This is it! The final part of our talk, “Building a Better Death Star,” given at EMPOWER 2018. As a follow up to part 4, this entry takes a look at real-time budget accountability. Some estimates put the cost of building the Death Star at around $852 quadrillion. At that scale, we’re guessing budgets were also kind of a big deal. Down here on Earth, we operate with smaller numbers, but that doesn’t make them any less important. Let’s explore how Quick Base can help you make a galactic impact on your budget accountability.
For some reason, a lot of Project Management systems either completely ignore the budget aspect in favor of a focus on schedules and timelines, or they include it, but it’s not as promised. Quick Base is really good at delivering on that promise. Once all of the pieces are put together (i.e. everything we’ve highlighted and covered in this series) and people are updating things in the field (industry dependent), then you can start to capture expenses in real time.
If an organization is tracking some level of time keeping, Quick Base becomes a really easy tool to have a time sheet to fill out. It’s also very flexible, so expenses can easily be calculated as well. For example, people can enter their time in real time. This, in turn, can roll up into the process and budget. You can also open up software data to whoever needs to see the budgeting data entry. As with most things Quick Base, these can all be flexibly configured to track however you want (e.g. with different sets of cost codes or super simply where you want to see all expenses against where you thought it was.)
QTimesheet
To get a bit more granular, let’s take a look at how QTimesheet can improve your operational efficiencies. It features a bug for the screenshot that lets you roll it into the budget. You can do this for employee time tracking as well as project management. It can also help with payment milestones to help drive a billing and expense process in the background. You can even mold the two together, creating a rare combination.
Case Study
So, what’s this look like in real life? Allow us to provide a quick snapshot.
Mulch Masters partners with farmers in California who need fields cleared. They mulch down the fields, take it all away, and then provide it to commercial mulching services (e.g. Dept. of Transportation or to factories). At the core of their enterprise is scheduling out three things: when they can go out, when they can take it back to home base, and when they need to take it to use for other purposes. No matter the end use, the schedule governs when expense and revenue is incurred. (There’s expense and revenue for picking it up). The same is true when they mulch the side of a highway.
At the core of the solution is a schedule that actualizes their budget and also helps with forecasting—all happening within a really condensed timeframe. They also use fields as storage warehouse. Only Quick Base gives them the flexibility to address their budget accountability.
And, that’s it! We’ve come to the end of our time in a galaxy far, far away. But, as always, if you have any questions, please contact us. We’d love to chat about how Quick Base can help you.