Workbench Release Notes

General Release 4.6.13.4

Scheduled Release - 07 August 2023

Licence changes:

• Job Costing Licence now includes Leave Administration & Job Adjustment Entry.

• Standard licence now includes Leave Administration.

Hotfix Release 4.6.13.3

Scheduled Release - 03 August 2023

Advanced procurement fix.

Beta Release 4.6.13.1

Scheduled Release - 31 July 2023

New Features

Stock

• Assigning a physical location to a Stock Location:
  A Stock location can now have a physical location added to it. This allows users to track the current location of items stored within stock locations, such as containers holding spare parts.
  The locations for selection are the same as the locations used on Plant Locations.
  
  

  Open

  

Expense Claims

• Several enhancements to the Expense module:
  Regardless of the approval method, Standard or workflow, mobile expense claims and desktop expense claims now offer the same functionality.

  • Mobile Expense Claims:

    • can now be used with workflow approvals.

    • Claim type can now be selected in a mobile Expense.

  • Expense Claims - using Workflow approvals:

    • An Admin can now create an Expense on behalf of an employee and submit it. Email notifications for when an Expense has been approved will be sent to the employee, rather than the Admin submitting the Expense.

    • All Expense Claims screens have been improved so when users are ready to submit they can use the [Submit] button without having to Complete it first. The system will tick the Complete check box on submit automatically. This makes the process more intuitive and has one less required step

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 Surcharges and Discounts links screen, where each line can be ticked to indicate it should be applied 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 follows:

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

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

  Open

  

  Auto Apply

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 them. 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 must 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 invoice lines’ values on save.

Service Desk

• Link a Budget Variation to a Service Log:
  To better track the work that has been done for a 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 linked to the budget will be displayed on the budget itself (as a hyperlink).
  
  

• Link a Daysheet transaction to a Service Log:
  Logs related to the job on the Daysheet can now be linked to the specific transactions entered on Dockets, Timesheets, Plant, Outputs and Stock tabs.
  A Site Manager can record all the work being done for the day on the different Logs directly from the Daysheet.
  
  

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 the same details as the original one except the Activity Code and 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 exist 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 reassign functionality, the PO cannot be reassigned to the first person on the list, only to 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 changes 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 entered an error message will be displayed: ‘Retention release value must be a positive value. Use a subcontract claim to make a retention.’
  Subcontract Claim: A new validation has been added to the Retention release value, where it must be greater or equal to zero (not negative). An error message will be displayed otherwise: ‘Retention release value must be a positive value.’

Plant

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

• Job Groups tab has been added to Plant Items (and it works the same way as with Jobs).

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 assist 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 displays the Invoice Status was removed by error and it has been added back.

• Receipts for negative Job Invoices or Claims:
  Receipts for negative Job invoices/Contract Claims were not populating either Local currency or FC values and incorrectly calculated Foreign Currency Invoice Balance resulting in a discrepancy in the Job Invoices Screen.

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 field 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 the 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/outputs from Job Invoice.

     2. If no Charge Type on the Log, the system will include it 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 Administrator 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 the Licence Matrix (Purchased Licences):
  
  

• Advanced Timesheet Licence:
  Mobile POs and Mobile Expense Claims are now part of the Advanced Timesheet licence.

Integrations

Upvise

• REMINDER!
  New Upvise Integration 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 export URLs.

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

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

• Leave Application

  • An update has been made to the Leave Application form where if the "Number of Days" or "Number of Hours" field has NULL value, the "Total days (*)" will now record only numeric values instead of "NaN". Where “NaN” was being recorded, leave request imports to workbench were failing. Clients wanting to receive this update should engage workbench support.

• Purchase Orders

  • An update has been made to allow the Project and Sub-Project fields to be hidden when the form is linked to a project. Clients wanting to receive this enhancement should engage workbench support.

• Expense Claims

  • Paid date:
    When Expense claims are paid in financial systems, WOrkbench now populates the date and time the payment is brought accross to Workbench to facilitate (ExpenseClaims.UpdatedDate) the syncing to Upvise.