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August's FAQs |
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See also: July 2003 FAQs June 2003 FAQs May 2003 FAQs April 2003 FAQs March 2003 FAQs February 2003 FAQs January 2003 FAQs December 2002 FAQs November 2002 FAQs October 2002 FAQs September 2002 FAQs August 2002 FAQs |
Below you'll find
the most commonly-asked questions about Clients &
Profits for August 2003. These questions are compiled
from telephone calls and e-mails sent to the Clients
& Profits Helpdesk.
Q. Where do I post an expense in Clients & Profits 5? A. In Clients & Profits 5.0, expense reports are no longer posted but are approved instead. To approve an expense report have the expense report on your screen and click approve button. Once the expense report is approved, the job ticket will be updated accordingly. To give a users the ability to approve expenses, choose Setup > Users, Access & Password, double-click on the user name, click on the Costs button, then edit the user's access privileges for expenses.  Q. Why would we use client retainers? A. Retainers are used to routinely bill clients for monthly service fees that are applied to the month's jobs. They are not billed to jobs, unlike job billings, so don't include a job number. Typically, a client gets an invoice at the beginning of the month for the agreed-upon retainer amount. Retainer invoices do not credit an income account, instead they credit a liability account that is used just for retainers. As jobs are billed throughout the month, payments are applied from the retainer balances. When the client's job invoices are printed, they will see each job's total billing less the payment applied from the retainer. Clients & Profits keeps track of the client's retainer balance from month to month. Q. What happens to job costs when they are written off? A. The cost's billing status is changed to "write-off" to indicate that it is neither unbillable, unbilled, or on-hold. Write-offs are summarized on Job Costs reports (see Snapshots) to track these unprofitable costs by client. Since job costs are debited to cost G/L accounts during posting, writing them off doesn't affect the General Ledger (i.e., because they already were accounted for on the income statement). Q. Where can I find a report that shows each staff member's total hours as well as their billed hours? A. The Staff Realization report will give you the total hours added as well as the billed hours for each staff member, subtotaled by Department. This report also gives the Staff Realization rate -- the percent billed hours of total hours. For "billed hours" to be shown on this report the hours must be part of the job ticket, then billed via an A/R invoice that bills costs (i.e., job billing or progress/final billing). To print the Staff Realization report choose Snapshots > Productivity then choose Staff Utilization from the menu. Enter in the date range, select the Staff Realization report option, then click Print. Q. Can I bill a change order separately? A. Yes, you can bill change orders on a separate invoice. Choose Accounting > Accounts Receivable and then Edit > Add New Invoice. Select Estimate Billing from the pop up menu. Enter 0% in the "Bill estimate" file and check the box to include change orders. The amounts estimated for the change order tasks will appear. Click to save and review the invoice before posting. Q. When I schedule a task, is there a place to add special instructions to the person doing the work? A. Sure! Each task has its own optional specifications that appear on schedule and work to do reports. From the Job Schedule window, select the task and click the Edit Task Specs button on the window's toolbar. The Task Specs window will pop-up, prompting you to enter the task's special instructions. The information that you enter here will appear in the Work To Do Reports and Weekly Task Planner. By the way, tasks that have special instructions/specifications are highlighted in the Job Schedule with a red "X" Q. How do we set up departments for our staff and how are they used? A. When adding a new staff member as a user, you can designate a department. This department can be named any name of your choice and you can assign as many users as you wish to this department. Be sure that each member of this department has the same department name entered into their staff file. You will now be able to produce all of your productivity reports by department along with Work To Do and Job Schedule reports in Snapshots. You will even find a great Department Task Checklist in Snapshots > Production > Schedules/Work To Do that pull from the job schedules. Q. Is there a way to prevent subtotals that appear on our printed estimates? A. Sure! If you do not want the subtotals to appear, simply highlight and double-click on each task in the job ticket. You can now delete the group designation for this task. Repeat this for each task. This will only affect this job's estimate. If you do not want to show subtotals on any estimate or invoice, remove the group number from the tasks in the Task Table. New jobs added with these tasks will not have the group number. You can update existing jobs that use these tasks by clicking on the "Update existing job tasks" check in the Task Table screen. Q. Is there a way that I can close many jobs at one time without having to go into each job? A. Yes. Choose Production > Daily Job Status Report. This report will allow you to edit the status of many jobs at one time. To change the status on jobs you wish to close, click into the column of the status code for that job and enter your code for closed jobs. Tab so that the description will change and remember to click "Save." These jobs will now be closed and the closed box will be marked. |
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