Torben Kristensen, Consultant at Erhvervshus Sjælland, explains:
“In an organisation like ours, funding is the sole source of income. As such, incorrect EU reporting can lead to us missing out on funding – and our livelihood.”
Consultancy for small companies
At Erhvervshus Sjælland, they offer a range of aid projects, particularly at a regional level. They visit up to 500 companies a year who have joined events and/or completed projects with a consultant from Væksthus Sjælland.
The primary aim is to help small companies to kick-start their business, and to offer optimisation and bankruptcy consultancy for companies.
Erhvervshus Sjælland also helps small and medium-sized companies of 2–20 employees to draw up business strategies and development processes.
“When I meet with other businesses whom I feel could benefit from the tools in TimeLog, I don’t hesitate to recommend the system,” Torben explains. “I have done so before and will again.”
Measures working hours in real-time
Previously, Erhvervshus Sjælland collected detailed timesheets – on physical sheets as well as by using severely outdated time registration software.
“The problem was that the hours came in too late, so we had no time to react to overruns or underutilised hours,” Torben explains.
“This led to double work, as the employees had to track time in several places, and checking excess hours against target hours was confusing. It simply wasn’t clear to the employees or us as leaders. Using TimeLog, budget figures are brought down to employee levels, which is a brilliant feature,” says a thrilled Torben.
The paper tiger revealed
“When it comes to EU projects, work hours need to be meticulously tracked. You also need to provide documentation on the hourly rates of all employees involved. The EU point of view is that project participation subtracts time from an employee’s usual work, i.e. time multiplied by an hourly rate for company investments,” Torben explains.
Keen on specific EU reports
Reporting to public authorities isn’t the only benefit of working with a specific business system: project managers and management have new and improved tools as well. However, Torben still believes the system can be further utilised. As of now, all three sister organisations (Copenhagen, Sjælland and Southern Denmark) have embraced TimeLog in their everyday work with reporting internally as well as externally.
“The features allowing us to keep track of our projects and ‘traffic light’ colour codes for initiatives [project factor], all tied in with our underlying finances, salary cost analyses, etc., is a strong foundation for us to realise our goals,” Torben concludes.
