Workbench Release Notes

General Release 4.5.

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34.

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3

Scheduled Release - 18 July 01 August 2022

Hotfix Release 4.5.

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34.

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2

Scheduled Release - 14 28 July 2022

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Business Central:

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Fix to handle importing large number of Job Receipts

Beta Release 4.5.

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34.

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1

Scheduled Release - 11 25 July 2022

New Features

Timesheets

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Expense Claims

• Workflow approvals:
  A new licence has been created called 'Mobile Timesheet Adv', which grants users access to the specific Mobile Timesheets Adv screen which includes Stock and Plant issue creation from each timesheet line.

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The existing Timesheet licence will from this version onward, only grant access to the Mobile Timesheet screens without access to Stock or Plant issues screens.

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• method of approvals has been added to Expense Claims. Workflow approvals can now be used instead of using approvals based on Timesheet Group Authorities. This is enabled by Control Parameter Expense Claim Approval Process = Workflow.
  
  Key aspects to it:

  • Reviewers and approvers are defined within the Workflow Schema. An Expense claim assigned for review or approval will show in My Approvals screen.

  • An Expense Claim must be marked as Complete by the claimant (with the check box) for the Submit button to appear. The user can then select Reviewer/Approver where available.

  • Claimant can uncomplete an EC if it has not been submitted yet, and amend or attach files.

  • The current Workflow assignee with permission “Expense Claim Admin Review/Approval“ can edit an Expense Claim.

  • ‘Expense Approvals' screen becomes unavailable when using workflow approvals. 'Expense Administrator’ screen will still be available for Admins where they can manually flag an EC as Paid.

Feature Revisions

Jobs

• Job Maintenance Contract - Site AddressBonds:
  Site address on Addresses tab was not being updated after selecting an address from the Address picker. This A display issue where the Bond name was not displaying on the list of Contract Bonds has been rectified.

• Budget import:
  Budget Lines At Revenue and Cost Element import was incorrectly populating the Retail (LC Retail) value as a Rate value (FC Retail was correct). This has been rectified.

• Jobs - Contract:
  Claims tab default filter has been changed to Jobs = no specific Job value, so the user can select if further filtering is required.
  

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Dockets and Daysheets

Daysheets:
An invalid error when saving a copied Daysheet was showing up. This has been rectified.

Purchasing

• Purchase Requisitions:
  Profit Centre security at Job level has been applied on Purchase Requisition creation and Purchase Requisition List.This will enable users that have very limited Job access (no PCs on their PC Group, but only Jobs on the Jobs tab) to see these Jobs and create PRs.
  

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Purchase Orders:

PO Line details pop up screen enhanced:

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Attachments on Mobile Purchase Orders:
Attachments on Mobile POs can now be included when sending the PO by email to a supplier, by ticking the 'Include All Attachments' checkbox.

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• Communication within subcontract Claim workflow:
  The 'Go To discussion comment' link on emails generated from messages in a workflow approval

Dockets and Daysheets

Daysheets:

• Changing Daysheet Date changes Job Transactions Date:
  When changing a Daysheet Date, the date on Job Transactions in that Daysheet will also be updated to the new Daysheet date.

Purchasing

• Catalogue Maintenance:
  A new option on Grid Management has been added to manage columns on Catalogue Lines. The three recently added columns, Group, Category, Sub-Category, are now set as hidden by default. These options are mainly used for large catalogues to make maintenance easier. If needed they can be made visible through the new grid on Grid Management: Catalogue Lines.

Subcontracts

• Subcontract Claim:

  • Payment Due Date:
    Payment Due Date on a subclaim was displaying a calculated default date, rather than displaying the date that was saved on the claim. This was only a display issue, the date was always saved in the background when edited. This has been rectified.

  • Orphan Claimed value:
    When a Subcontract Claim Line that was initially certified and subsequently uncertified (removed from the Claim), the actual Job Transaction was not being deleted leaving a Cost on the Job. This has been rectified and the Job transaction linked to a subcontract claim line is deleted when the line is uncertified.

Plant

• Plant Issues:

  • Bulk Plant Assignment process to allow bulk plant issues against more than 1 plant assignment at a time, has been re-engineered for better performance in those cases where a large number of Approved Plant Assignments exist.

