Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

Workbench Release Notes

Expand
titleGeneral Release 4.7.3.3

Scheduled Release - 11 Nov 2024

  • Expense Claims:
    Fix workflow functionality in those cases where the workflow had multiple steps, and not only the Job Manager step for approval.

Expand
titleBeta Release 4.7.3.1

Scheduled Release - 04 Nov 2024

...

Upcoming Functionality & News

Info

Stock Reconciliation with Financials

Previous versions of the Stock Valuation report calculated the value of stock from the quantity and unit cost, based on the costing method (Period Average, Last, Standard).  While useful as an approximation, this almost never reconciled with the value of stock as recorded in the financials, and was a point of confusion.

A new Stock Valuation Reconciliation report will show the opening value, and the value of transactions recorded for the month, for each stock item to give a closing valuation.  As it includes the value of all stock transactions, all these transactions must also be exported to the financials. The total on this report will reconcile with the stock valuation on the financials, and so keep the accountants happy.

A second report, displaying similar information by batch will help you cross reference and troubleshoot if required.

This will probably be released in the new year.

Info

Plant Meter Redesign

A review of the Plant Meters tab is underway with the objective of providing improved usability and

maintenance. You can look forward to these enhancements in a future release.

Info

Contract Progress Claim Process - upcoming changes you need to know

The new Claiming process that records Certified values as well as Claimed values for Contract Claims is now ready and in beta phase with some clients.
This will be soon documented in detail so you can look into it and get your users ready to start using it.

image-20241022-060238.png

Info

New upcoming Webinar - Month End Processes and Monthly Management Accounts

Register here

Join Clive Gardner and Justin Gardner for an insightful webinar to enhance your financial reporting processes. We’ll guide you through aligning your Workbench Ledger with your General Ledger, ensuring that your senior management team receives accurate and meaningful reports essential for effective decision-making.

 20th November - Topics:

  • Workbench Mapping to the General Ledger

  • Visibility of Major Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

    • Job Profitability

    • Labour Productivity

    • Plant Utilisation

    • Profit & Loss format to reflect these KIPs

  • Month End Processes to ensure the integrity of the Management Reporting

    • Labour Recovery Journal

    • Plant Recovery Journal

    • Claim Accruals

    • Docket Accruals

    • Intercompany Charges

    • Work In Progress

    • Client and Subcontractor Retention Reconciliation

  • Receive Standard Sharperlight Dashboards for;

    • Job Profitability - Month, Year and Life to Date

    • Labour Productivity

    • Plant Utilisation

Info

Closed Jobs in Workbench to Auto-archive in Upvise

We are implementing an integration update where Workbench jobs with a status of CLOSED will be archived in Upvise. Currently, the integration automatically archives jobs only when they are finalised in Workbench. This change aims to address issues where closed jobs in Workbench prevent further job transactions, making them unavailable in Upvise.

...

Feature Revisions

Jobs

  • Contracts - Contract Payment Certificate

    Improvements to the Contract Payment Certificate reports:

    • The Total Qty To Date, Less Prev Qty, Qty This Claim columns had a Total at the bottom agregating different quantity units and did not make sense. The total at the bottom of this column have been removed.

      image-20241105-205117.png

    Reports:
    Detailed Payment Claim Certificate wbContractClaim005
    Detailed Payment Claim Certificate (Schedule) wbContractClaim017
    Detailed Payment Claim Certificate by Line Status wbContractClaim015

    image-20241022-000840.png

    • Signature section at the bottom of the Payment Claim Certificates:

      • The Claimed By and Date, are there to be completed manually, but as people now send a digital document, these are not used. These have been removed.

      • Approved By and Date. The Approved by is populated with the signature of the user approving the Contract Claim (internal approver, not the client that certified the claim).
        This has also been removed.

        image-20241022-230147.png

    Reports:
    Detailed Payment Claim Certificate wbContractClaim005
    Detailed Payment Claim Certificate (Schedule) wbContractClaim017
    Detailed Payment Claim Certificate by Line Status wbContractClaim015
    Payment Claim Certificate wbContractClaim003

Purchasing

  • AP Vouchers - Supplier picker:
    The supplier picker on the AP Credit Voucher has been amended to allow editing to cater for the instances where the credit voucher is created by Xtracta and the GST / ABN number is used across multiple supplier records, typically for supplier branches. Previously the first supplier record was automatically selected and not editable.

Plant

  • Displaying Custom Views - Main Tab or Extension Tab:
    We have made a change on where a user chooses to display the Plant Custom View, and this is to improve performance.
    A custom View can now either be displayed on the Main tab or on the Extension Columns tab.
    This improves loading time, and avoids confusion for users as they wonder if there is a different field and/or meaning due to showing on different tabs.

