
- Greater customer satisfaction through invoices being sent to
the correct people in a timely manner