Time and billing is a core administrative function for any accounting firm, where every staff member plays a vital role.  Much like an orchestra, every person must play their part at a specific point in time.  How easily that is accomplished is dependent on the difficulty of the tool.  Fundamentally, a time and billing application should support five core functions:  time entry, expense logging, billing, collections, and generating management reports.  Like our orchestra, some tools will be tuned better than others, and how they all play together can make or break a firm.  Our review criteria were kept fairly simple for this series:

1) Does the application support ease-of-use and adaptability to a firm’s workflow?
2) If integration is supported, does it provide solutions to common problems?
3) What tools are provided for reporting?