How HPE Increased Cash Flow While Reducing Reconciliation Time and Effort

“When my client sends checks, I have to wait for the mail to get here, check the mail, wait until the bank is open… so there was quite a bit of lag time with getting that money into the account. And with BigTime Wallet, it doesn’t matter if it’s a holiday, if it’s 2 am or 2 pm, they can pay any time, anywhere and I can send them a link and they will be able to pay me from, you know… I’ve been paid from an airplane, I’ve been paid from Chile, I’ve been paid from the room next door. So it really makes it convenient for the customer.”

Jen Henderson President of HPE

We sat down with Jen Henderson, President of HPE, to discuss how BigTime Wallet has streamlined payment processing from the get-go, reduced non-billable admin time for billable staff, and how they are getting paid by clients faster and from anywhere…even from an airplane!

Jen: I’m Jen Henderson, the owner of Henderson Professional Engineers. We are a civil engineering company – we work in the land development sphere and are located just north of Austin, Texas, in Round Rock.

BigTime: What challenges led your firm to BigTime Wallet?

Jen: Our firm was brand new; we started the business in November of 2020 and there was no way for me to go to competitors because we were in the middle of COVID. I couldn’t ask them what they were doing and how they made their business operate. So when I reached out to some CPAs, they told me that BigTime was a great project management tool and when I looked at it, inside of BigTime was BigTime Wallet, and I realized that was going to make payment processing so easy and something that I wouldn’t have to deal with. So that was one less thing that I would have to find a service for, that I would have to integrate into the business, that I would have to learn and understand. Really, the challenges were in the unknown – we just didn’t know how to do it and what to do and where to go from there.

BigTime: How were you receiving payments before?

Jen: Clients like to wait until they get an invoice, so a lot of times when my clients send checks, I have to wait for the mail to get here, check the mail, wait until the bank is open… so there was quite a bit of lag time with getting that money into the account. And with BigTime Wallet, it doesn’t matter if it’s a holiday, if it’s 2am or 2pm, they can pay any time, anywhere and I can send them a link and they will be able to pay me from, you know… I’ve been paid from an airplane, I’ve been paid from Chile, I’ve been paid from the room next door. So it really makes it convenient for the customer.

BigTime: What have been the top 3 benefits of BigTime Wallet?

Jen: The top 3 benefits of using BigTime Wallet are that you don’t have to keep up with the payment – you know that it’s going to get into the bank. And you don’t have to keep up with any credit card information or bank accounts so they (clients) don’t have to give me that information, it’s stored through BigTime Wallet. There’s no data that I have to keep. There’s security in that, you know? They don’t have to give me their credit card info: they put it in and I never see it. So that’s a big benefit. And third, I don’t have to deal with putting the payment into BigTime and making BigTime put that into QuickBooks, and telling the bookkeeper that that particular bill is paid. It’s all automated and that’s made life so much easier. Just balancing the checkbook made it so much easier.

BigTime: What positive impacts have you seen on your firm?

Jen: One of the positive impacts I’ve found on the accounting front is just that it’s less of my time that I have to spend in making sure that everything is correct in the books and that everything is correct going to the CPA. I know that’s an increase in revenue because it’s a decrease in my time spent so that helps my utilization, my personal utilization, come up a little bit and I’m able to take on more work because I don’t have to spend my time reconciling payment.

BigTime: Recommendations to others considering BigTime Wallet?

Jen: My recommendation would be to just try it because the fees you pay are going to be the same for BigTime Wallet as you would anywhere else, and if you never use it, you never pay a fee. If you have it there in your back pocket to use just in case, then it’s just one more benefit. If you actually do use it, then you’ll automatically see how wonderful it is because you’ll feel that time back in your day.

Watch our 20-minute webinar to learn more about getting paid faster with BigTime Wallet and see a demonstration of the solution in action.

Prefer a personal demo? Schedule one here.

How PLATT has streamlined efficiencies while getting paid faster

About PLATT

PLATT, now celebrating 40 years in business, is a full-service architecture, construction, and interior design firm based in North Carolina. Specializing in custom homes and unique commercial structures, PLATT has successfully completed over 500 projects across the United States, including an HGTV Dream Home, a private lodge featured on DIY Network’s Barnwood Builders, and the east coast Oskar Blues Brewery.

