Customers - Applied Technologies Integration
Applied Technologies Integration (ATI) is a contract engineering company that has customers in the Aerospace, Automotive, Consumer goods, Defense, Heavy duty off road, Industrial, and Renewable Energy sectors. Their services include engineering design, testing, prototyping, and manufacturing, as well as custom services if needed. In the last 2 years, ATI has diversified into other markets that include I.T. services and innovative solar panel racking systems.
Time Entry, Reporting, and Management (TERM)
ATI's CEO contacted S.E.S. about software for entering and reporting time spent on projects for their customers. After discussing the two software packages ATI previously tried to implement and the reasons that these packages failed, it was decided the S.E.S. would write a custom TERM software application to fulfill their business needs.
S.E.S. designed a browser-based application with a PostreSQL database backend that has the following functionality:
- Allow employees to enter hours on assigned projects in the proper project classification. Hours can be entered in quarter hours from either the home office or the customers' location using predefined class, type and activity codes along with a short text entry describing the work that was done.
- Track the hours in each classification and show them as a percentage of total project class hours by using three graduated thresholds shown in yellow, orange, and red warnings.
- Provide a manager's authorization area where all of the hours for each employee require authorization on the Monday following each week. Automatically email each manager on Monday morning if there are unauthorized or missing hours in the previous week.
- Managers can run analysis reports at any time by customer, project, project class, hours type, activity, date range, employee, and several other criteria and metrics.
- Summarize weekly/biweekly hours by employee for payroll and total billable hours by customer for invoicing. Calculate straight time and overtime hours for each employee based on the total hours actually worked each week.
This customized software has been in use since January 2010.
Client Testimonial
ATI was in need of a Time Entry and Report Management system. We were generally 2-4 weeks behind on invoicing, time sheets were manual and often incomplete or late, and time was entered manually into our accounting and payroll systems. ATI researched many companies and even tried to implement an off-the-shelf program. After 6 months of headaches and issues, we decided to stop trying to force-fit these packages as they were not flexible enough to meet our business requirements.
ATI turned to Software Engineering Specialists to write a customized time management program. S.E.S. sat down with us, reviewed our needs, listened to our issues and worked with the ATI staff to develop a program that fit our needs. ATI now has a system that is network based, entries are real time through any browser, and invoicing and project information is a few keystrokes away. Engineers can only enter time on assigned projects, and there are automatic alerts if their hours are not entered or when accumulated hours are nearing total project hours. We are now also able to run reports using many project metrics anytime of the day and from any location where the internet is available.
- Franklin G. Keller - Engineering Director