• Plant Assignments enhancements:

  • End Date is not mandatory anymore on Plant Assignments. This mitigates the risk of setting an End Date and forgetting about it.
    

  • On plant assignment screen if you edit and click ‘Save & Close’ it prompts to save, this unnecessary extra step has been removed.
    

  • Bulk Stand Down for all active Plant Assignments:
    When the Plant Assignment on the Stand Down Main tab is left blank, all valid Plant Assignment Lines from all active Plant Assignments will display on the Lines tab. This allows a user to stand down assignments in bulk, without having to create one Stand Down per Plant Assignment.
    

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  • On the Bulk Plant issue process, a warning has been added if the period entered is more than a month. This is in case someone enters a date in the future by mistake.
    

  • In order to manage large volumes of active assignments, when finalising a Job, this will automatically set the Assignment status to Closed. When a Job’s Finalised Date is set, this will trigger the validation of any existing active assignment lines (where the End Date is blank or is after the finalised date entered on the job) and display an error if any exist.

Timesheets

• EBA Mode:
  EBA Mode control parameter value was cached until the application was restarted. This has been changed so the change takes effect as soon as the EBA mode is updated.

• EBA Tags on Jobs and Employees:
  The selection of EBA tags on Jobs and Employees has been increased to display up to 20 tags matching the text typed by the user, Tags are now displayed in alphabetical order.
  

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• EBA Additional Profiles:
  The rules to convert excess hours on ‘Time and Half' Group into 'Double Time’ were not working. This has been rectified.

Timesheets

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Billing

• Revenue Forecast enhancements:Delete option was not deleting all the Payroll transactions (only the first person’s ones). This has been rectified and all Payroll transactions matching the filter criteria are deleted with the Delete button.

• Job Manager Approval:
  Reverted change done on previous release [here].
  Both weekly and daily views now show stand-alone plant issues, additionally to plant issues entered from Timesheets.

Billing

• Job Invoices - "Open book" contract arrangements:
  On Input Based job invoices, the option ‘Attach Supplier Invoices' that is used on 'Open Book’ type of arrangements, AP Credit PDFs are now being included in the .zip file together with all the AP Invoice PDFs for the transactions being billed. Note that PDFs for Written Off transactions will not be included in the zip file.

• Credit Notes - currency symbol:
  On Credit Notes, the Apply Credit field was showing a list of possible Job Invoices the credit could be applied to and their amounts with a $ (dollar symbol). This has been removed, as it confusing for clients with local currencies like EUR, GBP, etc.

Quotes

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• Inherit Revenue (this is the default value): Work Centre is set on a Revenue line, and its Cost Lines will inherit Work Centre from it.

  • Job Work Centres: When creating a budget all WCs on Revenue lines will become Job Work Centres.
    Any JWCs from a Job template will also be added when creating a Job.
    

• Activity Group Default: The Work Centre on the Revenue and Cost lines will default from Activity Group defaults.

  • This scenario is more common on a manufacturing type of job, where Work Centre and Activity are not relevant on Revenue Lines when estimating this work .Generic Work Centres like Labour, Materials and Subcontracts are used in the Budget to understand the Cost structure available to complete the job.

  • For this reason, it is suggested that Work Centre and Activity columns are hidden from the Revenue lines screen using Grid Management (Cost Sheet Revenue Lines). If hidden, the Activity Code and Work Centres will be populated with default values, as they will be later required when creating a Budget. Activity will be populated with the Activity defined in Control Parameter [Quote default Activity code], and the Work Centre will be the default Work Centre from that Activity.

  • Work Centre column can be hidden from the Cost lines screen using Grid Management as well (Cost Sheet Revenue Popup Lines).

  • Job Work Centres: When creating a budget no JWC will be added.
    Any JWCs from a Job template will be added when creating a Job.
    

• Default WC on BOMs items: Work Centre on these BOM items will follow same rules as the other Cost Lines, based on the new setting.

Service Desk

• Service Log - Outputs:
  [Generate Output] process on Logs Outputs tab has now a different functionality to the [Generate Outputs] on Job Outptuts screen.
  This process on a Log will create Output lines for all schedule items on any Output Schedules on the Log Job flagged as Standard. This is a new flag on the Output Schedule. Check online help for more details.
  

