Evaluation and Training Institute Confidently Creates Budget Projections With ClickTime Timesheets

By the numbers

10+

years tracking with ClickTime

Evaluation and Training Institute (ETI) is a nonprofit educational applied research firm that works with state and federal governments, as well as other nonprofits, to measure the impact of their learning programs.

By using ClickTime, ETI can confidently create detailed project budget proposals in order to win state and federal grants and contracts over competing research firms.

Increased Confidence in Project Budgets to Win Competitive Grants and Contracts

Responding to Requests for Proposals (RFPs) is a competitive — but often necessary — process for many nonprofits.

RFPs are awarded to different entities based on many factors, which can include the proposal itself, an organization’s technical capabilities, and an applicant’s proposal research. However, budget is often one of the critical deciding factors when it comes to awarding contracts.

And as ETI president Jon Hobbs points out, time and money allocated to project management is a critical component of any thoughtful, honest budget projection for a research project.

Unfortunately for competing applicants, the groups reviewing RFP bids don’t like seeing too much of a budget allocated to simply managing a project. Even though proper management is crucial to completing projects on time and on budget, review committees prefer to see more of their money going toward actionable tasks, such as data collection or statistical analyses.

To ensure he can still allocate a realistic and useful amount of money to project management, Hobbs uses ClickTime to see how little time he can safely spend on management activities while still completing projects to a client’s satisfaction.

Using ClickTime’s employee timesheet data, Hobbs can understand exactly how much time goes into project management. This data allows him to bid RFPs with confidence.

Client sare satisfied by his ability to speak concretely to time allocated to project management. And his team can confidently spend the time they need on administrative project tasks without worrying about going over budget.

More Transparent, Timely Communication with Staff

ETI’s timesheet data also allows Hobbs to communicate more effectively with his staff.

As a research director, Hobbs is largely concerned with how his team’s project money is spent. While he recognizes the need for adequate time for project management, too much time spent on figuring out how to complete a project can be bad news for ETI.

“ClickTime gives me much better feedback with my staff. If I see a project has taken on an inordinate amount of hours for project management, something's probably going wrong.”

Jon Hobbs, Ph.D.

President of ETI

With timesheet data, Hobbs can easily see when a project has stalled in the management phase. He can then reach out to his staff to see where they’re running into roadblocks and help them get back on track.

Less Time Spent Reviewing Timesheets

To review timesheet data, Hobbs doesn’t have to spend valuable time poring over individual timesheets. Instead, he can easily pull reports to review time spent on different tasks for individual projects.

And since ClickTime’s timesheets are easy for employees to fill out — and difficult for them to make mistakes in — Hobbs can rest assured that he’s seeing accurate time tracking data.

Before ClickTime, ETI was using spreadsheets to track time. Ultimately, frustration with these spreadsheets drove Hobbs to look for a better solution.

“I was spending too much time on overhead when my role is research director,” he says. At the time, Hobbs had 10 employees. But, he points out, if six of them make a mistake on their timesheets, that becomes an administrative headache.

With a growing project load, Hobbs couldn’t afford to spend time tracking down employees to complete timesheets or correcting their mistakes.

ClickTime’s timesheets allow employees to enter time without breaking spreadsheet formulas. And when a mistake does happen, system administrators can easily prompt an employee to make changes or override an error themselves.

Finally, ClickTime’s customizable permissions allowed Hobbs to add more managers to the system to review and approve timesheets. With a more effective tool and assistance with back-office tasks, Hobbs is now able to spend more time doing what he loves: helping organizations measure the effectiveness of their learning programs.