BigTime Software: DCAA Compliant Time and Billing Software

Today, a majority of professional services firms that work for government agencies on a retainer or an hourly basis often struggle to keep track of the time spent on projects. With no leeway to fall behind on time tracking due to DCAA regulations, smaller firms struggle to manually create a compliant audit trail. Meanwhile, these services firms must present accurate reports to federal entities on all ongoing processes, timesheets and percentage of budget spent to prevent any overages or unnecessary spending by the government. Managing this condition can be quite difficult. Considering the DCAA compliance regulations coming into play, it has become nearly impossible for services firms to keep track of their workforce at the required level of granularity. Coming to the rescue of such companies is BigTime Software, delivering a cloud-based time-tracking, billing, and project management software, with built-in DCAA compliance time tracking steps.

“Our goal was to mitigate the challenges associated with work hour logging and to empower professional services firms that offer government contracting with innovative solutions,” states Brian Saunders, CEO of BigTime Software. The 17-year-old Chicago-based company’s software gives an organization’s workforce, customers, and partners, a better way to work together. BigTime solves the problems of more than 2,000 professional firms and tracking over $2 billion (USD) of billable time each year.

The key findings of a DCAA audit all come back to timekeeping. Directly affecting the complexity of indirect rate determination, fully burdened labor rate determination, floor check audits and rate audits, time tracking is the most critical element of a professional services firm to track progress, from both an internal administrative and government compliance standpoint. In addition to time tracking BigTime offers a review and approval process that follows the guidelines for DCAA compliance. The process allows for managers to review and sign off staff’ timesheets, and gives them the capability to make changes to it as well. BigTime’s compliance ready timesheets and expense reports can be validated against policies before they are submitted for approval. Additionally, comprehensive logs are incorporated into BigTime’s report engine to give users the ability to add audit-log data to existing staff and project reports. For audit reporting, BigTime gives users the ability to access the information they need with a click of a button.

Our goal was to mitigate the challenges associated with work hour logging and to empower professional services firms that offer government contracting with innovative solutions

As a result, federal contractors never have to worry if a report will pass an audit. It has several configuration options that let users tailor the various audit-log rules into specific settings that fit their accounting needs.

With DCAA compliance built-in, BigTime Software is making government contracting much simpler than it used to be, without the burden of having to configure a manual process and audit trail. In effect, the company offers one of the most versatile audit-trails in the industry. “Our software, which is browser-based, web-enabled and easy to use, helps our customers streamline the whole audit process,” remarks Saunders. With such adherence to DCAA compliance requirements—reflecting both industry best-practices and operational know-how—the product helps reduce the hurdle for thousands of small to medium size firms seeking to do business with state and federal government agencies. To top it off, this whole suite of offerings is bundled into a single, efficient online application that works equally well on mobile phones and PCs.

BigTime’s professional services automation software seamlessly integrates time and expense tracking, billing, project management and reporting, all with DCAA compliance in mind. Packaged in a single integrated system, BigTime is designed to substantially increase a firm’s profit margins.

For more information about BigTime’s solutions for government contracting firms, please visit bigtime.net or contact them at (312) 346-4646.