The project budget screens shows your current position and a predicted at completion result. Project time entries can be grouped, sorted and be moved in bulk.
There is no relaxing into the end of year for us - this is a substantial release, and the team is very proud of it!
Over the past few months we have been focusing on making changes that would benefit people that manage projects and that's what this release is all about. We're by no means finished in this space so expect more improvements in 2020 - and maybe even a couple more before Christmas.
So read on and learn about some things which should really make a difference for you.
Included in this release:
- A new project budget screen so you can really see what's going on with your project budget
- A turbo-charged project time entries screen where you can now sort and group time entries as you want and bulk move time entries if they're in the wrong place
- The forecast section now has a Short Term Forecasts and Long Term Forecasts screen both making it easy for Project Managers to view and update their forecasts.
- Tasks have been renamed to timecodes. it's a simple name change but it removes confusion and clarifies what these are used for.
- See how work effort is tracking within the week with weekly resourced and worked details shown on all screens for a project
- Projected burn now "real time" using actual timesheets to date plus remaining resourcing
- Better view of your revenue pipeline with a reports for a 12 month view of forecasts (by client or project)
- The improved date pickers were rolled through a bunch more screens: Slowly but surely you can view data for the periods you want to.
- There are no changes to the API or SQL views
If you have any feedback or questions please let us know - send an email to support@projectworks.io and one of the team will get back to you pronto.
Project budgets
Monitoring the budget of a project is very important and should be front of mind for Project Managers. To help with that, we have elevated the importance of budgets with a page dedicated to the budget of your project. The budget screen is now the landing screen for people that have access to project details.
This first version of the screen focuses on the total budget for your project - a rollup of all project modules (or budget items). As well as letting you know the current state of your budget it also shows your predicted "at completion" position by using a combination of actuals (timesheet and invoices) and projections (resourcing and forecasting).
Tip: Flip the Projected effort and Projected revenue panels to see a breakdown of the numbers.
Refer to the project budget article for an explanation of the data and calculations.
Refer to the project budget article for an explanation of the data and calculations.
Project time entries
The Project time Entries screen has had a significant overhaul, with two very hotly requested changes being made. If you manage projects, this will surely be something you will appreciate.
You can now group and sort the data how you want it, and bulk move time entries to another time code if they have been entered against the wrong timecode.
Grouping and sorting
We recently added the ability to specify the date range that you wanted to see. Now you can decide how you want to group the time entries. The first time you visit the page the time entries will be grouped by date, but you can choose to group them by timecode, by person, by module and even by whether they have been invoiced. The data is now able to be sorted by clicking a column header.
Pro Tip: You can shift click to sort on multiple columns.
Bulk move time entries
Finally, you say... While you could previously move time entries around on peoples timesheet it needed to be done one at a time - and we know how painful that was. It is now possible to bulk move timesheet entries from the Project Time Entries page. At this stage you can only move time between timecodes and not move time to different dates.
- Only uninvoiced time entries can be moved (you won't be able to select a time entry that has been invoiced).
- Time entries can only be moved from active (not archived) projects, modules and timecodes.
- Time entries can only be moved to timecodes that are active and on active modules and projects.
- Archived projects won't appear in the timecode search
- Any date restrictions that apply on the destination timecode will be enforced.
Goodbye tasks, hello timecodes
There are no functional changes here, just an adjustment to the language to clarify what these are actually used for.
Weekly view of worked vs resourced within a project
While we currently do a really good job at showing the relationship between resourcing and revenue forecasts, the same can't be said about resourcing and worked. In this release we have started to address that by showing the number of hours resourced, worked and remaining within a project. These figures are shown on shown on every page within the project section. In a future release we will look to make this more prominent as well as a version for people to see how they are tracking against what they are booked to do.
Tip: The hours remaining are calculated per person and then summed up. If someone has worked more they they were resourced their remaining hours will be counted as zero.
Projected burn for the week/month is now tracked "real time"
The way that projected burn (worked to date plus future resourcing) is calculated has been improved. It is now being calculated more accurately as the "current week" is using using timesheets and resourcing to calculate the burn per person.
The forecast graphs have been updated with this as well with the current week showing a dotted line of worked (timesheet entries) and a dotted green line of resourcing. The predicted end of week burn value (the highest of worked or resourced) is used to predict the end of month projected burn.
Previously the projected burn was calculated as: Timesheets up to the end of the previous week + resourcing from the start of the current week
Short Term and Long Term Forecasts
The Forecasts section has been split into two screens, with a Short Term Forecasts and a Long Term Forecasts screen. These screens have slightly different structures, however you can use them both to view and update the revenue forecasts for all your projects from one page.
- Short Term Forecasts: Compare your forecasting with projected burn (worked and resourcing),
- Long Term Forecasts: A simplified page where you can quickly enter forecasts for up to 12 months.
New reports for 12 month forecasts
Visibility of future revenue forecasts has been improved with the addition of two new "12 month forecast" reports. The new reports show the monthly revenue forecasts (either by client or project) for the next 12 months. To see further into the future select a different starting month, with 12 months of forecasts shown from that date. The data from both reports can be exported to a CSV as well.
Date pickers
We're still not done with the date pickers - but we're getting closer. The new Date pickers have been rolled through a bunch more screens: Slowly but surely you can view data for the periods you want to
- Expenses: All Expense Claims by Office and All Expense Claims by Person
- Invoices: All Invoices and Ready Invoices
- Reports: Project forecasting, People Margin, Month End Billing, Month End Accruals, Month End Projected Burn
- Timesheet Log
The next release of date pickers will see options for week and financial year filtering.
API and SQL views
There have been no changes to the API or SQL views in this release.