Category Archives: Tips & Tricks

How to exclude Abtrac from LastPass Autofill

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Password Managers are fantastic things when they do their job., They help you so you don’t have to remember hundreds of passwords. However when they try to be smarter than you have asked them to be it becomes very frustrating!

In Abtrac we have found more and more people are using LastPass (we use this also) but it has started to become a nuisance for people when it tries to fill information in the Grid search bars and also on some forms. Here is how to turn that feature off for Abtrac (and other sites if you wish).

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Cloning Tasks/Stages/Phases

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A Job/Project Task is the bit of the job you are working on – and can budget against. Sometimes they are called Stages or Phases.

What if I use the same tasks all the time?

When you set up Abtrac we recommend you create a non-billable client for your own company, and within that client you can setup some template jobs and assign the tasks which are structured with the details of the most common types of jobs you undertake.

Once you have template job and tasks created, each time you create a new client job you can choose to Copy Tasks from the template job to the new job.

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Cloning Jobs/Projects

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If you find that you work on the same types of jobs/projects and some of the information is the replicated from one job to another, then you can use the Clone Job/Project feature in AbtracOnline. This will simply duplicate the job and selected details and save the job to the existing jobs client.

You can setup template jobs/projects for the different types of work you do and then clone these jobs when you have a real job of the same type.

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Cloning Timesheets

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If you find that you work on the same clients and projects from one week to the next you can use a previous timesheet as a template and save some data entry time.

The clone feature will copy across the client, job, task, and activity but it will not copy the units or the comment.

Here’s how to clone all the clients, projects, and tasks from one week to the next.

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Non-Chargeable work – tracking administration and leave as jobs (projects)

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When you set up Abtrac, we recommend you create a non-billable client for your own company.
For this client, enter all the administrative and leave jobs(projects) that your staff may use, and any jobs that you would like to track time against.

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Abtrac Job/Project Templates

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Abtrac Job/Project Templates aka Proposals, Fee Estimates, and Mail Merge Documents allow you to create templates that contain information from Abtrac such as client, job/project and task details that can be intertwined with other information, such as your proposals or mail merge type documents.

How it works is you create the different report types that you use i.e. proposal, letter of engagement etc., and within those reports, you add different sections with the required information.

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Importing Disbursements

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Importing Creditor/Supplier Invoices, Bills etc. into AbtracOnline

AbtracOnline allows you to import disbursements via two methods.

 

If you are using MYOB Account Right or Xero the available API connections to these systems will allow you to import your disbursements with the click of a button.

If you don’t use MYOB or Xero, or if you want to import things such as PaperCut files, Linz Fees, Uber Receipts etc., then you can import your disbursements through a file-based import.

Either way,  with our import disbursement functionality you don’t have to spend hours re-keying information that you probably have available from other systems.

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Simple reports to get started with invoicing

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Getting started with your invoicing normally starts with a few reports to see who you are invoicing and for how much. This can then be checked with job (project) managers to confirm they are ready to invoice the clients and if they are happy with the amounts.

There are two basic reports that can get you going. Unbilled Work Quick Summary and Timesheet Entries.

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How to Archive data (make items non-current)

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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.

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How to create an Abtrac desktop Shortcut or Bookmark

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Here we will show you how to create an Abtrac shortcut on both your Windows and Apple Devices in multiple browsers. Click the links below to go to your preferred browser.

We will cover Google Chrome, FireFox and Safari. While you can use Abtrac on other web browsers these are the preferred options which have the best performance and reliability.

When creating a shortcut, you must create it from the login screen or the home page, otherwise you may land on an error page. 
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Using Work Items to Track Deliverables and Quality Assurance Standards

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Work Items are a list of things to do on a job. They are lower than tasks, (aka stages or phases). They are small steps of work that can be ‘ticked off’ as they are completed. If you already have a QA Check List of some sort for each job/project, then Abtrac Work Items are quite possibly the exact same concept. Examples of a work item might be a day-long site visit, or a 4 hour piece of work in the office to write a report. Each of these and more may all be under a task (aka stage or phase) of ‘Feasibility Planning’.

Most offices start the week and look ahead several weeks when sketching out work to be done and spreading it around the office for people to do. Using Abtrac work items, the benefit is that everyone knows what is being done and how long it is expected to take.

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