The first week of every month
Your agency is on several public sector frameworks: a regional one for translation, a health trust contract for interpreting, a local authority arrangement for both. Each requires a monthly management information return. One wants volumes by language and department. Another wants turnaround against agreed service levels. A third wants spend by cost centre and the number of complaints received and resolved.
Your operations manager spends the first days of every month exporting from the TMS, the interpreting spreadsheet and the accounts package, reshaping the data into each template and checking it adds up. Any late correction means doing part of it again.
Why framework reporting is so manual
- Every buyer has its own template and field definitions.
- Data comes from several systems: TMS, interpreting bookings, invoicing and complaints.
- Fields such as department or cost centre are not always captured at booking.
- Service level measures, such as turnaround or fill rate, need calculating from timestamps.
- Returns must reconcile with invoices, so errors are caught late.
What it costs
Days of skilled staff time every month. Late or inaccurate returns, which buyers notice and which can matter when the framework is re-tendered. Missing fields that have to be chased from PMs and clients after the fact. And no easy way to use the same data to spot problems, such as a department whose jobs are always urgent.
| Report field | Where it comes from | What the build does |
|---|---|---|
| Volumes by language | TMS job data | Read and grouped automatically |
| Department or cost centre | Often missing | Required at order, validated |
| Turnaround or fill rate | Timestamps across systems | Calculated against your service levels |
| Spend | Invoices | Reconciled with job data |
| Complaints | Email or log | Counted from the complaints log |
How we build framework reporting
- The fields each framework requires are captured at the point of order, for example by making department and cost centre mandatory on that buyer's order form or portal.
- Job, booking, invoice and complaint data are read from your systems, such as Plunet, XTRF or your own job database, your interpreting system and Xero or QuickBooks.
- Each framework's template and definitions are set up as a mapping, so the same underlying data produces each buyer's return.
- Service level measures, such as turnaround or interpreter fill rate, are calculated from timestamps using each framework's definitions.
- The return is reconciled with invoices before it is produced, and differences are listed for a person to resolve.
- The draft return is produced in the buyer's format, such as a spreadsheet template, for your operations manager to check and submit.
- The same data is available as a dashboard, so you can see performance on each framework during the month, not only after it.
Your contracts define what each buyer requires. We set up the mapping from your data to those requirements, and a person always checks the return before it goes.
What changes
Definitions deserve care at the start. One buyer's 'turnaround' runs from order to delivery, another's from quote approval, and interpreting fill rates may exclude cancellations made by the client. We write each framework's definitions down with your operations manager when the mapping is set up, so the figures mean what the buyer thinks they mean and do not shift from month to month.
Monthly returns become a check-and-submit task instead of a data-wrangling one. Missing fields are caught at order, not at month end. Returns reconcile with invoices first time. You can see service level performance mid-month and act before it shows up in a return. And when a framework is re-tendered, you have clean historical data to support your bid.
New frameworks are also easier to take on, because adding one means a new mapping rather than a new monthly spreadsheet ritual.
Is this your month start?
- Framework returns take days of manual work.
- Each buyer's template is filled in by hand.
- Department or cost centre fields are often missing.
- Returns do not reconcile with invoices first time.
- You only see service level performance after the month ends.