Are You Wasting Money and Time in Your Placement to Payment Process?

Every firm in every type of industry can always be more efficient. And firms in the staffing and recruiting industry are no different. In this time of economic uncertainty and in an age when the speed of business gets faster each and every day, firms absolutely have to be on the lookout for ways to wring cost and time out of their processes while still delivering great client service. Automating the placement to payment process offers a great area of opportunity for many firms.

Placement to payment is broken

The placement to payment process runs from placement to time and expense tracking and approval, through to the time you get paid and the time you pay (i.e.: accounting and payroll.) Few firms today have completely automated this. Several big gaps exist.

1. It’s not the 1970s anymore

Believe it or not, most staffing firms still have paper timecards and expense reports, and I think everyone would agree that’s a very antiquated approach and something that just doesn’t make sense anymore in today’s online, 24 x 7 world. Paper timecards and expense reports create a slow, manual, costly, error prone process. One issue or mistake in the collection, reconciliation and data entry into your accounting and payroll systems can significantly derail or stop invoicing or payroll.

2. The dots aren’t connected

Most staffing firms aren’t making a complete connection between their recruitment CRM and these other systems. Data has to be manually entered and reentered and that again is slow, costly and error prone. And even if you are on what are supposed to be integrated front to back systems, there can frequently be functions that aren’t 100% automated.

3. Staff can’t answer questions

Without an automated placement to payment process front-line sales and recruiting staff can’t easily answer the following questions: – What’s the status of my timecard? – Where’s my check? – When should we expect that invoice? So they have to loop someone in from the finance time to search for answers, sometimes by digging through stacks of paper records. Not only is this inefficient, but it damages relationships with candidates and clients.

4. Front to back shouldn’t hold you back

If you are on a front to back system today, you may not be using the best tools for the job. Your recruitment CRM won’t be the easiest to use, or the most effective as helping you place great candidates, nor will you be using industry leading solutions for payroll and accounting from companies like Intuit, Microsoft, ADP or Paychex. If you aren’t using the best stuff out there, particularly for sales and recruiting, then you are potentially not getting or filling as many jobs orders as possible. And you are locked into a solution that doesn’t give you flexibility to change accounting or payroll, nor can it grow as your firm does.

There really is no need to sacrifice though. Enter Bullhorn Time and Expense. Bullhorn developed a new module to close these placement to payment process gaps so that recruitment firms can reduce costs, move faster and improve customer service. Bullhorn Time and Expense extends our recruiting software platform, automates online time tracking, expense reports, and approvals, while integrating with the best accounting and payroll systems available.

Bullhorn Time and Expense can help you by:

1. Saving up to 75% of your processing costs of time cards and expense reports – For example, Bullhorn Time and Expense user DeWinter Consulting saved more than half of the annual cost of a full time head to administer time cards, expense reports, invoicing and payroll.

2. Automating time and expense tracking – With online tracking and approvals you can automate this process, and ensure it’s completed easily and in a timely fashion.

3. Providing pinpoint accuracy in billing and payroll – By having online time and expense data automatically connected with payroll and accounting systems like QuickBooks, Dynamics Great Plains, ADP and Paychex you can eliminate mistakes that can occur with duplicate data entry. That means you can bill and pay on time, with 100% accuracy every time.

4. Improving client service – Sales and recruiting have access to online reports to easily answer questions about timecards, expense reports, invoices and payroll. And this means your team can deliver great candidate and client service that not only will help you keep the customers you have and but will make it easier to win new business as well.