You've undoubtedly done something right if you grow from one to 30 employees in just one year and simultaneously make a profit. At the consultancy firm Q Nation, they don't hesitate to say that Intempus deserves some credit for the tremendous growth. Without Intempus, they could very well have been suffocated by administration.
When speaking with Nikolaj Langkilde, founder and CEO of Q Nation, it's hard to believe that it hasn't been much more than a year since he first sent out an invoice with the Q Nation logo on it. Firstly, there are the financial key figures, which reveal growth that even successful companies with many years under their belt can often only dream of achieving. Secondly, Nikolaj can talk about how the company has restructured its infrastructure several times, thereby going through many of the life stages that only older companies typically experience.
Q Nation, which is based in Vesterbro in Copenhagen, make their money by selling consultancy hours for testing and quality assurance of IT systems. In other words, if you have developed a piece of software that you want tested from A to Z to get to know it better, then Q Nation can help you. The majority of the employees are therefore test managers, who sell their consultancy work on an hourly basis.
From manual in Google to automatic with Intempus
At Q Nation, they use e-conomic as their accounting system. Therefore, it was crucial to find a time tracking system that integrated with e-conomic, as the invoicing work was previously done manually.
“Our entire infrastructure is on Google, as it's important for us that all our systems are cloud-based. Initially, we managed our time tracking to clients manually through Google Docs. Then I manually invoiced clients in e-conomic. But with the growth we've experienced, invoicing ended up becoming a huge circus, so I looked into what administrative solutions were available. That's when I felt that Intempus was the best fit for our needs and temperament,” says Nikolaj Langkilde, continuing:
“Intempus is easy, and our entire philosophy is that it should be easy to be an employee with us. Intempus has enabled us to continue growing and avoid being bogged down by administration. At the same time, Intempus ensures that we minimise our invoicing deadlines, as they start from the day I send out the invoice.” – Nikolaj Langkilde, founder and CEO of Q Nation.
Self-driving startup phase
The employees at Q Nation record both their billable hours and their very few internal hours, as well as holiday and the like. This way, Nikolaj Langkilde can get a complete overview of all parts of the business, while his administrative work has become significantly easier.
“Previously, I’ve sat and made all sorts of extractions in Google Docs. Now I can extract reports across and sideways directly in Intempus. So I can predict our revenue quite accurately,” he says.
“Intempus has enabled us to continue our growth and avoid being swamped by administration. At the same time, Intempus ensures that we minimise our invoicing deadlines, as they start from the day I send out the invoice. And since I can much more consistently get it done immediately, the bills are also paid faster, which is not insignificant for the finances of a company with 30 employees who need to be paid at the end of the month,” says Nikolaj Langkilde, adding that the risk of errors on invoices, for example, has also become much smaller with Intempus.
The implementation of Intempus has also been a good experience.
“On the whole, we've been pretty self-sufficient. When you ask employees to change their workflows, there's naturally always a bit of uncertainty associated with it, but I haven't heard anything other than in the first week. I think it was easy to get started with Intempus. And incidentally, it's a non-IT-savvy administrative employee who has been responsible for the implementation with us. I don't think you can give better feedback on a time registration system,” he concludes.