    The only 2 options on a Custom View new are:

    image-20241103-235230.png
    • Main tab

    • Extension Tab

The Both option has been removed. If Both was selected, it will display on the Main Tab.

  • Plant Maintenance Logs:
    A few tweaks to improve performance when loading the list of Maintenance Logs.

Resource Scheduling

  • 'Scheduling by Person' report:
    Changes have been made so that when the date filters Start and To Date are used, the scheduled people whose dates intersect or overlap the days in the filters are included in the report.

Month End

  • Provisional Contract Claim Accruals and WIP (Work In Progress):
    In 4.6.40 there was a fix for double counting of revenue when generating WIP, where there were provisional claim accruals. The provisional claim accruals should be excluded from the revenue calculation for WIP.
    However, we have identified that when the claim accrual batch is finalised, and the unapproved claim moved into the next period, the provisional flag was not being removed and these accruals stayed as provisional. This was preventing the accruals from being included in the WIP calculations. This has been fixed, and the process now works as expected.

    There is also a data fix to flag all old claim accruals, and any current ones which have been finalised (i.e. reversal created) as non-provisional.

  • Location on Export Control
    The Location of the batch has been added as a new column on Export Control, and as a filter. This will help users with knowing which batches to export.

    image-20241103-233535.png


    Additionally, a reminder that Locations can have a batch prefix number that can display on a batch number if configured on the Batch Prefix rules.

    image-20241111-035100.png


System Setup

  • Retention Types - tidy up:
    A few changes will be made in the next release to improve understanding of Retention Types. Nothing to worry about. They are aimed at making them easier to use and avoid confusion.

    image-20241106-015047.png

  1. Step by Percent (Schedule Type):

    • when selecting this one on a Retention Type, the current label Estimate Basis will change to Schedule Basis. This is just a fix.

    • Increased Costs, Other Costs, Recharges, and Contingency options will be removed from the Schedule Types, as these are not options for Schedule Types when creating a Contract Schedule. Only Original and Approved Variations are valid types, and these are the types that the Retention calculation includes when generating retentions on a Contract Claim.

      image-20241021-212712.png

  2. Subcontracts - valid retention types:
    Any Retention Types with the type Step by Percent (Schedule Type), will not be available as a selectable option on a Subcontract, as this is not a valid one, and if chosen Retentions are not calculated. This type is only valid for Contracts.

    image-20241021-213151.png

Administration

  • Data Imports - Activities:
    The Activity import has been updated to correctly handle Markup% values and to support the update of existing Activities based on Activity Code.
    The description has been updated to clarify what it does:
    ”Imports all types of Activities. This import can update/overwrite existing records if they already exist. If no matching record is found, it will insert a new record.”

...

Fixes & Technical changes

Expand
titledetails

Fixes:

  • Expense Claims - Reassign list shows duplicates. Fixed.

  • Forecast - Labour Resource: Incorrect Forecast Final Cost calculation when the Labour Resource Forecast exceeds Balance of Budget. Fixed.

  • Old Licences granting access to Purchasing reports:
    Users with a STandard licence, that still had the old licences assigned to them (in the background), had access to Purchasing reports when they shouldn’t have, as the Standard licence does not provide this. Fixed.

  • CostSheetSchedule Import - not working for Plant items:
    wbImportCostSheetScheduleLinesWeb has been fixed so Plant Items can be imported as Cost sheet lines.

  • Old wbImportCostSheetScheduleLines data import has had its description updated to "Cost Sheet Schedule Import Legacy"

  • Settings - Upvise Purchase Order Numbers person picker:
    When assigning a PO number range in the Settings screen using setting Upvise Purchase Order Numbers, if the person does not have a login code assigned to them in the User screen, the person did not appear in the Person list. This has been fixed and the picker now includes people with the Upvise User Only flag.

  • Daily Diary- optimisations
    We have applied optimisations to the daily diary form to improve performance and reduce latency, especially for sites that record large numbers of plant issues within a single Daily Diary form.

  • Timesheets entered via Upvise Timesheets app:

    We have resolved an issue where timesheets entered through the Upvise Timesheets app (with no form) displayed incorrect start and end times when syncing back to Workbench due to an incorrect timezone offset. This occasionally caused transactions to shift one hour backward. With this fix, timesheet data will now accurately reflect the correct times, ensuring seamless integration with Workbench.

...

Upvise

Project Filter in Files app

A new column filter has been added in the files application in upvise to allow users to filter files linked to a project.

...

...

Things we are busy working on...

🗓️ Contract Claims: record claimed and certified values on each Claim (like in Subcontract Claims). New approval process on Contract Claims to resemble the certification process.

...