CONTROLLING BUDGETS THROUGH HELPDESK

17 November 2009

Powerful budget management features in fm facts Helpdesk, from Integrated fm, enable FMs to allocate budgets for specific service areas, track estimated against actual costs and analyse expenditure against a range of variables.

Helpdesk’s budget control is integrated with the ‘Common Jobs’ feature. For example, a common job for a broken light switch might have an estimated cost against it, based on predicted labour time and the cost of a new switch. When the job is complete, the cost is updated to reflect the actual cost - and this is put against the appropriate budget (e.g. electrical maintenance, M&E maintenance etc) so that FMs have an at-a-glance view of actual costs against budgeted costs.

The result is that FMs have more control over their budgets with no unpleasant surprises, as the figures are updated as each job is completed. The system will also facilitate reporting in a wide variety of ways, such as estimated labour times against actual labour times for each type of job. This feature enables closer investigation of supplier costs and fine-tuning of the cost-estimating procedures – in turn enabling more accurate budgeting in the future.

And, of course, the same principles can be applied to any other sort of common job, such as cleaning up a spillage, replacing a toner cartridge, moving furniture, unblocking drains, sweeping leaves etc.