By Travis Pittman
When it comes to early adopters of handheld technology, accounting and consulting professionals are right up there with doctors and lawyers. All are looking for the best resources available to help them increase efficiency and to achieve the ultimate profitability for their firms. In this regard, Palm handhelds provide financial professionals with a more efficient way to track engagement time, billing, and expenses. As a director of financial services for a major handheld software publisher, it's my job to help accounting and consulting firms stay ahead of this emerging technology and abreast of the applications and capabilities available for wireless and handheld devices.
Identifying issues
I regularly work with local, national, and international accounting and consulting firms to provide them one point of contact for finding, deploying, and managing "best of breed" handheld solutions. Based on many years of experience as an accountant myself, and from knowing the available technology, I have been able to identify some common issues, including, but not limited to: time and expense tracking; amortization/depreciation calculations; a need to review and edit financial statements, footnotes, and disclosures; a need to create and edit fully functional spreadsheets; and email retrieval on the go. What follows are the applications I typically recommend to help individual accountants and larger teams hit the ground running.
Time and billing
Keeping track of "chargeable" time or expenses ultimately impacts the overall profitability of a firm. It can be difficult for accountants to keep up with their billable time while they're concentrating on assisting their clients. They typically lose hours and expenses here and there because they have no better way to track their time than on a Post-it note.
Firms are finding easier and more comprehensive ways to track billing via handheld computing. A wireless method of tracking time and expense data with seamless integration with a "back-end" application requires less time and effort and minimizes input errors. The best solution currently available is a software application called MobileTimeBilling. It's a unique application that's making revolutionary waves in vertical markets where billing time and expense reimbursement is required. You can find it at http://www.wirelessverticals.com/products_and_services/mtb.shtml, and it's pictured in Figure A.
FIGURE A
Record your billing on the go with MobileTimeBilling.
