Boston Engineering

Boston Engineering Reduces Approval Time and Maintenance Costs with Journyx

What Journyx did for us:

Our costs associated with the maintenance of our time and accounting systems are down. The average length of time required to approve a timecard has been reduced by 25%.

– Shawn Lothrop, IT Director

Their Story

As an engineering services outsourcing firm, Boston Engineering offers turn-key electrical, mechanical, software, and controls engineering development services for clients in industries such as electronics, medical, homeland security, energy and environment, manufacturing and foodservice. Boston Engineering’s interdisciplinary systems approach follows a proven methodology that combines a focus on accelerated time-to-market with a Total System Responsibility™ (TSR) philosophy.Boston Engineering formerly used a desktop application for tracking time that had a project accounting module, but being a project-based company, they needed a system that was built around project accounting. They found themselves only using a small number of the application’s features which did not always meet all of their needs. When the provider forced a system change that required a costly upgrade – even more costly than the price that Boston Engineering had originally paid for the software itself – they decided it was time for a change.

Solution

Boston Engineering has a lengthy evaluation process for all business systems, including if the systems have open standards, plug-in architecture, source code access, third party dependencies, ability to leverage exiting infrastructure and technology, and more.

While other providers failed to meet their criteria, Boston Engineering found that Journyx Timesheet has all of the necessary key features, including external application programming interface (API), rate customization, and the fact that Timesheet is both web-based and open source-based. Since implementing Journyx Timesheet, all Boston Engineering employees now track their time with the software, and the resulting data is used for billing, invoicing and project management. Additionally, Boston Engineering uses Timesheet data to calculate payroll for hourly employees. Overhead costs are significantly lower, allowing the IT department to focus both time and budget on other important business needs.

Results

“Our costs associated with the maintenance of our time and accounting systems are down,” said Shawn Lothrop, IT Director, Boston Engineering. “The average length of time required to approve a timecard has been reduced by 25 percent due to Timesheet’s robust approval process and web-based access. In addition, its ‘rates’ and ‘rules’ modules allow us to accurately track project costs by tailoring the rate structure on a per-project basis, resulting in a 5 percent decrease in non-billable hours. The key parts of the business are now automated due to leveraging the Journyx API. By integrating the API with other business systems, we give our end users access to select features, allowing them to administer their own projects and eliminating up to 75% of the day-to-day system administration of our time and billing system.”