“I’m keen on anything I can use to reduce time on administrative tasks and spend more time on engineering. I went with Synergy for engineering business management because it wrapped everything together.”
James Turner | Director – Structural Engineer, J Turner Design (UK)
See all storiesJames Turner â J Turner Design
More time for engineering
âIâm keen on anything I can use to reduce time on administrative tasks and spend more time on engineering.
âI went with Synergy for engineering business management because it wrapped everything together. Before, the project accounting side was quite disjointed â I had a package to do invoices and basic bookkeeping with a tenuous link to my banking system. These were isolated from proposals and shared documents. All the information was spread out through the various packages and I couldnât get them to communicate. Now, itâs all in one place.â
Role/s in the business
James has run his own limited company since 2016, but said he could easily be a sole trader. As well as owning the responsibility of all administrative tasks, James is the consultant structural engineer of the practice.
Quick and easy
âI donât have to login to three different systems, or manually update a spreadsheet, so proposals, timesheets and invoices all match from the outset.â
The QBO connection
âSynergy integrates with QuickBooks Online, which I am migrating to for my accounting. I donât want to be duplicating work. I can create invoices in one location and send them to the accounting software automatically, then marked paid and send the payments back to Synergy.â
Simple file sharing
â[Clients] tend to have one email address for everything, so things can go missing. Now, they know itâs in the project portal. And because the files and packages of work get bigger, I can just send links rather than huge files.â
Why we need Synergy
âSynergy lets me look at how I am performing across the business. Itâs not enough just to tag the project âresidentialâ, âcommercialâ, âdomesticâ â I need to drill down and see my actual costs against my budget.
âMaybe a job didnât take longer than Iâd planned because it was residential, but because I was building a retaining wall from scratch rather than repairing. Synergy helps me see a pattern in the scope of my work.â
Core Synergy features used by James
Time saved as a result
âWithout technology, I couldnât do my job. It helps me punch above my weight.â