Advanced Chemical Safety doesn't sell widgets. The consulting firm offers services — not goods or wares. Unlike companies that carry inventory, Advanced Chemical Safety needed an accounting solution that offered flexible billing rates, the ability to track project costs and professional invoice options.

Industrial firms of all sizes turn to Advanced Chemical Safety (ACSafety) for help in preventing accidents, injuries, illnesses and environmental contamination. The San Diego-based firm is a proven expert in international health, safety and environmental protection.

ACSafety's business revolves around services and billable hours, not goods sold. For the last eight years, ACSafety has relied on QuickBooks to manage its finances, but the staff had to wrestle with the software to accomplish specific service-oriented billing tasks. When QuickBooks: Premier Professional Services Edition was introduced, Dr. Neal Langerman, Founder and President at ACSafety, lost no time upgrading to Professional Services Edition because he quickly realized it meets a consulting firm's unique needs.

"With the new QuickBooks Professional Services Edition, somebody was listening to consultants, engineers and architects," he says. "They modified the software to meet our needs."

Specific features added to Professional Services Edition include customized proposal and invoice templates, flexible billing rates by client and service, professional services-specific Navigator, industry sample files, and 11 new reports that track the important data that Professional Services firms need to know.

One of Langerman's favorite reports is the Billed vs. Proposal report, which shows how much has already been billed to a client and how much is still available to bill on projects. Langerman uses this report to track project costs and prevent ACSafety from exceeding the agreed-upon client fee. Before his staff began using QuickBooks: Premier Professional Services Edition, an administrative assistant had to track these numbers on paper, and the data had to be current because Langerman requested updates several times a month. Now, the Professional Services Edition tracks that information automatically.

"It will save her time, which will translate to saving us money," he says.

Langerman estimates that based on the hours he and his staff will save using Professional Services Edition, the product will pay for itself in less than a month.


Cost Savings: Hard and Soft

Professional Services Edition has contributed to other cost savings at ACSafety and improved the firm's financial management. By tracking Project Costs Detail, Langerman realized that one of the services he offered was not profitable. Once he examined the numbers in the report, he decided to stop offering those services and concentrate on the company's core profitable services.

Professional Services Edition contributes to measurable cost savings like these at ACSafety, and it provides softer benefits, such as giving a firm a more professional appearance to its clients. The new proposal and invoice templates are more streamlined. They use terms that are relevant to professional services firms and their clients, and they can be customized to add a logo or modify the layout and formatting.

AC Safety has adapted several of the Professional Services Edition templates to meet its specific needs. "In particular, we modified the Professional Services Invoice by adding the company logo and changing the layout based on client requests," says Langerman. "We also created a new Not-to-Exceed proposal template from the Intuit-provided proposal template and a Not-to-Exceed report that generates a current status report for each Not-to-Exceed client. All these templates add to the professional appearance of the firm and to the ease of doing routine financial tasks."

Professional Services Edition can also play a role in helping owners understand their team's utilization. Project Status report and Billed and Unbilled Time by Project, Person or Activity reports provide an excellent view of each project and the resources being used. Owners can easily identify where work is billable vs. not billable and make adjustments accordingly to increase utilization and profitability.

This case study represents the individual experience of one customer. Intuit does not guarantee that results will apply to all customers.

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