S
SparksCW
Hi,
I'm a new member but I run a commercial electrical contractors, it's a family business around for 35 years and I've been in it for about 13 now. Started off in admin, then a full apprenticeship, electrician, junior project manager, estimator, manager, now I'm operations manager running all of the day to day.
I currently have 17 staff on the go plus 2 managers and 2 admin, we use time sheets for all on site staff which were traditionally paper documents but we have all the usual stuff, late, non - existent, incorrect etc and it takes ages to process and chase them. It used to cost us a lot of time in admin staff when we had 30+ operatives, even when we were down to 5 staff it was still a bit of a nightmare.
We looked for some basic software but couldn't find anything really appropriate for the trades, most of them seem to be based around projects, consultants, web designers etc. And everything I've found so far is either overkill (and priced to suit) or just plain rubbish!
So we've created excel spreadsheets, these have cut down our processing times drastically which has saved us loads of admin money. But.... it's still aggro, it's messy, involves loads of documents/paper print outs and it's not very easy to use for our staff, the older less computer savvy ones are simply ignoring it. I must admit, it's not the easiest thing to use!! Whilst it's improved admin time with a bit of basic maths, it's not really solved the problem.
Is it just me that has this problem?
I have another two companies, one ecommerce, the other vehicle tracking, I've recently met a decent developer who's creating a basic web app for one of the businesses, I've started talking to him about the possibility of creating a time sheet online software to solve my problems.
Before I spend the money I wanted to see if anyone had found anything that's good enough for what we/I want? And if the answer is no, do you think there is a market for a low monthly cost time sheet software to easily create time sheets including tracking holiday, expenses, sick, one touch reports for weekly payment figures (you'd be able to assign costs to each staff, overtime etc - staff can request holiday, admin can approve etc etc. - another issue we have!) this is basically what I need for my business and if the price comes in at a reasonable level I will probably have it made, but it did get me thinking that if I need it so much then there's probably a need for others I'd consider having it as a SaaS to make it all worthwhile to me. If I do go down this route I'm planning to solve another "problem" at the same time which is vehicles, just looking to add a basic vehicle management into it to add the vehicles, details, MOT dates to automatically email chosen garage etc.. just looking to automate some more basic tasks that are overlooked but do cost a lot of money in admin time.
Hopefully I'm missing an obvious software out there and don't need to make it, but on the flip side part of me is looking for a new challenge and I do like the idea of creating a software to help others (and make a bit of money hopefully!)
Could I have your thoughts and suggestions please?
I'm a new member but I run a commercial electrical contractors, it's a family business around for 35 years and I've been in it for about 13 now. Started off in admin, then a full apprenticeship, electrician, junior project manager, estimator, manager, now I'm operations manager running all of the day to day.
I currently have 17 staff on the go plus 2 managers and 2 admin, we use time sheets for all on site staff which were traditionally paper documents but we have all the usual stuff, late, non - existent, incorrect etc and it takes ages to process and chase them. It used to cost us a lot of time in admin staff when we had 30+ operatives, even when we were down to 5 staff it was still a bit of a nightmare.
We looked for some basic software but couldn't find anything really appropriate for the trades, most of them seem to be based around projects, consultants, web designers etc. And everything I've found so far is either overkill (and priced to suit) or just plain rubbish!
So we've created excel spreadsheets, these have cut down our processing times drastically which has saved us loads of admin money. But.... it's still aggro, it's messy, involves loads of documents/paper print outs and it's not very easy to use for our staff, the older less computer savvy ones are simply ignoring it. I must admit, it's not the easiest thing to use!! Whilst it's improved admin time with a bit of basic maths, it's not really solved the problem.
Is it just me that has this problem?
I have another two companies, one ecommerce, the other vehicle tracking, I've recently met a decent developer who's creating a basic web app for one of the businesses, I've started talking to him about the possibility of creating a time sheet online software to solve my problems.
Before I spend the money I wanted to see if anyone had found anything that's good enough for what we/I want? And if the answer is no, do you think there is a market for a low monthly cost time sheet software to easily create time sheets including tracking holiday, expenses, sick, one touch reports for weekly payment figures (you'd be able to assign costs to each staff, overtime etc - staff can request holiday, admin can approve etc etc. - another issue we have!) this is basically what I need for my business and if the price comes in at a reasonable level I will probably have it made, but it did get me thinking that if I need it so much then there's probably a need for others I'd consider having it as a SaaS to make it all worthwhile to me. If I do go down this route I'm planning to solve another "problem" at the same time which is vehicles, just looking to add a basic vehicle management into it to add the vehicles, details, MOT dates to automatically email chosen garage etc.. just looking to automate some more basic tasks that are overlooked but do cost a lot of money in admin time.
Hopefully I'm missing an obvious software out there and don't need to make it, but on the flip side part of me is looking for a new challenge and I do like the idea of creating a software to help others (and make a bit of money hopefully!)
Could I have your thoughts and suggestions please?
