Resource planning for firms on IRIS Practice Engine, Star and IFM
IRIS solutions keep the firm’s record of clients, jobs, time and billing. Beeye plans who works on which job, and when. Connected, the plan starts from what they already know.
The short answer
How Beeye works with IRIS solutions
Beeye connects to IRIS solutions, and the two stay in sync automatically, as often as the firm chooses: staff, clients, jobs, tasks, job fees and actual time. IRIS stays the system of record; Beeye uses that data to decide who works on which job, and when, against each person’s capacity and each job’s fee.
No double keying
New staff, clients and jobs reach Beeye at the next sync. Nobody retypes a job before it can be scheduled.
Fee, time spent and time scheduled, side by side
The fee and the actual time come from IRIS, Beeye adds the time still scheduled. You see where each job will land while there is still time to act.
A plan that follows IRIS
People keep the position and department IRIS gives them, and a job closed in IRIS is archived in Beeye.
The data
What syncs between IRIS and Beeye
IRIS and Beeye stay in sync automatically. Each record type can be switched on or off, and the field mapping, custom fields included, is agreed with you during onboarding.
| In IRIS | In Beeye | What planners do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Staff | People, with name, email, position, department and sub-department, and the partner and manager they report to | Who can be scheduled, and in which team |
| Clients | Clients, with codes, office, partner and manager, status, year end, industry and group | Filter and group the plan by office, partner, industry or year end |
| Jobs | Engagements, with client, job code, department, period and category, and their partner, manager and in-charge | The work to staff, with the people accountable for it |
| Job value | The engagement’s fee | How much time the engagement can carry before it erodes its margin |
| Tasks | Tasks, with assignee, status and start date | Planning at task level, not only at job level |
| Time entries | Actual time on each engagement | Time spent, set against the fee and against what was scheduled |
Kept in Beeye
Skills, availability, bill rates and the schedule itself are managed in Beeye.
Who does what
IRIS keeps the record. Beeye plans the work.
IRIS stays the record of
- clients and jobs
- time entry
- billing and WIP
- the value of each job
Beeye decides
- who works on which job, and when
- capacity across departments and offices
- fee, time spent and time still scheduled, side by side
- busy season, weeks or months ahead
Beeye does no billing, payroll or compliance. It completes a firm’s IRIS setup rather than competing with it, and the more the firm relies on IRIS, the more the plan has to work from. See what Beeye does.
Setup
How the connection is set up
Configured with your team during onboarding, the connection then runs on its own.
- 01
Connect
A Beeye administrator enters the connection details of your IRIS environment, then tests the connection.
- 02
Choose what syncs
Switch each record type on or off, pick the departments to import, and map IRIS fields to Beeye fields, including your own custom fields. Inactive staff and lost clients stay out.
- 03
Let it run
Syncs then run automatically, as often as your firm chooses. A history log shows each run, what it brought in and whether it succeeded.
- 04
Plan on IRIS data
New jobs and new people appear in Beeye on their own, and your schedulers plan on the same data as the rest of the firm.
Only Beeye administrators can see or change the connection and the mapping. How Beeye handles security.
In their words
Firms that plan on IRIS data with Beeye
Firms in the US, the UK and Canada plan their people on IRIS data with Beeye. In the UK, Larking Gowen pulls its IRIS time and billing data into Beeye to compare what it scheduled with what it recorded, without double keying.
The Wow moment for me was when we saw a budget flow in from IRIS Practice Engine; from the budget/fee we could gauge how much time was supposed to be scheduled, then see realization by past cost and future scheduled time.
Kim BeauchampPartner and Chief Operating Officer · AAFCPAs
We have multiple syncs throughout the day to get our client, our mandates and our resource data into the system so that everything is smooth and transparent for our end users.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Does Beeye integrate with IRIS solutions?
Yes. Beeye connects to IRIS solutions, and the two stay in sync automatically, as often as the firm chooses: staff, clients, jobs, tasks, job fees and actual time. Firms schedule their people on the same data they use for time and billing.
Which data syncs between IRIS and Beeye?
Staff, clients, jobs, tasks, the value of each job and actual time. Each record type can be switched on or off, and how IRIS fields map to Beeye fields, including custom fields, is agreed during onboarding.
Can we choose what syncs?
Yes. Which records sync, and how they map to Beeye, is agreed with each firm during onboarding. If you need data that is not listed here, ask us about it.
Are job budgets imported?
Yes, as the value of each job: it becomes the engagement’s fee in Beeye, which tells planners how much time the job can carry. Beeye then shows the fee, the time spent and the time still scheduled side by side.
Are skills and rates imported?
No. Skills, availability, bill rates and the schedule itself are managed in Beeye. Bill rates follow each person’s position by default.
How often does the data sync?
As often as your firm needs: the sync frequency is set for each firm, and syncs then run automatically. Nobody on your team exports or imports files, and a history log shows the result of each run.
Does Beeye replace IRIS?
No. IRIS stays the record of clients, jobs, time and billing. Beeye does no billing, payroll or compliance: it plans the work that IRIS records.
How long does it take to set up?
The connection is configured during onboarding, alongside the rest of the rollout. At AAFCPAs, it was completed within an implementation of about six weeks that took Beeye from 10 test users to around 200.
IRIS, IRIS Practice Engine, IRIS Star and IRIS IFM are trademarks of IRIS Software Group.
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