How Shook Kelly Saved $2000 Per Month By Facilitating Its Invoicing Process

Shook Kelley’s timesheet software was outdated and they needed a reliable upgrade path. How did ClickTime Web Timesheet ensure a smooth and time-efficient transition?

About the Client

Shook Kelley is a design and branding firm founded in 1992 by Terry Shook and Kevin Kelley. The firm helps clients deliver a consistent brand image by cueing specific emotional values in consumers. This unique approach leverages consumer perceptions to turn complex business strategies into cues that trigger specific emotional values in consumers.

With three offices located in the United States, Shook Kelley employs a vast talent of brand strategists, urban designers, architects, interior designers, graphic designers, retail specialists, and cultural anthologists to discover and design brand strategies tailored to each customer.

The Challenge

Shook Kelley’s business model is based entirely on people, so keeping accurate worked time is critical for billing and reimbursement purposes. They started tracking time with a program made by Sema4, since they use Deltek Sema4 as their accounting package.

“It only worked on Mac OS9 platform and they weren’t developing it for OS X, which is what prompted us to start looking for alternatives,” says Henry Stepp, CTO. “The user interface was also convoluted. Every time we started it up, it was incredibly slow and only worked if you were in one of the three offices. It was really slowing us down.”

The Solution

Shook Kelley compared ClickTime with three other time-tracking applications and ultimately selected ClickTime. “First of all, it’s a great timesheet application without all the unnecessary features. The other products just duplicated a lot of functions we already had,” says Stepp. “We also didn’t want an application that we would have to install on everyone’s computer, so we really liked the fact that ClickTime was hosted. It also ran smoothly on Macs, and since we are an all Mac firm that was important to us. We really liked that we were able to export time and import it into our accounting package without any problems.”

Personally, Stepp likes the fact that ClickTime allows for easy time entry and review. “When we implemented ClickTime, we sent out an email explaining how to use it and asked people to call us back if they have questions and only 4 people out of 60 called.”

“In fact, one employee emailed me and said: ‘Thank you, this is exactly what we needed-you go to the website, you enter your time, and you’re done.’ It’s much faster than previous timesheets we were using and it is a lot simpler. You can see your all time for any week which makes it easy for you to see if you are missing hours for that week.'”

Shook Kelly’s employees can, for the first time, stay connected with their home offices regardless of where they are. “It’s important that people enter their time every day; otherwise if they wait a week or so they’ll end up forgetting what they did on that day. So being able to access the timesheet data from your computer, laptop, or phone is a huge advantage to us,” explains Stepp.

The Results

More than two years ago, Shook Kelley started using ClickTime. Now both the management and employees benefit from ClickTime’s services. The management no longer has to worry about employees not entering their time and employees can easily enter time anytime and from anywhere.

As Shook Kelley has grown, they have also enjoyed assistance from ClickTime’s Professional Services team. “We are happy with the Professional Services team’s help. We asked them to set up a couple of extra fields for a standard report. They gave us a time estimate and emailed us promptly when it was ready for us to test. The testing process was smooth and we had no problems,” comments Stepp.

ClickTime has drastically reduced the amount of time it takes Shook Kelley to prepare invoices and saved them thousands of dollars. “Before ClickTime we were taking almost 25 days from the end of the month to send out invoices, and now we’ve cut that time to 12 days. It saves us about $2,000 every month,” says Stepp.

Once time in entered in the platform, more than 60 pre-built reports, dashboards, and visual summaries highlight the true costs of clinical trials.

“It’s critically important that we understand how much each trial costs us in terms of employee resources,” McGlolthlin. “ClickTime gives us great data. It shows us what resources are being used per trial, which allows us to more effectively plan for future budgets.”

Want to learn more?

Check out how design agencies can better track time and manage projects.