We know ConnectWise is complicated, it's why we are consultants and can help you make the most of it. Here are the top 5 mistakes you might be making and how to solve them.
“Our agreements are bundled and it’s impossible to get accurate costs.”
Problem:
Be sure to check out the Agreement gross profit report to keep on top the Financial Dashboard.
Accounting vendor bill reconciliation.
Don't forget about C360 Reports.
It's important to have Agreement addition cost to keep track of your Agreement Profitability.
Resolution:
Start by using invoice grouping with $0 price additions that do or do not display on the invoice. Make sure you update your product catalog with all the correct rates. You can update agreement additions at mass.
“If the time is covered, it’s not billable, right?”
Problem:
You may have a Employee Charge-ability Report and run the Employee Utilization Report.
It's important for your Financial Dashboard. Make sure time does not deduct from cap hour agreements. You could lose out on true billable time.
Resolution:
Learn when to use 'Do Not Bill'. It's important to have communication with Sales, Admin. Update your defaults on: Work Types, Service Boards, Project Boards, Agreement Types, Active Agreements and Ticket Templates.
“Our technicians never seem to select the right work type.”
Problem:
Having too many work types can lead to confusion and difficulty training new billable resources. New techs will have low adoption on the correct work types. These could also be incorrectly included or excluded on agreements. Once again these can be seen in C360 Reports. Work Type Usage.
Resolution:
How to fix: Inactivate work types that are also charge codes. (Ex. PTO, Jury Duty, Meeting, etc). Then inactivate work types that should be work roles (Ex. Project Management). Try to just focus on what is needed for rate modifiers and agreements. Set the default work type to MUST CHANGE with a custom rate of 999999. The last step is to Re-Train your team to use these new work types correctly.
“Our techs work on the StreamlineIT board for client visibility.”
Problem:
The Techs are entering time on the StreamlineIT location but, these cannot be invoiced within ConnectWise. This will count against your Agreement profitability report and mess up your Time detail report. Finance has to manually update each time entry to the proper location!
Resolution:
Step one is to Set up escalation workflow. Train your customer on the customer portal. Train your technicians to not put time there. Final step is to restrict access to the StreamlineIT client board to prevent further updates not going in ConnectWise.
“We left this blank because we don’t want others to know what people make.”
Problem:
Not having the Member Hourly Cost will cause your Agreement Gross Profit Report to be inaccurate. Which then cascades down to the Gross Profit by Company Report and the Profit By Member Summary Report and all the way to Company Profitability Trending Report. All of these reports being off will affect the Project Job Costing Reports.
Resolution:
If you still don't want to show the Member Hourly Cost you can configure security roles to hide this hourly cost. Then you can use tiered averages on your reports. Enter it into CW.