Scope Creep is a phenomenon that can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled.

One of my most recent client acquisitions is pulling a lot of this.  And while I have been re-iterating what is happening every phone call, I have a feeling there will still be questions about the next milestone bill. 

Enteryourhours.com, an online hourly billing and project managment tool, recently upgraded everyones account to manage what they call ‘activities’ within a project.  I’ve correlated their ‘activites’ to fall inline with the different sections of a scope of work that was originally presented to said client.  This helps keep both, me inline, and the client on par with what is happening within each section of a Scope of Work.

So great, I’ve got everything categorized by activity.  But what makes it better is that EnterYourHours.com has a recently improved invoicing tool. It has a new feature where you can break out the project in any hierarchy you want. Either by worker, project, activity or by project, then worker, then activity. 

This lets me pass along an invoice that has a grand total, followed by a detailed summary of the number of hours spent on each ‘activity’ within single and/or multiple projects currently active with the client.

When the client says, “Why are we over budget?”  We’ll both be able to see where things took longer than expected or where the “scope creep” truly started. Putting me in a stronger position when presenting the facts at invoice time.

I’ve been in business for about a year now and just the other night, it dawned on me. When I am trying to go to sleep at night, I spend more time planning more of the next day’s actual work. What i dont spend time thinking about is billing my clients. Before you jump to any conclusions, its not that i dont cover or track my billling in quickbooks like everyone else.  I am just also using a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution recommended to me when I went into business.  It is a hourly billing and invoicing software solution that lets me manage my projects and clients. Bill them, invoice them and transfer everything to quick books. Oh and they’ve just added a new timer, it’s a special add-in i think, but its lets you have mutliple timers up for different clients at a time (don’t worry only one timer runs at once.)

While this post comes across as promotional.  I’m a registered user managing 2 contractors, and not worrying about anything but that.  They enter their time online, I enter my time and the,n generate an invoice i’ve previously configured to show/hide specific details about the work performed by each person or for what project.  Like anything new, you have to just get in and use it. You’ll worry less about billing and more about new work.

So I was recently at a Colorado Avalanche game having the best time when in between periods i thought, “Oh crap,  i need to get my accounting squared away for the accountant and soon.”  And while normally, hourly billing, is a pain to balance out – knowing that my hourly billing software was ready with features  to transfer all my invoices to quickbooks, my clients and all the other stuff comes with – i was able to watch the game in peace. 

Some of you might say, “Oh big deal.”  You are the people who are OCD about organization.  I’ve used scrap notebooks with time logs, notepad docuuments and others, but those notes usually get all mixed up with notes on phone calls, new projects, new tasks.  Somehow those time log/notes never get into any form of software for billing and sometimes get tossed during clean-up.  I’ve forced myself to enter these times into my hourly billing software solution, so that I can truly be a “paperless” office and not miss billing for any time.

While we all have those picky clients that will refute any line item in an invoice, there are those that drive us even closer to the edge.  I had one client in particular that was not too fond of a two page invoice. Page 1 showed the total hours and amount due, while page 2 had a breakdown of hours and the description of work done. 

Apparently two sheets of paper was too much for the owner too review when rushing through invoices.  On top of that, page 1, always stated: “Consulting: See attached sheet for details”.  While this generic description is accepted by most clients, this one in particular wanted it to say “Project X: Development”.  Completely understandable and adjustable under Settings >> Invoices >> Line Item Settings at EnterYourHours.com. 

That said, i was able to revise the invoices for said client and return them as they saw fit.  Well wouldn’t you know it, they wanted everything one page.  The totals and now the descriptions were to be on one sheet so that it could be easily looked over by the check/pen holder. 

After some discussion with the owner and developer of EnterYourHours.com, I was able to convince them that a 1-page invoice should be provided as a setting option. A few weeks later, they called to notify me that my wish had been granted.  It’s been weeks since i’ve started using, but recently i received an email from the owner that said, “The one page invoice seems to be one of the most popular settings amongst our  users.  Thanks for your suggestion!”  I was blown away.  I should have put some money on it. 

The 1-page invoice has not only made it better for my clients to quickly review totals and descriptions, but its also a “greener” alternative.  EnterYourHours.com has enabled me to run a truly paperless office.  Don’t Spend Hours Billing, Bill more hours….enteryourhours.com.