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Month End

• Adjustments: Columns on Adjustments screen were not sorting properly. This has been rectified.

Integration

Business Central

• Handle Payments for multiple invoices:
  The integration with Business Central now handles import of one Payment for multiple AP Invoices.

• Payment Terms:
  Payment terms mapping from BC to Workbench has been changed to accommodate to BC's specific Payment due date calculations.

  It has changed from using the Business Central PaymentTermType Code to using Business Central Payment Due Calculation.
  

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MYOB AccountRight:

New setting created to enable/disable checking of existing invoices with the same supplier and number when posting AP Invoices: MYOB No AP Invoice Number Checking

Upvise

• Email change:
  When the email address of a user is changed in Workbench, this change now updates Upvise user’s email address too.

• Upvise Owner → Workbench person:
  For integrations that use the Upvise Owner field synced to a Workbench person, the matching now prioritises a person being Active and in the same Fin Co that Upvise is syncing on

  • Account Manager option has been added as a filter.

  • Create Tile option has been added to the [Apply filter] button, which will create a shortcut tile on the Main dashboard with the filters selected.

  • Variance column values now show in red when the value is different to zero. The To Spread column does not show in red anymore.

  • When hiding Type column in Grid management, the Totals row at the bottom used to disappeared. This has been rectified.

• GST on Manual AR Invoice lines:
  GST type is now a mandatory field on AR Invoice Manual lines. Previously it was not enforced which incorrectly allowed invoices to be exported with no GST type.

• Input/Output Get Sales Markup Summary:
  On the Summary tab of Get Sales, a new summary by Activity type is displayed. This is for Jobs with an Input based or Output base charge type (or both). Activity types will be grouped by: Time, Purchase, Stock, Plant, and Other (which groups any other Activity types). It displays an analysis of the transactions invoiced on the current invoice including Cost, Markup, Invoice Value, Markup %.
  The purpose of it is to assist anyone reviewing or approving this Invoice, understand what’s being charged.
  

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Quotes

• Labour Costing on Revenue & Cost Element and Cost Element Cost Sheets:

  • Cost Rate, Total Cost, Markup %, Margin % are now re-calculated once the Activity Code has been selected. The combination of Employee Class, Activity, and Time Code affects the Cost values, and because the Activity is the last field selected, the fields listed before have to be recalculated.
    

  • When a Time Code (Applied Rate) is selected, the list of Activity Codes available for selection is now limited to valid activities for the Time Code.
    

  • The re-Pricing routine is now executed when the Activity Code is selected because there could be rules on the Price code that involve this specific Activity Code, and the Selling rate, Total Sell and Margin % can change based on this selection.
    Example: Employee Class is selected first, and Sell Rate and Total Sell will default from it, but values/ rules can change further when the Time Code and Activity Code are selected.

• Extension columns on a Quote:
  The name of Extension columns that were the same as existing Quote fields were not displaying on the Extension Columns tab. This has been rectified.

Month End

• Timesheet batches:
  When historical Timesheet batches are printed and jobs have subsequently changed FinCos, the inter-co GL posting were not being calculated correctly. This has been rectified.

Work Breakdown

• Cost Categories Sequence:
  Job Categories now have a Sequence number to control the order Cost Categories display on the different screens.

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System Setup

Reporting - Reports:

• The 'Export to Excel' option on SSRS reports now downloads a file with a .xlsx extension.

Email attachments using Office 365 authentication:

• Re-engineered the Office 365 integration to cater for larger file attachments on emails. Maximum total attachments size suggested is 20 MBs per email.
  O365 will allow you to send a larger size attachment, but the destination server will probably reject it as the majority SMTP servers reject attachments larger than 20 MBs.

Administration

• User setup - Licences:
  When assigning a Licence to a User from Application Access tab, now only purchased and unassigned licences will be available for selection. This is to avoid assigning licences that the site does not have available which causes an error when saving. One less headache when setting up new users.

Integration

Business Central

• Job Receipts and Credit memos:
  When importing Job Receipts, Customer Ledger Entries are excluded when the document type is Credit Memo.