The purpose of this functionality is to categorise the reasons for write offs and write ons, and therefore more easily report on them. The starting point is putting together a list of valid reasons.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Maintenance
How to Archive data (make items non-current)
How does making items non-current help you
Simple, fewer pieces of information to load means you will have a faster system.
Screens such as the searches, timesheet entries, invoices, and some reports all load with the current data that is available in the system, so it’s pretty straightforward to think that making items non-current will give you a quicker response for all these pages.
Invoice Status
With AbtracOnline, you can assign a different status to an invoice, so your team knows where you are up to with its creation. Examples of these statuses can be Draft, Returned for Edits, Approved, Committed.
This is helpful when there is a team of people creating an invoice, but one final person signing off on the contents of the invoice.
Tasks or Activities, Which should I use?
One Frequently asked question from new Abtrac users is whether to use Tasks or Activities in their timesheets.
Here’s the difference between the two: Tasks are Quantitative, Activities are not.
Tasks are where you enter the budget for the job.
Tasks are also sometimes called Stages or Phases.
They should be exactly the same as budget items on the fee agreement you document to the client.
You give each task an estimate of both time and fees, and then analyse them later using reports such as Actual vs Budget by Task, or Invoice Preparation Information Report. These reports compare your proposed amounts, time spent, and amount invoiced.
You can learn from them over time to see how good staff are in getting through work allotted to them as well as how good you are in your estimates. If necessary you can modify your thinking and estimating to more correctly budget the next job based on what you’ve learnt from previous jobs.
Examples of Tasks (depending on your line of work): Concept Design, Feasibility Study, Developed Design, Media Monitoring
Activities are not Quantitative.
If Tasks are the bits of the job you’re working on, Activities are what you’re doing on each bit.
Really activities are to save you typing the same comments over and over again.
There are limited reports based on activities other than those used when reviewing timesheet entries and preparing descriptions for invoice lines.
Activities are generic across all jobs whereas tasks and the values associated with them are very much specific to a particular job, especially when there are variations and extras on a job by job basis.
Examples of Activities (again depending on your line of work): Office Work, Travel, Research, Meetings, Site Visit
Invoices and Payments
In AbtracOnLine invoice payments and outstanding accounts can be managed independently from your accounting software with our optional Debtor Management module.
You can record invoice payments, account for write-offs and adjustments, and report on your debtors from this add-on module.
Back to basics – Job/Project Status
Abtrac’s Job/Project Management suite has plenty of fields available to build a detailed, real-time analysis of your job/project progress and profitability. It is something that sets us apart from our competitors.
But before you get carried away with Milestones, Scheduling, Tasks and Budgets…spare some time for the humble Job/Project Status.
It crops up in quite a few reports, and you’ll probably find it pretty handy.
Keep it simple when using job status, between 3 – 6 options are usually plenty. Something basic like “Not Confirmed, In Progress, Started, On Hold, Completed” is often useful. Rather than micro-managing the status; you can add more detail in the Tasks(Stages) screen if needed.
Teams or Departments, Which should I use?
In Abtrac both Employees, and Projects can be assigned to a specific Team or Department for reporting purposes. The main difference is…
- A Team is assigned to an Office, and as such can be filtered in reports by office.
- A Department is a stand-alone group that both employees and projects from multiple offices can belong to.
Both groups can be created and maintained from the Administration screens.
Disbursement Types
Disbursements are categorised and reported on in Abtrac by disbursement type.
From Administration >> Maintenance >> Disbursement, you can maintain a list of disbursement types and groups, and define the system settings for tax, reporting and employee reimbursements.
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