TeamSys Time and Project Tracking Software for QuickBooks® Announced Today
TeamSys Team Manager Suite, a new low-cost system that lets users of Intuit QuickBooks® accounting software track customer tasks and projects, as well as employee time billed to those projects, was released by Austin-based TeamSys Corporation today.
TeamSys Team Manager Suite™ is an inexpensive client-server system that any QuickBooks owner can use to track employee billable time as well as the tasks and projects employees are billing to. The TeamSys Suite is not one program but a "team of applications" that work interactively to keep time billing up to the minute and project managers aware of the tasks their teams are working on.
The TeamSys Suite consists of a server and three client applications that work with it:
" The TeamSys Server manages and preserves both project and time billing data, transmitting and receiving information between the Timer clients and the Team Manager and Administrator clients;
" Timer clients let employees record their billable time as they work on customer jobs;
" Team Manager clients let project managers create, assign, edit, and track employee tasks;
" TeamSys Administrator clients let a company's QuickBooks administrator export time to QuickBooks and manage other aspects of the system, including setting system preferences, creating reports, and exporting data to Microsoft Excel®.
The suite of applications may sound complicated, but in reality each client is designed to be easy to use and quick to install. Because QuickBooks users are busy small business people who don't have time to deal with complex client-server systems, TeamSys attempts to make the server and all the client applications easy for busy professionals to learn and use. For this reason, the system is based on tracking tasks that can either be organized into more complex projects or left as "one-off" standalone tasks. Employees can also create their own tasks using their Timers, and project managers can see at a glance the tasks their team members are billing to, the status of tasks, the time billed to date, and the percentage of completion of tasks and projects.
The goal, according to TeamSys representatives, is to allow small business owners to make tasks as simple or as complex as necessary. Workers in many organizations perform a lot of small tasks for their customers, tracking them in lists on whiteboards and in notebooks and (Microsoft) Outlook. Others work on large, long-term projects with lots of time-sensitive dependencies. And many small service businesses work on a combination of 'one-off' tasks and long-term projects. The TeamSys Suite lets users choose the level of complexity of their task and time tracking.
The TeamSys Team Manager Suite works with QuickBooks versions 2001 and later and with Windows versions 2000 and later, including XP and Vista. (Although company representatives say that the system was designed to work with Windows 98 as well, it has not been tested extensively on that platform.) The TeamSys Suite has a suggested retail price of $299.95, which includes one copy of TeamSys Server, five Timer clients, two Team Manager clients, and an Administrator client. Additional Timers retail for $39.95 each, and additional Team Manager and Administrator clients for $49.95 each. The program is available from select retailers and online at http://www.teamsys.com.