We sat down with Bud Holland, Senior Project Manager, and Ren Uriarte, Finance Director of PLATT to discuss how BigTime has streamlined outdated processes, capitalized on project management efficiencies, and how they are getting paid faster.

The Overview:

Industry: Architecture
Located in Brevard, NC
45+ BigTime users

The Challenge

Modernizing the Paper Process
Founded more than 40 years ago, it’s no surprise that processes were rooted in a paper workplace. From tracking time on paper to outlining a physical Excel spreadsheet for project management, PLATT needed a system to digitally house and streamline all internal processes.

Third-Party Consultants & Accurate Budgets
In the architecture world, the need for third-party consultants is a daily occurrence. Keeping track of costs, adjusting budgets, and hitting bottom lines are essential to each project and forecasting similar future projects. PLATT needed a way to be on top of these evolving budgets and have clear visibility into the project from every angle.

Faster Invoices, Quicker Payment
Still waiting for physical checks in the mail (or simply waiting for a client to go and get a stamp), PLATT was seeing an immense delay in payment. Allowing wire transfers also proved too labor intensive with clients actually having to go to the bank, not to mention the fees on both ends. PLATT was in need of a quicker, more digitized process of getting paid.

The Solution

BigTime’s project management capabilities have provided PLATT with accurate insights on project health and have given the team the ability to customize each unique project for each client.

“We have found that utilizing tools like BigTime has been helpful to us since there’s so many moving parts. We’ve experimented with project management softwares and found that a lot of them can be really cumbersome and bulky for a firm our size – we’re too big to be small, and too small to be big. So finding that sweet spot of project management processes without being too regimented has been a challenge, but we have a good system (BigTime) in place right now.”

Bud Holland Senior Project Manager

BigTime’s flexible forecasting and budgeting tools have also helped PLATT stay on track with clearer visibility to third-party consultants.

“At the beginning of our projects, we make a lot of assumptions on cost based on what we know about the project at that time, and as we move through the project, we continue to track and update that to make sure we’re staying on the rails in terms of overall cost. We have a lot of third party consultants, and softwares like BigTime have been really beneficial.”

Bud Holland Senior Project Manager

Finally, BigTime Wallet, our integrated payments processing platform, has dramatically increased receivables and client response times.

“The clients who use the (payment) link that we provide pay almost immediately (day of or day after) which means that payment hits our bank account a few days later. Our clients who have used it have expressed great satisfaction with it.”

Ren Uriarte Finance and HR Director

The Result

BigTime increased cross-team productivity, organization of internal processes, and provided greater visibility into project health for PLATT architects by utilizing a clear and easy-to-use service management system.

“Originally, all our processes were based on a paper office. Finally we said ‘this is ridiculous, we gotta do something…’ It’s helpful to have all that (information) captured in one place as it’s basically building a database so that you can project on future projects and know where you need to be on building financials for the next year.”

Bud Holland Senior Project Manager

In addition, BigTime Wallet’s customizable invoicing and modern payment links have made PLATT’s payments process much faster and easier.

“BigTime Wallet offered us a way to get payments faster from our clients, and also eliminate any fees within electronic payments on the client end. Because it is so highly customizable, it makes it a no-brainer to use it for billing your clients.”

Ren Uriarte Finance and HR Director

Looking to power up your professional services organization and see how you can start saving valuable time from unnecessary tasks? Request a personalized demo here or feel free to take a virtual tour for more insight into BigTime.

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Signature Analytics Uses Projector by BigTime to Deliver Visibility

View Customer Story

When finance is your business, the numbers need to be right. Learn how accounting consultancy Signature Analytics uses Projector by BigTime to:

Empower consultants to track their billable attainment against goal in real-time
Enable roll-up reports from multiple offices for real-time projections and reporting
Achieve visibility into future demand and staff capacity across the organization
Confidently grow the business by 30% in year 1

Projector by BigTime’s PSA System Drives 15% Productivity Increase for Avasant

Discover how this consulting firm:

Increased productivity across the organization by 15%
Replaced an outdated PSA tool with the flexible and integrated Projector PSA platform
Aligned project management workflows with technical requirements
Gained immediate access to reliable data from their PSA platform and increased organization visibility
Implemented the necessary systems, planning and forecasting to scale and grow a PSO

BigTime Customers and Their Big Time Reactions

Like what you hear? Join the club by requesting your own personalized demo of BigTime by clicking the button below.

