“Before Synergy, it used to take me two whole days to do monthly invoicing. Now it takes no more than half a day.”
Brett Lucchesi | Owner/Director, Cenit [Structural Engineers]
See all storiesBrett Lucchesi — Cenit Structural Engineers
More time for client relationships
“By having all my project information at my fingertips, I am across what everyone’s doing, I know where each project is financially, and invoicing is simple and quick.
“That leaves me time to concentrate on staying in touch with clients and partners, whether active projects or not. Maintaining these relationships is where a lot of future work comes from. Less time spent on business administration means more time to keep in touch.”
Role/s in the business
“Where do I start? I’m the director wanting to see numbers and performance. I’m the project manager who wants to track the probability of the project and budgeted hours versus actual hours. I’m the admin doing invoicing and synchronising everything to Xero. I’m the new business development manager. Sometimes I get to do engineering! I do a bit of everything.”
Easily accessible project information
“The information is all there. I can find out how much time people spent on the jobs, contacts, it’s just easy. It’s easy for me in every level that I operate in… It just makes sense.
“Everything I need to know about the project is in one place.”
Synergy the problem solver
“I’m an engineer, so logic is how we work, you know, we like solving problems. Synergy helps me solve my problems because it’s logical. It makes sense.”
Critical reminders
“Getting invoices out is critical. Making sure I haven’t missed any, making sure I’ve followed up on proposals because you get busy, phone calls… the market is tough over here so you have to be proactive with your clients. It’s not just ringing up when you want to find out why they haven’t paid, you want to ring up ahead of the game to see how they’re going, how the projects are going, what else is coming… Synergy reminds you when you look at it.”
Why we need Synergy
“Before, I had spreadsheets for projects, proposals, invoicing, so I had to go through two or three spreadsheets to find everything. Now it’s just on one screen.
“Synergy saves time. It’s easy to use and it saves me time. It saves everybody time. So therefore, everybody can be more productive. We get more utilisation out of everybody.”
Core Synergy features used by Brett
- Invoicing
- Xero add-on for Synergy
- Reports
- Timesheets
- Projects and budgets
Time saved as a result
“With just invoicing, at least one-and-a-half-days already (within first two months of use). We expect quite a lot more time saved as we get more into the application.”
