Managing a Consultancy
Discussion
I manage a small team of consultants providing business advice.
Business is good and I need to make sure my operations managment systems can cope.
Essentially I need to keep track of the number of consultancy days I've contracted, who's delivering them and when.
At the moment I have a spreadsheet with details of contracts and the number of days to be delivered, and another spreadsheet with details of what my consultants are delivering each week / month.
The two spreadsheet are not linked so I manually take "days" off one sheet and put them on the other until all the contracted days have been committed to an advisor.
The system worked ok with a small team, but we're growing and I'm sure there is a better way of doing this.
Anyone know a simple solution / spreadsheet that does this?
Business is good and I need to make sure my operations managment systems can cope.
Essentially I need to keep track of the number of consultancy days I've contracted, who's delivering them and when.
At the moment I have a spreadsheet with details of contracts and the number of days to be delivered, and another spreadsheet with details of what my consultants are delivering each week / month.
The two spreadsheet are not linked so I manually take "days" off one sheet and put them on the other until all the contracted days have been committed to an advisor.
The system worked ok with a small team, but we're growing and I'm sure there is a better way of doing this.
Anyone know a simple solution / spreadsheet that does this?
johnfm said:
wouldn't some sort of database type thing be more applicable than spreadsheets?
Quite probably, I don't really know what I want, I just know what I want it to do.In a Blue Peter world without computers I'd have a bucket of counters representing each day sold. I'd take each one out of the bucket and give them to a consultant until each page in their diary had a counter.
Only ever one counter so it can only ever be in one place.
I'm sure there is a simple way to do this that everyone else uses - don't even know what to search for on google.
Time/project management software like Jira? http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/ There's a free version/trial for you to have a play with.
I've used Retain Enterprise in the past and it's a good piece of kit for allocating people on projects.
More recently I have been trialling Yutiti which seems pretty good for a free piece of software. I am tracking 30 odd people on it at the moment. The interface is a bit clunky but you can assign people to projects and view by projects or individuals
More recently I have been trialling Yutiti which seems pretty good for a free piece of software. I am tracking 30 odd people on it at the moment. The interface is a bit clunky but you can assign people to projects and view by projects or individuals
Cheers folks I'll have a look at those.Agree with what the others have said above - these tools are good, but may be overkill and don't know how long its free for before you need to buy the full versions / licences etc.
I have some pretty detailed experience with Excel - and if its something reasonably simple (which it sounds like it is), i'm pretty certain I could knock up a model (using VBA) for you free of charge. To be honest I ned a bit more detail on it. PM me if you want.
I have some pretty detailed experience with Excel - and if its something reasonably simple (which it sounds like it is), i'm pretty certain I could knock up a model (using VBA) for you free of charge. To be honest I ned a bit more detail on it. PM me if you want.
Hi Sploosh, sounds like we're in the same business 
One of my business sectors is providing software to do exactly what you're looking for. As ever, bespoke Access and Excel can do it but when it comes to resource planning, attaching Client notes, billing and timesheets never mind the reporting element, then it all gets a little clunky and costly; it all depends on what you want to spend.
If you want to drop me a line, I'd be glad to help out
One of my business sectors is providing software to do exactly what you're looking for. As ever, bespoke Access and Excel can do it but when it comes to resource planning, attaching Client notes, billing and timesheets never mind the reporting element, then it all gets a little clunky and costly; it all depends on what you want to spend.
If you want to drop me a line, I'd be glad to help out
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