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Draper and Associates Increase Productivity by 66%

“Thought it was too good to be true for a while but it’s actually really changed our business and our team has been very happy with the solution. I’ve had staff that were against this originally coming back and saying ‘hey this is great, look at what I figured out how to do’ and learning new things that I haven’t learned how to do, so been very happy with the adaptation from the staff.”

Reed Draper Draper and Associates

Reed: My name is Reed Draper and I’m vice president of Gary Draper and Associates of Atlanta Incorporated. We are a construction, scheduling, and services firm. Our primary business is scheduling large complex construction projects.

BigTime: What challenges led you to look for a software like BigTime?

Reed: Our challenge was we were doing everything manually. So people would fill out their timesheets, email them back in, and then they’d have to get emailed out for review. Any changes would be put into our accounting system, then we would generate invoices manually, scan those, send them out for review, and have to do the manual fixes… so there would be a lot of area for errors. And then we would print those out, and send them out to our clients via mail, so it was a long process that took a lot of time, a lot of data entry type work. It wasn’t really a cost thing as much as it was a time and process thing and having a lot of room for error in our old process.

BigTime: What are the key benefits of using BigTime for your firm?

Reed: When I started demoing BigTime and playing around with it, I really thought that it was flexible with different options for how the invoice looked, for how it presented the data to the clients, for the workflow, for how we approve timesheets, expenses, and invoices. Overall it’s just a really good fit for what we wanted to do. Thought it was too good to be true for a while but it has actually really changed our business and our team has been very happy with the solution.

BigTime: What feature have you found most valuable?

Reed: I think the workflow and the approval flow for time, expenses and invoices has been really big for us because now it’s electronic, so I can see everything, everybody gets notifications when they have to approve things. They click on a button and it goes to the next person, click another button and it comes back to accounting and then we email it out. So overall, we were taking 60 days from the end of a period to kind of go through that whole thing of getting time and expense in, entered, approved, and getting the invoices out – now, we’re down to about 20 days. We kind of shoot for 20 days to get an invoice out so it’s really helped in improving that timing.

The side benefit of that is that it looks better for customers if we’re not billing them 60 days after and they’re trying to figure out what we did two months ago so it helps in that regard and it also helps in getting paid. I’ve noticed that it’s really improved our cash flow and clients paying faster and not having the “invoice is lost in the mail” and things like those problems. The other benefit, I think, is that it gives me some insight and visibility to where we are financially because now I can look forward and see what’s been entered into the system, what billing for the next month is going to look like, whereas it was kind of a guess before with our old system.

BigTime: What are your recommendations to others considering BigTime?

Reed: We went in knowing what we wanted to do and felt like what we were being sold was what we needed and it actually has ended up working out the way that we thought we hoped it would or it’s been better than what we expected.

Make sure it works for you and your people. It’s taken a little while to adapt with the staff since they’re used to doing things one way. It takes a little while to go through that implementation and my recommendation is to take it slow and one step at a time versus overwhelming them because the benefit really relies upon your people doing things the way you want them to do it and if you overwhelm them they’ll back away. But we’ve actually gotten really good buy-in. I’ve had staff that were against this originally coming back and saying ‘hey this is great, look at what I figured out how to do’ and learning new things that I haven’t learned how to do, so I’ve been very happy with the adaptation from the staff.

See how BigTime stacks up against our competitors according to users in the G2 PSA Software Grid Comparison Report.

Ardalyst | BigTime GovCon Customer Success Story

“People are always surprised when I talk to them about just how fast it is. If it’s a month where we’re trying to get out a dozen or 20 invoices or something like that, we’ve been able to do it same day. We enforce time entry by midnight of the last day of the month, and the next morning we come in and managers approve the time, and we start generating invoices by lunchtime, get the approval, and get them out to the client by the end of the day. It’s that fast.”

Ingrid Jansen Ardalyst

Ingrid: My name is Ingrid Jensen and I work for a company called Ardalyst. I’m the VP of administration and finance and our company does software solutions, cybersecurity, amongst a bunch of other stuff.

BigTime: What challenges led you to look for a software like BigTime?

Ingrid: We brought BigTime in when we started up the company and got our first time and materials contract – we needed a way to gather the time and be able to invoice the client and have it integrate with our accounting software which was QuickBooks Desktop and BigTime made the most sense at the time and still does.

BigTime: What led your firm to trust BigTime for DCAA compliance?

