2012 Review of Sage Timberline Office
The program’s accounts receivable module offers detailed customer tracking, including credit limits, ratings and histories, default billing information, tax exemption status and certificates, customer contact information, correspondence logs that track memos, letters and other interaction, and the ability to link such correspondence to customers, contracts, contract items, change orders, invoices, jobs, cost codes, cash receipts or other items. The AR also has extensive aging management tools. Payables functions also offer the same extensive tracking of vendors and subcontractors as the AR module does for customers. Other optional accounting-focused modules include job costing, billing, equipment costing (including depreciation), full payroll and remote time entry, which can be used to enter time and distribute it to multiple jobs, cost codes, categories, pay IDs or other factors. A timesheet approval system can also be used, allowing managers and accounting to monitor, change and approve entries as necessary. A built-in, full-time audit trail and task-specific security functions at the user level help ensure data integrity and access only to authorized users.
CONSTRUCTION/CONTRACTOR-SPECIFIC FEATURES - 4.75 Stars
The construction and property management modules available with Sage Timberline Office depend upon the nature of the construction business. The program can be set up to manage firms in commercial/industrial, residential and electrical/mechanical contracting and construction, or specialty and service contractors, real estate developers and managers, corporate or government property owners, and heavy highway construction firms. For residential builders, the key construction modules include estimating, production management, document management and property management.
Recently added features include a new personal assistant tool, which can monitors critical project and property information and delivers automatic alerts about profit, compliance, and a broad range of key activities, and the Sage Timberline Office Connector, a business intelligence tool that lets users query, report and move data back and forth between Excel and Timberline Office.
Sage Timberline Estimating offers tools for automating many processes. The estimating spreadsheet system offers a customizable interface that shows all related factors, including easily sortable columnar data for takeoff quantity, labor productivity, labor quantity, and prices, material costs, and other information, with the spreadsheets linked to several extensive databases. Users can do quick takeoffs, adding items to estimates individually, or use assembly/group-based takeoffs or model takeoffs to start an entire project based on templates. More detailed information on Timberline Estimating is at www.sagetimberlineestimating.com/Solutions.
The program’s Desktop and Job Central console offers a centralized location for job setup and management, including estimates and billing, with the ability to drill down to job components, materials, parts, labor and related documents. The change management functions give users tools for tracking contract changes, and also includes customer and in-house approval routing processes.
The payroll module in Sage Timberline Office supports all states, multi-state employees, and allows unlimited deductions, including garnishments, insurance and retirement programs, and other third party pay. The module includes utilities for managing union payrolls, tax reciprocity, certified payrolls and workers’ compensation, with the ability to run payrolls on any frequency. Customer, vendor, employee and subcontractor management screens offer extensive detail and drilldown to histories and credit limits, as applicable, as well as reporting functions.
The inventory module tracks items in a shared database with purchasing, helping to consolidate the functions and streamline inventory reordering. It supports LIFO, FIFO, last cost, standard and average cost methods. For scheduling and dispatch functions, the program can be used to manage up to 50 technicians, each of whom can remotely access customer and project billing and service histories, and can receive work orders wirelessly while in the field. Equipment cost and service management functions help track asset and vehicle usage, as well as rental information, license and insurance expiration dates, warrantees and user-defined information.
REPORTING & MANAGEMENT TOOLS - 4.75 Stars
Sage Timberline Office has a library of more than 500 customizable reports covering both business accounting information and project management, and the system includes a financial statement designer that can be used to create standard and custom sets of financials. The program also offers integration with Crystal Reports.
Job costing reports include committed cost details, completion trends, the change order log, WIPS and other AIA-compliant output. Templates are available based on business type and industry language, and are also available for customer communications. Document management functions include the ability to store all project-related items with the job, keeping various documents, correspondence, invoices, blueprints, images and specs organized.
