· 2 min read
Our own tools first: Censiary Time & Expenses
Censiary builds the tools an engineering business runs on — and uses them itself, starting with time and expenses.
Most of Censiary's portfolio is about industrial assets: cranes, hoses, plant and the evidence that goes with them. But an engineering business also runs on less visible work — recording the hours spent on a project, keeping the receipts from a site visit, and turning both into an accurate invoice. Censiary Time & Expenses is the app we built for that, and it is in daily use at CraneWave.
Built for engineers and consultants
Time & Expenses captures time and expenses for engineers and consultants on iPhone and Mac. Work is organised into projects and phases, each with its own rate cards, so the time recorded on site is already priced correctly when it reaches the office. On the Mac, time can be logged with a stopwatch, an egg timer or a quick add; on the iPhone, it is there in a pocket on the plant floor.
Receipts in seconds
Receipts are photographed in seconds and attached to the expense they belong to. That sounds small, but anyone who has emptied a coat pocket of faded till receipts at the end of the month knows how much time and accuracy it saves. Entries sync between devices, so something captured on the phone in the car park is on the Mac by the time you sit down.
From record to invoice
Statement and summary PDFs come straight from the records, and invoicing runs through Xero. The same principle that sits behind the rest of the Censiary platform applies here: keep one trustworthy record, and generate the paperwork from it rather than retyping it somewhere else.
Why we build our own tools first
Using our own software every day is the most honest test we can give it. When an engineer is frustrated by an extra tap or a confusing screen, we hear about it the same day, and the fix goes into the product. It also means that when we talk to other engineering businesses about their tools, we are speaking as people who rely on ours. Censiary builds the tools an engineering business runs on — and we run on them too.
Where it stands
Time & Expenses is in daily use at CraneWave. It can be demonstrated and adapted for your team. If your consultancy or engineering team would find it useful, get in touch and tell us how you work today: the projects you run, how you price your time and where the paperwork slows you down.