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Announcements:
🔐 Multifactor Authentication (MFA)
We are excited to announce that multifactor authentication (MFA) is now available for System Administrators to enable it on their Workbench instances.
This a secure way to manage logins, where Office 365 authentication is not available. We still recommend Office 365 (Azure) authentication as the most reliable way to secure your users loggin to the web application.
With MFA, you will have an added layer of security when accessing your Workbench account, making it even more difficult for unauthorized users to gain access.
Info |
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Important for System Administrators to note: Users must have an email address in their User details to be able to login for the first time after MFA has been enabled. |
To log in to Workbench when MFA is enabled users will require:
Login code
Password
One-Time Passcode
This Passcode can be either:
sent to each user’s email address from the Log-in screen in Workbench (Send new passcode) or
the user can grab a One-Time Passcode generated from their preferred authenticator app.
All you need to know is here
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💰👷♀️ New regulations for Construction companies on trust accounts in Australia and New Zealand
Workbench is pleased to announce that we are working with Construction industry experts to bring new functionality to enable our construction industry clients to comply with new regulations on trust accounts in Australia and New Zealand. This will allow head contractors to easily manage both project trust accounts (PTA) and retention trust accounts (RTA), as well as regularly provide retention balance reports to subcontractors.
Recent changes in Construction Acts in Australia and New Zealand require head contractors to hold retention funds on trust accounts to protect subcontractors' payment claim funds. Additionally, specific construction projects in Australia must hold project funds on trust accounts dedicated to that project. Managing these trust accounts can be time-consuming and complicated, leading to potential non-compliance and financial risks for head contractors.
To address this challenge, Workbench is designing new functionality that allows head contractors to specify the details of separate trust accounts for each construction project, as well as for each subcontract if required. Head contractors will be able to report regularly to subcontractors following a simple process. Reporting will include details of retention transaction history and retention balances, and provide them with the necessary trust account details for their peace of mind. Specific General Ledger accounts can be configured on each Trust Account to facilitate transaction reporting once the information is exported to the financial system. Appropriate reports will be available to facilitate auditors' work and be able to trace all the transactions in a Project.
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Workbench Release Notes
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Hotfix Release 4.6.8.4
Scheduled Release - 02 June 2023
Improved application startup performance for instances hosted in AWS.
General Release 4.6.
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8.2
Scheduled Release - 15 29 May 2023
Beta Release 4.6.
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8.1
Scheduled Release - 08 May 202322 May 2023
Announcement:
All users with a System Administrator licence will see a popup message reminding them to populate the Commercial and Admin Contacts. This popup will appear until the contacts have been populated
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New Features
Plant
Plant Enquiry enhancements:
The Financial Summary tab now has a new line under Revenue to display Recoveries figures values.
The Recoveries tab has a new section that displays a productivity summary by Plant Rate for a specific Financial Period. Month To Date and Year To Date figures are based on the Financial Period selected.
By default new databases will not display the following tabs: Summary, Documents, Revenue, and Month End (See setting 'Plant Enquiry Tabs' to hide/show tabs).
Feature Revisions
Dockets & Daysheets
Daysheets:
Plant Issues import:
A new data import for importing Plant Issues into a Daysheet has been created (wbImportDaysheetPlantIssues).
These Plant issues will be auto-batched on an auto-system batch, the same way as when entered manually from the Plant issues tab on a Daysheet—batch reference: Plant Issue Auto, Open status.
Saving attachments on a new daysheet:
When a Docket is created and files are attached to it before the docket has been saved (and a docket ID assigned to it), files were saved but not linked to this specific docket. This has been rectified and attachments are now linked as expected.
Purchasing
AP Invoices:
Enhancements to AP Invoice reconciliation:
Filters have been added to make the reconciliation of AP Invoice Lines and Dockets easier from the Reconcile pop-up screen on an AP Invoice. Users can now use a filter to include or exclude subjobs.
Subcontracts
Subcontract Claims - additional filtering criteria:
Users can now search for Subcontract Claims using these new filter criteria:Invoice No,
Received Date,
Batch No.
Insurances to be reviewed:
When there is an Insurance to be reviewed, the system sends an email notification to the Subcontract Administrator, or to the Job Manager if the latter is not set informing a new Insurance is ready to be reviewed.
This email template ("Notification - CompanyInsuranceReview") has been improved, and it now has a link to the relevant subcontract and the link to the Subcontract. It also has other parameters that can be added to the template.
Plant
Generating Plant depreciation:
In some cases, the depreciation was setting a negative Current Book Value when the Current Value was close to $0. This has been rectified, and when a plant value has been completely depreciated, it won’t go negative but $0.Plant assignment new reports:
There are 2 new reports that can be printed from a Plant assignment:Historical Hire Schedule which displays all plant including returned items.
