If your growing services business is like most, you use multiple systems and common tools such as spreadsheets to share and report data between departments and teams. However, dispersing your data in this way significantly slows you down—your people are continuously re-entering information, effectively creating double entry accounting across platforms to keep financial records consistent. This manual bookkeeping of project information, assets, liabilities and expense accounts can lead to inconsistencies in your accounting equation and extra work. As a result, you may struggle to maintain a seamless balance sheet, especially when data re-entry spans departments.
Data re-entry across systems inhibits your business in several ways:
- Delays critical processes, including project quoting, phase completion, invoicing, marketing and sales campaign tracking, and other activities involving credits, debits or financial transactions across multiple tools or systems. These delays often create unwanted lags in posting liabilities, equity, debits, credits or other elements of the accounting equation.
- Increases workload when staff must search for information, verify its validity and re-enter data. This is similar to recording debit or credit entries in multiple separate systems instead of using a single entry accounting method that reduces effort.
- Introduces errors, as people naturally make mistakes, especially when duplicating entries related to asset or liability account data for each transaction.
- Creates uncertainty about which system holds the most accurate and current data—CRM, accounting software or another standalone tool. This uncertainty can lead to inconsistencies in financial statements and disrupt the assets-liabilities equation you rely on for decision-making.
- Wastes management time, forcing leaders to build reports instead of focusing on business growth. Searching for recorded debit entries, reconciling debits and credits, or validating which double entry bookkeeping dataset to trust can consume valuable leadership time.
- Lowers employee morale, as repetitive “busy work” is unfulfilling. Constantly re-entering data to maintain accounts payable, tracking transactions in multiple spreadsheets, and verifying every debit entry can feel tedious and unproductive.
- Reduces strategic thinking, as there’s no 360-degree view of your operations and customer relationships. Maintaining a single point of entry in your accounting method ensures better clarity on assets, liabilities and equity, supporting improved financial reporting.
Your team needs a unified system for entering data, enabling them to complete every critical process through a single point of entry. Eliminating manual data re-entry—similar to repetitive bookkeeping sequences—helps your teams focus on higher-value tasks and ensures your accounting capabilities are efficient, not burdensome.
Your people need a unified system for the data they’re entering, allowing them to fulfill every critical process by enabling a single point of entry.
How to Spot Your Double Entry Trouble Areas
It’s easy to identify where your service professionals, sales staff, support staff and project managers are forced to duplicate efforts. For example, when a project is sold, does the data flow automatically from your CRM system into your project system without requiring separate entry? When project team members enter their time and expenses into the project management system, does that system forward those records to your ERP for billing or for balancing assets and liabilities in a single entry format? If a sales team engages a customer, does the CRM show relevant information from current and historical projects to support cross-selling or upselling, while avoiding double entry accounting tasks?
The drawbacks of disconnected systems and data are even more pronounced with mobile employees. For instance, if a project team is traveling to kick off a customer project, can they remotely log into your PM or CRM system and review all relevant data, including debit and credit details for that project? On their way home, can they input their time and expenses so you can close the books faster, streamline cash flow and reduce accounts payable complexity—without unnecessary double entry bookkeeping?
If your answer to any of these questions is “no,” it’s time to modernize your project management and CRM into a single system with ERP integration. This approach maintains one fully synchronized set of financial records to consolidate your business processes. An integrated system supports single entry accounting for day-to-day transactions while still accommodating double entry models for official liability or asset account records.
Integrated PM-CRM Is the Answer
TimeLinx is a next-generation project system that integrates with Infor CRM or Sage CRM, enabling professional services organizations to connect critical processes and financial transactions faster than ever. With TimeLinx, your sales, service, support and financial applications work together to maximize customer satisfaction and business profitability. This streamlined approach removes double entry accounting tasks when updating assets, liabilities, debits, credits or expense accounts.
TimeLinx also ends your reliance on standalone tools and their individual data entry requirements. Instead, employees enter opportunities, project information, time and expense records, schedules and other sales and project-related data into the TimeLinx database once, where it is integrated with the CRM. Because project data—including how funds are being consumed—is tied to the same customer record as accounting and sales order information, your financial applications automatically pull the correct billing information in real time. This ensures that a single entry updates your recorded debit in the cash account, reflects properly in liability account details and aligns with your overall accounting equation.
The unified nature of data in TimeLinx and your CRM application virtually eliminates errors when sharing data across teams. This accelerates your processes and significantly raises the quality of life for your frontline staff, as they can focus on their core responsibilities instead of tedious manual data re-entry. Freed from repetitive data duplication inherent to traditional double or triple entry processes, your teams can improve transaction accuracy, maintain balanced financial statements and streamline cash flow. Meanwhile, your management team can dedicate more time to developing strategies that drive your business forward and support overall financial health.
To learn more about unifying your core business processes and systems, contact us today.