Business has been keeping my busy in spite of the current economic whirlwind.  Several new businesses have embraced Zapata Data’s design and development offerings stretching its client-base into the landscape/plantscaping, loan modifications and traffic ticket markets. 

Our recent project with Hot Calls Inc, a Florida-based call center, is now fully operational.  They have made over 35,000 calls on 37+ projects with 20+ callers.  Needless to say, it is Zapata Data’s largest accomplishment since opening its web doors in April of 2008.  Zapata Data is looking to integrate the Hot Calls Software system with EnterYourHours.com’s payroll and Quickbooks support.  The Hot Calls software program tracks when callers login and logout out of the system.  While the API is not yet available for EnterYourHours.com, it is certainly starting to show its face on the horizon.  I look forward to making the Hot Calls Software program integrate thru EnterYourHours.com and end up in their Quickbooks file.

I use EnterYourHours.com for both my own business, and as a contractor for another company using EnterYourHours.com for their hourly tracking solution.  We’ll call that other company, TheBiz. 

TheBiz hires me to do one-off projects for their customers, so my hours need to show up on their invoices to clients.  To keep records and hourly billing organized, we decided it would be best for me to enter the hours at TheBiz.enteryourhours.com over my own account mycompany.enteryourhours.com.  This lets TheBiz create invoices with my hours on them without me having to invoice the hours from my system and pass them onto TheBiz. This saves at least one step in between. 

While the work being completed is being entered at, thebiz.enteryourhours.com, my running weekly hour totals on mycompany.enteryourhours.com are inaccurate. It’s something I have to be mindful of when I am checking to see how many billable hours I’ve logged between theBiz and ZapataData.

The advantages are in favor of TheBiz. TheBiz can adjust my hours before invoicing if needed, choose not to bill for certain items and track his hourly totals by contractor (me).

As a user of both sides of the system, I find it easy to see how much work I’ve done for theBiz, while still being able to see what my own business is doing without TheBiz in the mix.  Sure I could track hours in both places, but there’s no need to since I will never create an invoice for TheBiz and tracking the hours in my system will throw off running totals on the billing screen during invoice time.

A customer was looking for a quote on a specific project they had sent some specficiations for a few days back.  Realizing it had been left on ice, i needed to get to it ASAP.  After reviewing the spec, i was ready to build a quote on my EnterYourHours.com account.  I built the quote, reviewed the quote and emailed it in all of about 5 minutes.  I didnt have to go open word and overwrite iinformation in a template. It’s just done. And once the quote gets approved, i can convert it to an invoice and be done with it.

Prior to starting with EnterYourHours.com, a web-based hourly billing software solution, I had a client pay me before their first official invoice.  At the time i wasn’t using QuickBooks, but needed a way to apply a credit to show them in one form or another (on paper) that i had received payment.  I looked around on various screens, but nothing was jumping out at me.  Being a programmer myself, I started to think: A credit could be defined as a negative price or negative fixed-price item, so I looked under the Fixed-Price Items tab on the Enter Hours screen.  And, just for the heck of it, I tried entering a negative number.  And there it went.

I was able to apply a credit to a client, without having any prior invoices or hours tracked in the system.  I ran bill batch to see how it would lok to the customer. By default, EnterYourHours.com adds these fixed-price items to your invoice as such:

            [FIXED-PRICE ITEM] – Descriptive Text Here

All I did for the “Fixed-Price/Expense Summary” was:

            [CREDIT] – Descriptive Text Here

So when I actually generated the invoice, the line item looked like:

            [FIXED-PRICE ITEM] – [CREDIT] – Descriptive Text Here

To my surprise, the invoice read out looked great and even showed the numbers in parentheses, standard designation for negative numbers in accounting. So after worrying EnterYourHours.com had missed a simple need, I realized it had inadvertently provided a solution that just took a little creative thinking to find.

I was asked by a friend and respected colleague to integrate a graphical user interface into some heavy database architecture and scripting for a new peice of software. After integegrating the interface, I saw the enormous potential it had to help me run my own consulting business.  I have been using EnterYoursHours.com as beta-tester since April 2008.  It has saved me countless hours of billing and tracking project hours. I don’t even think about billing until the day i need to email the invoices.  It truly is that simple.