It will be clear where improvements can be made in efficiency, and how much new business you can take on with current staffing levels.  Good job management software will show you how busy people are, based on the work assigned to them and upcoming work in their schedules, and may even allow you to select who to allocate new work to depending on the requirements of the job and  current workloads.  Maximising billable time is key to developing a successful agency, and software can play an important role here if used well.

Software alone, however, is not the be all and end all of job management. It is only as good as the business processes that shape its’ development and use.  Before buying off-the-shelf software or talking to a developer about bespoke or semi-bespoke software, you should be sure that your business processes are efficient and up-to-date.  Rules don’t need to govern creativity, but the processes that allow creativity to happen – poject management, client liason, billing, credit control, etc.

A popular method is to include estimates as a component of a job (in the same way as internal or bought-in time) – and whilst this is perfectly valid, many agencies, in my experience, prefer to treat an estimate as a separate entity, which can then be converted to a job when the client signs an order.

As for which is “best” – there is no right or wrong answer.  It is perfectly valid to have estimates as component of jobs, particularly when a single job is stretched over a long time frame, however, obviously, not every estimate results in an order, and non-invoicable jobs will start appearing in your system.  Then there is the question as to whether it is actually a job, when the only activity is estimating.  Where estimates are handled as entities in their own right, they should be referenced in the job bag that they become when converted.

When you buy software, don’t be fooled into thinking that you have to change your business processes to fit it.  Before automating a set of tasks, the critical factor to success is making sure that the existing processes are up to scratch – the result of not doing so is having flaws in your process exaggerated.  Business should always come first, software second.