Summary Hire Schedule, which shows the list of plant items which is currently assigned.
Enable deletion of plant assignment lines:
Plant assignment lines can now be deleted, as long as there are no plant issues recorded against them. (i.e. JobTransactions.SourceID = PlantAssignmentPlantLines.PlantAssignmentLineID and also matching on Job, Activity and Plant Item)
Quotes
New Multiple Cost sheets import:
For Quotes with At Cost Element Cost Sheets, the new import allows importing lines for multiple existing cost sheets, and also the creation of new ones. The import has two new columns:Cost Sheet Code
Cost Sheet Desc
With these columns populated, lines for multiple cost sheets can be imported in one go.
New Cost sheets are created if they do not exist, in which case the Price Code and Activity Group are inherited from the quote header.
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Reporting:
The following report stored procedures have been updated to support the new structured addresses [See Release notes on 4.6.6]Purchase Order reports:
wbPurchaseOrder001 (Purchase Order) now supports both address structures. Any custom reports based on this report will also support the new address structure (stored procedure change).
wbPurchaseOrder003 (Purchase Order Unpriced) now uses the same stored procedure as wbPurchaseOrder001 to support both address structures. Be advised that any custom reports based on 003 will need to be updated to use the new SP if the new company address structure is to be supported, so the PO delivery address displays correctly.
Service Log report:
wbLogMaintenance001 now supports both address structures.
Administration
Licence changes:
Added:Job Financials to Standard licence
Inwards Goods and Procurement List to Adv Procurement licence
Licence Matrix:
Each licence on the Purchased Licences tab on Licence Matrix now has a hyperlink to a report that displays what that licence actually includes. It displays a list of the site map items the specific licence enables.General Config - File Groups:
File groups on the attachments screen on all entities are now filtered by the entity defined on the File group. For example, a file group called Plant images will only be available for Job entities when uploading a file on the attachments on Plant Items, and file groups that are not relevant to this entity will not display, avoiding confusion.
General
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Unhandled error message:
We have changed the error message on unhandled errors so it is less confusing for the end user.
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Page Parameters pop-up:
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Permissions that could be applied to users to access different functionality on this screen.
Control parameters and Settings that may be considered by the system to enable/disable functionality on this screen,
Page Licences, which are one or more licences that a user must have to access this screen.
The Page Licences screen appeared empty for several of the Workbench screens, and this has now been fixed.
This pop-up screen displays information useful for Administrators or users that set up other users.
It can be accessed from:
-The menus accessed from the User’s profile at the top right
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Integrations
MYOB Advanced
MYOB Adv. V2: When exporting Journal transactions, Workbench now explicitly populates Posting Period.
This is to solve a period mismatch between Workbench batch and MYOB Advanced described in the scenario below:
Period A is closed
Transactions created in Workbench with dates within Period A
Transactions get put in Batch with Period A+1
Batch gets exported to MYOB Adv.
By default MYOB Adv. gives these transactions a Posting Period based on their date (Period A)
But, the period of the Batch in Workbench (A + 1) and the Posting Period of the transactions in MYOB Adv. (A) need to match.
Upvise
Update Subform Dates utility in the Daily diary has been updated to display the time in the correct format on the confirmation pop-up message.
Bug fix for Equipment PO forms to allow the Equipment Code to save as the workbench Job Code.
PDF imports from Upvise Jobs & Daysheets:
New functionality has been introduced to sync the PDF’s of Upvise forms to workbench as an attachment for service logs (Upvise Jobs) and daysheets (daily diaries).
To enable the PDF import, the below settings must be updated.Forms/Options/General
Select "Keep a temporary of the submitted form PDF in API Store"
Remove email from "PDF Archive Email"
Remove "Keep a copy of the Archived Form PDF in Files app"
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Expense Claims
New Claim Type - Credit Card expense:
Users can now capture expenses incurred using their Company’s Credit Card. These expenses will be non-reimbursable, and require a new Supplier company to be set up with the right AP Accounts linked to the Credit Card in the Financial System.
For now, this only works on Standard Approvals of Expense Claims. Further work is being done for Workflow approvals.How to configure it:
1- Users will now have two Expense Claim companies linked to their profile (Employee Details tab). One for Reimbursable Expense Claims and another one for Credit Card type of Claims.2- The option on the Expense Claim Type will depend on the companies set on the user. The drop-down may display none, one or both, depending on the corresponding expense company set on the user.
3- In Upvise, we now support both types of expenses as well: employee expense and Credit card expense types. To enable this both payment modes must be set up:Employee Reimbursement
Credit Cards
An Expense Claim from Upvise may include two different Payment methods, and when exported to Workbench these will be split into one expense Claim per Payment Method.
