Workbench Release Notes

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.

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

💰👷‍♀️ 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.

We will update you via our blog and Release Notes as we progress. We estimate the work will be available for Beta testing in July. We take the opportunity to thank our clients that have kindly provided their feedback in this process.

General Release 4.6.7.2

Scheduled Release - 15 May 2023

Beta Release 4.6.7.1

Scheduled Release - 08 May 2023

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.

System Setup

• 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

• Unhandled error message:
  We have changed the error message on unhandled errors so it is less confusing for the end user.

  

• Page Parameters pop-up:
  

  

  
  On each Workbench screen, all users can access at any time the Page Parameters pop-up screen that displays:

  • 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

-The list icon next to the help icon on every popup screen:

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.

  1. Forms/Options/General

  2. Select "Keep a temporary of the submitted form PDF in API Store"

  3. Remove email from "PDF Archive Email"

  4. Remove "Keep a copy of the Archived Form PDF in Files app"