Next month Reckon One users will have the option of adding a time and expenses module to their cloud accounting program. The module, previously called time and billing, will track billable and unbillable time and expenses against clients and projects through the Reckon One web app or mobile app.
Time tracked through the module is added to Reckon One in real-time so a business can see the total number of hours billed to a client by several employees up to that minute.
Timesheets can be viewed by day, week or month. “As a time based professional there’s nothing worse than having to come back to your diary and remember ‘What did I do at 830am this morning’,” said Pete Sanders, general manager for Reckon’s business division.
“We’re not far from replacing some of those apps” such as Timely and Harvest, Sanders added.
When a Reckon One user prepares an invoice, the time and expenses module pulls the billable time onto a timesheet and the user can decide whether to include it in the total.
The invoice can display a summary of the time billed or a detailed breakdown, depending on what the business wants to show the customer.
Light, medium and advanced plans for the module cost $3, $5 and $7 respectively.
The medium plan adds an approvals process so a manager can review the time billed before adding it to the timesheet.
The advanced module, due next year, will have more complex time tracking features such as budgeting time as well as expense on a project. Users will be able to track actual versus budgeted time spent.
Tracking Expenses
Expense tracking adds expenses to clients and projects, which are then pulled through to an invoice if the expense is billable. If an expense is reimbursable to an employee then a new expense triggers an expense claim process.
The time and expense module will not be able to take photos of receipts when it is released next month but this feature is on the roadmap, Sanders said.
Reports and Other Modules
Reckon One has also upgraded reporting, which Sanders admitted was “fairly limited”. The new reports cover top income and expense accounts and list reports for items, projects, suppliers, customers and unpaid bills and invoices. The time and expenses module will also add relevant reports such as unpaid expense claims.
Other reports include detailed debtors and creditors and top-paying customers.
Still on the to-do list include the new GovConnect module, which will be renamed as GovDirect. The GovDirect module, developed by last year’s acquisition SyncDirect, will include online lodgements for BAS, and employment and payment summaries.
The advanced plans for the invoicing and projects modules are also slated for next year. Reckon is still opening up its application programming interface (API) so that third-party programs (or “add-on” software) can swap data with the cloud accounting program.
A new version of Reckon One built without code from Microsoft’s shelved Silverlight platform will be released early next year.
Reckon Pay
Reckon demonstrated a working beta of its mobile payments app, Reckon Pay. Although the software company wouldn’t commit to a release date, the launch is expected to be before the end of the year, after NAB finishes the integration of its merchant account systems.
One of the attractions of Reckon’s mobile payments service is that there is no contract required and Reckon takes care of the merchant account set-up, which takes much less time than the usual several weeks. If the business already has a merchant account with NAB they can start taking payments immediately.
Although NAB handles all the payments, Reckon Pay can accept money from any bank and sends transactions directly to Reckon One. The app can also be used in a standalone mode to take chip-and-pin credit and debit cards, EFTPOS, and international cards that require a signature.
A Reckon Pay user can also record cash and cheque payments against an invoice. An SMS receipt is sent to the customer’s mobile phone on payment.
The mobile app will work with “all smartphones”, promised Reckon strategic director Daniel Rabie during the Reckon Pay demonstration. The transactional history is recorded in the mobile app and to Reckon One in real time, which allows a business owner to see how much they sold that day.