Client
LMS Advisory is an accounting practice based in Sydney. They provide a range of high-quality accounting, financial and business services to their individual and corporate clients.
Challenge
LMS Advisory team had to quickly adapt to new ways of working when COVID started as all staff were required to work from home.
Staff members have faced new challenges and some processes that were done previously seamlessly in the office became challenging. This applies to processes such as submitting a leave request and completing weekly timesheets.
In the past, employees were completing paper based leave requests, which would land in their manager’s in-tray for approval, and filling out timesheets in an Excel document sent by Payroll Manager.
Course of Action
LMS Advisory engaged us to review their current internal processes and implement a solution that would provide seamless experience for staff members and reduce repetitive tasks.
Our approach included having an initial discussion with a Company Director and the Payroll Manager followed by reviewing the existing paper based leave request form and the timesheet Excel document.
This was followed by a discovery session with nominated stakeholders. We were able to finalise requirements quickly and move to the solution architecture phase.
Solution Architecture
Since LMS Advisory has heavily invested in Microsoft 365 and based on gathered requirements, we made the decision to develop two separate solutions using Power Platform products, PowerApps and Power Automate.
We developed Timesheet app to suit specific needs of the accounting practice including:
- Two welcome screens – an employee and a payroll manager
- By default an employee is presented with timesheets for the current week. The week starts on a Wednesday and finishes on the following Thursday
- Employee can create and submit timesheets for the current and future reporting period
- Entered data is automatically saved into a SharePoint list
- Payroll Manager gets notified when a timesheet has been submitted.
Leave Request app has the following main features:
- A welcome screen which allows login as employee and as a manager
- An employee can submit a leave request by completing a leave form
- The request is automatically sent to their manager for approval
- The employee is notified if the leave is approved or rejected including any comments
- The employee leave balance is updated based on the approval outcome
- Employees can view their current leave balance including personal, carers, exam and jury duty leave as well as all current public holidays for the year.
In addition, we built a Power Automate flow which does comparison between the timesheet and the leave apps data. If a discrepancy is identified, a notification email is sent to the Payroll Manager.
Impact and Benefits
Employees can now easily submit their timesheets and leave requests online without being in the office. They can easily request leave, track progress of their requests and view their leave balances.
Payroll Manager has a holistic view of all timesheets and leave requests and can export data at any point for further analysis. She no longer needs to share weekly Excel timesheets and send reminders to employees to complete the timesheets.
LMS Advisory has automated a part of their administrative processes and reduced workload and repetitive tasks.
What’s Next
The next step is to further integrate the Timesheet and Request Leave apps. This will provide a comprehensive reporting to the Payroll Manager so that at any point in time they can view leave balance for each employee and their entitlements.
