Workbench Release Notes

IN PROGRESS

Beta Release 4.6.13.1

Scheduled Release - 31 July 2023

New Features

Billing

• Surcharges and Discounts - Auto Apply:
  Discounts and Surcharges can now be configured to be auto-applied after creating Job Invoice Lines. A new field has been added on the Surchages and Discounts links screen, where each line can be ticked to indicate it should be aplied automatically. Once the invoice lines have been created, the applicable Discount/Surcharge lines will be created on save.
  
  Changes were made so Surcharges / Discounts are only applicable as follow:

  1. Job Sales Invoice Type = Invoice (not Claims)

  2. Invoice status must be either Entered or In Progress.
     

  

When is the Auto Apply discount/surcharge applied?

It is only applied after invoice lines have been created and saved.

Can I delete discount/surcharge lines created by Auto Apply functionality?

Not really. Once you delete these auto-created lines, the system will generate them again after saving. If the Discount/surcharge is not to be applied every time, then the Auto Apply should not be ticked, and it should be a manual process of applying the discount/surcharges when required.

The workaround to delete auto-applied lines is as follows:
1- Remove the Auto-Apply on the links of the Discount/Surcharge maintenance screen.
2- Open the Job Invoice, delete the surcharge lines and save.

Can I amend the invoice after the surcharge/discount has been applied?

Yes, you can. However, you need to delete the surcharge/discount lines that were applied to the original invoice lines' values. After changes are made to the invoice, the discount/surcharge can be applied again with the Apply Surcharges/Discount button, and it will be applied to the new invoice lines' amounts. In the case of the Auto-Apply, lines must be deleted and will be created again based on the updated invice lines’ values on save.

Service Desk

• Link a Budget Variation to a Service Log:
  To beter track the work that has been done for an Budget Approved Variation, there is a way now to link these Variation budgets to a Service Log.
  Approved Variation Budgets will be selectable from the Log, and a list of logs lined to the Budegt will be displayed on the budget itself (as a hyperlink).
  

  

  
  

Work Breakdown

• Activity creation:
  To streamline the activity creation, we have added an option to create a new activity based on an existing one, where the new activity will have all same details a sthe orginal one except Activity Codea nd Description.
  A new +From Activity button has been added for this.
  

  

Feature Revisions

Jobs

• Job Transactions - Dockets' suppliers:
  For better visibility of the Job transactions for Dockets, for display purposes only, the Supplier is now displayed on the Docket’s description field.
  Also when using a supplier name in the filters to find a Transaction type = Docket, it now returns results when it should.
  

  

Lists

• People extension column:
  We have made changes to the way standard extension columns are installed. On each upgrade, if extension columns already exists for the People table, extension columns will not be installed for this table.

Purchasing

• Voucher:

  • Approval Workflows - using the reassign functionality:
    When using the reassign button a second approval was required after the first approval, and this shouldn't be the case as there should always be one approval only (on the other hand, review steps can be multiple). This has been rectified.

• Purchase Orders:

  • Reassigning to the first person on the list:
    When using the reassig functionality, the PO caoul dnot be reassigned to the first person on the list, only any of the other users on the list. This has been rectified.

  • Workflow Dialog screen not opening:
    In some cases where the Purchase Order has more than one page of lines, and where a line on other pages has an Activity with an & character in it, the “WFlow | Msg“ button would not open. This has been rectified.

Subcontracts

• Subcontract Retentions - prevent negative retention releases:
  We have made chnages to stop users from releasing negative retentions from the SUbcontract Retention Management screen.
  The correct process to revert an incorrectly released retention is by creating a new SUbcontract Claim and adding manually a retention value.
  Subcontract Retention Management: When a negative retention value to be released is netered an error message will be displayed: ‘Retention release value must be a positive value. Use a subcontract claim to make a retention.’
  Sub contract Claim: A new validation has been added on the Retention release value, where it must be greater or equials to zero (not negative). An error message will be displayed otherwise: ‘Retention release value must be a positive value.’

Plant

• Plant redesign:
  Renamed the 'Vehicle Details' panel on the new Plant Main tab to just 'Details' as it may not always be a vehicle.

Expense Claims

• Service Log Number on an Expense Claim:
  Users can now create an Expense Claim and link it to a specific Log. A Log no can be linked to each line. A picker for not completed logs related to the Job on the Expense Claim line will assis users in finding the right log. Once the expense is created, the AP Invoice resulting from it will be linked to the right Service Log.
  

  

Billing

• Invoice Status on an Invoice:
  The label that dsplays the Invoice Status was removed by error and it has been added back.

Service Logs

• Service Log - Invoice button:
  After changes introduced in 4.6.12, where the Invoice button was only enabled if the new Log Charge Type fied was populated, we have made further changes as Clients have found it disruptive to their processes to require the log Charge Type to bill the log.
  New rules:

  1. The [Invoice] button is enabled irrespective of the Log Charge Type field being populated.

  2. Invoicing from Log: Invoice can be created from the Log even if the Charge Type is null and the Invoice will assume the Charge Type from the Job. After this, the Charge Type on the log will be populated with that from job (if it is null).

  3. Invoicing from the Job:

     1. If there is a Charge Type on the Log then the system will exclude transactions/outpust from Job Invoice.

     2. If no Charge Type on Log., the system will include in the Job Invoice.

Administration

• Workbench Licence Administrator user:
  For any sites migrating to the new self service Licence Portal, the system will by default assign the Workbench Licencing Amdinistrator Role to two existing users that have a System Admin licence (order alphabetically by name, the top 2 users).
  This will improve the migration process and reduce the manual steps required.
  The licence administrators will be displayed on Licence Matrix (Purchased Licences):
  

  

Integrations

Upvise

• REMINDER!
  New Upvise Intergration URL - Deprecation of OLD integration method 1st September 2023:
  Upvise has introduced a new Integration model available in "My Account"--> "Integration". 

  The key feature includes:

  • Unified Export URL for both archive and production database.

  • Designed for performance and scalability.

  • New Security architecture with new private API Token and secure storage of credentials.

  • Time Zone with DST support.

  • Logs & traceability of exports URLs.

  Any clients using deprecated URL links for reporting in SL or PowerBI will need to migrate over to using the new integration URL's- Please engage your consultant for guidance on this.

  The deprecated links will be removed from 1st September 2023.

• Daily Diary Integration Update:
  We are introducing a “Job” field on project daily diary subforms, where the user will record project time and job time on the same daily diary for the below transactions:

  i.Project Hours
  ii.Plant Issues
  iii.Stock Issues
  iv.Outputs
  v.Allowances
  vi.Dockets

  Where the Job is selected on the subform, the time will be recorded on both the service log and daysheet.