Ingrid: It was really easy to turn on DCAA compliance because we have two instances, we run commercial and a federal instance because we do work for both kinds of clients, so it’s flipping a switch. It takes care of all of the auditing and other requirements that we have for DCAA so people get dinged if their time is entered too late, etc, without being wildly expensive like some of the other DCAA-compliant time and expense applications are.

BigTime: Which feature have you found most valuable?

Ingrid: The DCAA compliance, it feeds into the whole DCAA system so in other words, as we’re posting the timesheets, it does it in a way that allows us to produce the reports that are required for DCAA auditing, including all the way through project costing. So, it allows the timesheets to line up properly, and it handles sort of the overtime calculations, the unreimbursed overtime calculations, that are necessary without any kind of extra work.

BigTime: How does BigTime help your accounting team stay audit ready?

Ingrid: There’s a post-timesheet function so it stops any of the postings from happening until the time has been entered and submitted and approved, so it’s been fully vetted. And then our accountant just clicks a little cloud symbol and it posts it up to QuickBooks, and from there it feeds into both the invoice and the timesheet which then makes it go around the full circle where the reports are linking the time both on the invoice, on the revenue, and on the cost side.

BigTime: Where have you seen the biggest change in productivity?

Ingrid: People are always surprised when I talk to them about just how fast it is. If it’s a month where we’re trying to get out a dozen or 20 invoices or something like that, we’ve been able to do it same-day. We enforce time entry by midnight of the last day of the month, and the next morning we come in and managers approve the time, and we start generating invoices by lunchtime, get the approval, and get them out to the client by the end of that day. It’s that fast. Then we turn around and post the timesheets so then the cost side of it is done as well. It’s just quick and it’s flexible. A lot of times, especially on the government contracting side, the client wants to see the invoice look a certain way or be formatted a certain way and BigTime doesn’t really have any problems handling that. Like I’ll come in and say “Okay, well I need it sorted this way” or “I need it grouped this way” or “I need it summarized or need more/less detail” and it’s quick and it remembers how I liked doing it the last time. It just churns out the invoices the same way.

See how BigTime stacks up to our competitors according to users in the G2 PSA Software Grid Comparison Report.

PLATT | BigTime Wallet Success Story

“BigTime Wallet offered us a way to get payments faster from our clients, and also eliminate any fees within electronic payments on the client end. The ease of creating invoices from time in BigTime and the formats were better than almost anything we’ve seen out there.”

Ren Uriarte | Director of Finance at PLATT

Watch our 20-minute webinar to learn more about getting paid faster with BigTime Wallet and see a demonstration of the solution in action.

Prefer a personal demo? Schedule one here.

Energy GPS | BigTime Wallet Success Story

“Invoicing out of BigTime has made a huge, huge difference for us. Before we were doing time entry and invoicing out of two separate systems, so the time saving there is ridiculous – days, a month. BigTime Wallet the set up is so easy, it takes no time at all, all you have to do is click a button and it’s there.”

Eryn White Financial Operations, Energy GPS

Eryn: Hi my name is Eryn White and I’m the director of financial operations at Energy GPS, and we’re an energy and consulting subscription firm.

BigTime: What payment challenges led you to BigTime Wallet?

Eryn: It’s kind of a combination of checks and wires and people who are paying us with ACH now can just click on the link and then you don’t have to go back and forth with wire instructions and sending that stuff via email.

BigTime: How has your experience been since adopting BigTime Wallet?

Eryn: Using BigTime Wallet is super easy because when I’m going to invoice somebody all I have to do is click a button and it basically makes our link available to customers. So, super easy, and then you know, as a customer, receiving the link, it’s easy for them to just click and pay. We’ve had, I would say, an increase of at least five days for payment in some instances, so definitely worth the time.

BigTime: What are your recommendations to others considering BigTime?

Eryn: Invoicing out of BigTime has made a huge, huge difference for us. Before we were doing time entry and invoicing in two separate systems so the time saving there is ridiculous – days, a month. BigTime Wallet, the set up is so easy; it takes no time at all and then, like I said, all you have to do is click the button and it’s there. It’s the easiest setup I’ve probably ever done, so I would definitely recommend it.

Watch our 20-minute webinar to learn more about getting paid faster with BigTime Wallet and see a demonstration of the solution in action.

Prefer a personal demo? Schedule one here.