Our consulting firm had 120 employees billing hourly across 40+ projects. Every two weeks, payroll was a nightmare. Timesheets were handwritten, approvals were a mess, and we were consistently paying overtime that nobody had authorized. One director admitted he’d been approving late entries “just to be nice.”
The problem wasn’t the people—it was the lack of a system
Before ERPNext Consulting stepped in, we had no way to match actual hours worked to project budgets. Timesheets were submitted in Excel via email, and the HR person spent three days manually cross-checking them against client contracts. The result: we overpaid $90,000 in overtime in one fiscal year. That’s pure margin gone.
- Implemented a mobile-friendly timesheet app that syncs to project budgets in real time
- Set overtime approval rules: anything over 40 hours requires a project manager’s sign-off before the work happens
- Created a dashboard that alerts managers when project hours exceed 80% of budget—before it’s too late
The hidden savings came from better resource planning
With actual data, we could see which projects were understaffed. We reassigned three junior consultants from a slow project to a struggling one—no extra cost. Overtime dropped by 40% in the first quarter. And payroll processing went from two days to two hours. The HR manager started leaving at 5 PM for the first time in years. ERPNext Consulting showed us that good payroll isn’t just about paying people correctly—it’s about understanding your capacity and costs.
If you’re still chasing paper timesheets on payday, you’re burning cash. A digital process with built-in rules is the cheapest fix you’ll ever make.