The new millennium has brought about a revolution in the way people work. More and more, Americans are chasing their dreams of owning their own business. And, more and more, professionals are realizing the benefits of hiring out their services as a business consultant instead of making money for an employer.

Engineers, architects, accountants, IT experts, lawyers, sales and marketing, financial advisors, graphic designers, and website developers are all casting their net in the open market. But, when it comes to running an entrepreneurial business, one of the main reasons for failure is a lack of good business administration and management. 

As cash flows out to cover your expertise and time, supporting staff, and overhead costs — money should be steadily flowing back into the business. Every hour and/or every activity should be tracked and logged, so your clients can be accurately charged, and your business can realize a profit. The best way to make sure your accounts payable and accounts receivable are current and correct is by using billing and invoicing software like BigTime.

BigTime is in the business of making sure your professional venture succeeds by automating and optimizing your and your employee's time along with other client invoicing tasks. The result of this level of business automation is less manual labor, fewer billing errors, accurate time tracking of your hours per project, and the effortless and automatic sending of invoices to your clients.

BigTime software is time tracking and invoicing software that helps you create and organize your ongoing projects. Yet, this software for small businesses goes further than just a project management tool. It's designed to help professionals that are focused on delivering their services to also be financially responsible.

This includes the timely submission of client invoices, so you'll get paid more regularly - and to manage deadlines and deliverables, so your clients will remain satisfied with your level of professional service.

Best Employee Time Tracking Software

The best employee time tracking software reduces the need for management or supervisors to worry if time worked is being entered on a daily basis. Employee hours don't have to be grouped in daily increments. Employee time tracking software can be set up for employees to enter job or task codes, which allows you to have a better understanding of how each of your workers are spending their day.

Many small companies use time tracking for freelancers to keep on top of what time remote workers are putting in on the job. Today's peer-to-peer economy often has entrepreneurs hiring freelancers to assist in completing project tasks. Smart timesheets are a part of BigTime's employee time tracking software and makes it easy to keep track of employee time when they are located in different areas.

So, what does BigTime software smart timesheets do to automate this very important job of managing hours worked which will ultimately affect your bottom line profits? It can limit the number of hours a worker inputs to keep jobs on track for budgeting. When an employee does need to put in overtime, they would have to get explicit permission from a supervisor or HR team member.

Time Tracking and Billing Software For Consultants

Time tracking and billing software for consultants must allow for the way these professionals typically work. And, each profession may have a different way of billing or invoicing their clients. For example, the best time tracking app for small business that includes a number of engineers and/or architects may want to bill clients as each project milestone has been completed, reviewed, and accepted by the client.

Lawyers and accountants may want to bill for each quarter-hour of time spent on each caseload. Therefore, time tracking software for consultants needs to be flexible to accommodate the different ways these professional service providers deliver on their projects. With BigTime, you can build a custom invoice by using a consulting time tracking template as a starting point.

Management can add or delete the fields that apply to your business. Or, set up project approval workflows to keep all team members focused on what actionable items need to be done and in what order they should occur. This type of time tracking and billing software for consultants works that way your business works by allowing customization of project invoices. Best of all, BigTime integrates easily with your existing business platforms like e QuickBooks, Salesforce, and others.

Best Time Tracking Software

The best time tracking software or personal time tracker can also be used as a project management tool. Build your timesheet to include those tasks that must be executed for each project. As a personal time tracker, this keeps you on schedule and within budget for your professional clients. You will notice increased productivity from yourself and your employees when using the best time tracking software.

A personal time tracker takes care of capturing time worked and calculating wages to be paid. When time tracking and payroll procedures are automated, it offers transparency and can avoid disputes between supervisors and workers. When you and your workforce are made accountable by using the best time tracking software that is automated and accurate, it increases the trust in management.

Consider also that BigTime personal time tracker can be bundled as part of a larger project management application that allows you to organize and track project deadlines and tasks. It also adds to increased billing accuracy as time entered can be assigned to specific clients or projects.

A personal time tracker is a great way to keep yourself motivated and on task, even while in the field because BigTime's personal time tracker can be assessed by mobile device, tablet, or laptop.

Time and Billing Software For Accountants

With BigTime, you don't have to abandon your legacy financial systems because our time and billing software for accountants integrates directly with QuickBooks. It doesn't matter if you have QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop, BigTime software for accounting firms will sync seamlessly with both platforms. Now, in addition to your financial bookkeeping, you have the benefit of sending out invoices, tracking personal and employee time, and project scheduling - all in one place and with the need to enter the information over again.

QuickBooks time and billing for accountants allows BigTime to directly post invoices into the platform, reducing the chance for human error and increasing the automation of your business. Redundant data entry is a leading cause of financial errors. Some of these mistakes are not found until your yearly audit. With BigTime, expect more accuracy across all your project billing, management, time tracking efforts.

The best time and billing software for accountants syncs company-specific labor and expense codes from QuickBooks and other active clients without any downtime. Your accounting practice is essentially future-proofed when you integrate BigTime with real-time reporting, and efficiently managing project timelines and employee timesheets. 

Invoices can be sent out of either system, BigTime or QuickBooks which can dramatically improve workflows, like knowing when you will need to add extra manpower capacity. Administrative work like reviewing and approving workflows are done automatically, freeing up your time to focus on your core business.

Best Free Time Tracking Software

BigTime is not free but, the company does offer a free trial, so you can experience how easy it is to create invoices from templates and customize how to track time among your various employees. At one time, Excel was used as a quick way to create a free time tracking software app. But, to obtain the level of automation that BigTime offers, you would have to be at an expert level in both Excel and database management to duplicate the automation of BigTime.

And, even the best free time tracking software is often difficult to use or customize, and will offer only limited features. The goal of these free time tracking software apps is to lure you into a basic framework version of the program with the intention of converting you into the purchase of an overly priced version that contains all the bells-and-whistles.

BigTime is one of the best ways to experience best time tracking software free, until you decide if it's best for your professional services firm. 

List Of Time Tracking Software

You can search the internet to find a list of time tracking software like Clockify and Toggl Track. But, BigTime was developed specifically to address the way consultants work and organize their projects. Also, with BigTime, you can scale the app as your company grows by bundling project management software with the time tracker.

BigTime best serves the professional services industry that often will not track time by hours. You understand how your business operates, but many time tracker apps are geared for enterprise-wide tracking of employee time. BigTime is both a productive tool and a time tracker tool all in one.

When compared to a list of time tracking software apps, BigTime is the only one that addresses the needs of the professional consultant, including architects, engineers, lawyers, accountants, and creatives. To learn more about BigTime and how we can help automate your employee time tracking, client billing, and project management tasks, visit BigTime online today.