If you are strictly looking at per person profitability in a professional service firm, your first step  is to figure out how many hours you can bill. To get an accurate calculation, you need to do more than just subtract the employee’s salary from their revenue; you also need to factor in benefits and overhead costs. Every organization is different, but you need to figure out what is the cost of your organization’s overhead per employee workable hour in order to calculate this multiplier to add your employee’s hourly wage to more accurately calculate your organization’s real profitability.

The debate begins when you start looking at an employee’s profitability; should you actually start by reviewing an employee’s productivity? There are activities that probably occur within your organization that may be considered productive, but not profitable in the short term.

When you want to calculate an employee’s productivity, you need to start by looking at how many hours in a year are considered workable versus non-workable hours. An employer knows that you cannot be profitable or billable at all times since employees are entitled to benefits.  The calculation must take into account the hours that a salaried employee will be paid for but will not be productive since this should not be taken into account when you are looking at someone’s personal productivity rate. You should  calculate the actual number of potential productive hours after benefits, and the calculation would look something like this:

• Number of available hours to work in one year for a salaried employee:  40 hours per week and 52 weeks per year: 2080 workable hours 
• Number of paid but non-working hours in a year for a salaried employee:
  • 3 weeks of vacation= 120 hours
  • 10 civic holidays= 80hours
  • 5 sick days= 40
  • 240 of non-working hours
• Total number of productive hours in a year: 1840 hours 

Once you have calculated the maximum number of potential hours of productivity that are available in a year, the next question should be: can all resources be profitable? Within an organization, it is expected that there are some tasks that are productive, but by definition will never been seen as “profitable”. For example, should employees who are doing Business Development activities or completing RFPs be penalized on their performance reviews because they were working on something that isn’t immediately profitable but may be profitable one day?  This is why it is important when you are setting up your solution that you can create various levels within your project in order to distinguish, but not penalize, those who are productive yet not technically profitable in a financial sense.

So what is the danger of you strictly manage by profitability? If you assign goals which are solely linked to profitability, you are creating an environment that is solely focused on short-term profits.  If you do this, your organization may begin to lag in other areas since this evaluation process does not encourage them to do business development and nurture future sales, places less importance on training and can cause you to fall behind to the competitions with regards to knowledge on the latest innovations, and finally, you may well miss out on solidifying customer loyalty since there is less importance placed on basic customer support.

A good project accounting solution would have an integrated time sheet module that would enable employees to enter their various activities and would push the results directly into your ERP solution. The time sheet must be able to allow for different phases and levels in order to extract the breakdown of an employee’s profitable versus productive hours in general and within a particular project. This will help you set a wider variety of objectives since both are needed to maintain a successful business.

By JOVACO Solution, a Quebec-based Dynamics GP Partner

Should You Manage Employee Performance Based on Profitability or Productivity? is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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Use Keyboard Shortcuts

There are numerous keyboard shortcuts available in Microsoft Dynamics GP.  Users that spend a significant time each day performing data entry work can save keystrokes – i.e. time, by learning and taking advantage of these shortcuts.

Setup Quick Print Options

Invoices, packing slips or other sales order processing documents can be set to print automatically – almost!  To print using Quick Print, open your Order, Invoice, etc., and then select Options and Quick Print.  Alternatively, use the keystroke shortcut, CTRL + Q.

Customize Your Toolbar

You can customize your toolbar to promote efficiency in your routine tasks.  You may Arrange Toolbar, Add Tools, Customize Tools and even change names on your Toolbar Menus!

Change Your Display

Through User Preferences, you may change your user defaults.  Note that security rights will be required to update User Preferences.

Use Macros

A macro is a pre-recorded series of steps that can be played back at anytime.  Think of all the steps that you use to perform your routine tasks and combine these into a single command.

Customize List Views

A view is just a name applied to a filtered or modified list.

Customize Smartlists

You may modify Smartlist column names to meet your specific business needs.  Also, Smartlists may effectively be used for custom reminders based on a defined set of conditions.  Finally, limiting records can speed up search times.

Customize Your Navigation Pane

You may customize your Navigation Pane to remove from view or make visible, or to show more or fewer buttons.

Use Shortcuts

Shortcuts provide quick and easy links to resources you use frequently including windows, macros, Smartlists, Web pages and external applications.

Set Advanced Lookups

By setting Advanced Lookup options, you may speed the search for records by choosing from data that is most meaningful to your search.

For further information contact Anderson, Tackman & Co.

by Paul Pirhofer, Anderson, Tackman & Co. a Wisconsin Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner

Productivity Tips For Microsoft Dynamics GP is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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3. Walk Before You Run: Tips to a Successful Microsoft Dynamics GP Implementation