Contractors submitted hours through email and spreadsheets. Client-side approvals arrived through a separate channel, creating chronic mismatches that triggered billing disputes on nearly one in three invoices.
Client purchase orders were stored in email threads and local Excel files. Finance had no real-time view of consumed PO value, so invoices were raised against expired or over-utilised POs, prompting rejections and delayed payments.
Approved overtime hours and billable expenses were routinely missed during manual invoice preparation. The accounts team estimated leakage of Rs22 lakh per year, but had no tooling to identify or recover it systematically.
Contractors were onboarded into Zoho People’s contractor management platform with structured timesheet workflows. Each timesheet entry is mapped to a client project and job code. Client-side approvers receive an email link and approve directly in the portal, creating a single auditable trail. Overtime and weekend hours are flagged automatically for billing markup.
Approved timesheet data flows directly into Zoho Books client invoicing via native integration. PO value and utilisation are tracked per client per project. Invoices are generated automatically once timesheets are approved, with TDS deduction on contractor payments and GST on service invoices handled within the same workflow. Billable expense claims from contractors are validated against client contracts before inclusion.
Three custom dashboards give the leadership team a live view of dispute ageing, PO consumption rates, and unbilled hours. A weekly leakage alert report flags approved hours not yet included in any open invoice, enabling the finance team to act before month-end close.
| Area | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Timesheet submission | Email and shared spreadsheets, no version control | Structured portal entry with client approval workflow |
| Client PO tracking | Local Excel files, checked manually before invoicing | Live PO ledger in Zoho Books with auto-alert at 80% utilisation |
| Invoice generation | Manual compilation, average 4-day lag after period close | Auto-generated from approved timesheets, same-day dispatch |
| TDS on contractor payouts | Calculated separately in tally, prone to errors | Rule-based deduction inside Zoho Books payment run |
| GST on service invoices | Added manually, HSN lookup done offline | HSN codes and GST rates mapped to service items, auto-applied |
| Billing dispute rate | ~31% of invoices raised a client query | Under 10% within 90 days of go-live |
| Overtime billing capture | Inconsistent, missed in roughly 1 in 5 cases | 100% captured via auto-flag in timesheet module |
| Visibility for leadership | Monthly PDF reports, 10-day lag | Live Zoho Analytics dashboards, updated daily |
Aaxonix mapped all existing timesheet, PO, and invoice workflows. Dispute root causes were classified across three categories: approval delays, PO mismatch, and unbilled hours. Client contracts were reviewed to extract billing rules, markup structures, and TDS applicability.
Contractor records were migrated into Zoho People. Timesheet forms were configured with mandatory fields: project code, client PO reference, and work type. Approval chains were set up for 14 active client accounts. PF and ESI compliance rules were applied for contractors on the payroll. Attendance integration was enabled for onsite contractors using biometric data export.
Client POs were entered into Zoho Books as purchase order records with line-item value tracking. Service items were mapped to HSN codes and GST rates. TDS deduction rules were configured by contractor type. The Zoho People to Zoho Books integration was activated and tested across three billing cycles. Invoice templates were customised to include timesheet summary attachments requested by enterprise clients.
Three dashboards were built: a dispute tracker, a PO burn report by client, and a billing leakage alert report. Scheduled email reports were configured for the CFO and operations head every Monday morning. Data from the prior six months was back-loaded for trend comparison.
Finance, operations, and recruitment coordinators completed role-based training. Contractors received a one-page guide for portal timesheet submission. Two billing cycles were run in parallel before the legacy system was decommissioned. Go-live was declared at the start of week 15.
The root cause of invoice disputes in IT staffing is almost never a billing error. It is a data synchronisation problem. When client approvals, contractor hours, and PO balances live in three separate tools, reconciliation becomes a manual activity, and manual activities fail at scale. Connecting Zoho People to Zoho Books removed the reconciliation step entirely. Timesheets approved by the client became invoices without a human touch point in between. Dispute resolution shifted from reactive to proactive because the analytics layer surfaced mismatches before invoices were raised, not after they were rejected.
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