Feature Revisions
Jobs
Job Enquiry - Additional filters in the Orders tab:
Users can now search for a specific Purchase Order on the Orders tab using PO picker or the new filter Item Description to search for a specific PO line.Job template - Site address:
Deriving the Site address on a subjob template was not working as expected when using the new Address structure as determined by the control parameter “BETA FEATURE - Structured Addresses”. This has been rectified.
Purchasing
AP Vouchers:
Allow Reassign action to other steps on a Workflow approval:
The Reassign function previously only supported reassignment on either a Workflow Function or Named context. It has been enhanced to support Reassign for Workflow schemas defined using both WF Functions and Named.
Stock
Negative Stock in Daysheets and Service Log:
The "Allow Negative Qty Stock" CP determines whether stock on hand can go negative when entering stock issues. This validation has now been added when entering STock issues from a Service Log or a Datasheet.
Subcontracts
Work Order List - status:
The status of the Work Order on the Work Order list did not reflect the correct status when the approval process was Standard. This has been rectified.A new default filter for the Work Order list has been added:
Completed = No, to display only WOs that are still opened and being worked on.
Plant
Plant Meter Reading automatically clocking:
An issue where the plant meter was automatically clocking after entering a reading with the same value as the previous one was rectified.Plant extension Column Views:
To make it easier for users to create a new Plant Extension Columns Views, we have now added a picker for some of the criteria options, so the user does not need to know IDs for these criteria and simply chooses the right option from the picker. The example below shows a View using Plant Group, where the Plant group Dozers can be selected using the picker.
Pickers added:Plant Group Picker
Plant Class Picker
Owner Type
Carrying Units
Plant Pricing Group
Quotes
Sorting was not working properly on At Cost Element cost sheet formats. This has been rectified.
Datasheets
Scheduling Plant Item’s datasheets:
When using the Datasheet Scheduler to generate datasheets for Plant Items, the created datasheets were not linked to the Plant Item. This has been rectified.
Service Desk
Plant Log - populate Client when a Plant Job is selected as the Log Job:
When a new Service Log is created and the Job selected is a Plant Item, the Client is now populated with the Client on the plant item.Service agreement being removed from logs:
The service Agreement field was hidden from the screen when changing the Log status, but this is not correct and it has been amended.When Saving a finalised log the status was reverted to Completed. This has been rectified.
Log No now included as Reference in Get Sales:
The Log No is now included in the Reference field on Job Invoice Get Sales screen following this logic:if we are billing the job we show the log no and the first 20 characters of the log description.
if we are billing the specific log the Log Reference is not displayed, as it is assumed the transactions are from this log only.
Administration
Control parameters:
The description on Control Parameter Auto Receipt With ApInvoice has been updated to make it clear that this CP is only valid for legacy Stock mode.General Config - Email Templates:
The email template for Workflow - PR Reminder has been enhanced with new tokens:
General
Work Centre picker suggestion not filtered:
A recent change to trigger the Work Centre suggestions immediately had a side effect on the picker filtering and when the user uses the tab key to navigate through the different columns, that has been rectified.
Integrations
MYOB Advanced
Description change on Bills:
The description on all AP Invoices (Bills) and AP Credits (Debit Adj.) exported to MYOB Advanced has changed from: [Company Name] - Batch: [BatchNo] - [Invoice Details/Comments]
to: Web WB - Batch: [BatchNo] - [Invoice Details/Comments]
SAP B1
Enhanced AP invoice batch process:
The export process has been improved to handle the re-exporting of a batch that errored due to an invalid supplier in one of the AP Invoices, so it doesn’t error again after removing the invalid invoice from the batch.
Upvise
Workbench Site Contact Integration Update:
To ensure better data alignment, a recent update has been made to the Workbench Site Contact integration. This update enables the automatic synchronization and replacement of the Client contact field on the Upvise Project to accurately reflect the one-to-one relationship with the Workbench Site contact. To improve data consistency, instead of concatenating multiple contacts, the update focuses on finding and replacing the contact if any changes are made in WB. This approach ensures that the data remains more aligned and up-to-date.Assets - Columns Displayed:
A new control called "Columns Displayed" has been added to the Upvise Assets Module. It allows you to choose which columns to show in the Asset list. To access this feature, go to Assets, select Options, then go to Display and choose Custom Columns.
Notification issues fixed:
Upvise has successfully implemented a bug fix to address an issue that was previously hindering the delivery of notifications for submitted forms. Effective from 20/05/2023, notifications are now being sent in accordance with client's Upvise system settings.