4.6.23 - 21 Jan 2024

Owned by Maria Harreguy
Last updated: Jan 22, 2024
15 min read

Workbench Release Notes

Happy New Year!

Scheduled Release - 21 January 2024

Sharperlight - Workbench Data Model Release

2.5.2 - 11 Dec 2023

Scheduled Release - 16 January 2024

New Features

 

Jobs

Contracts - Project Trust Accounts

For those clients in Queensland, Australia with specific construction projects that must hold project funds on trust accounts dedicated to that project, to comply with QBCC new regulations, we are now releasing the first stage of the new functionality that will simplify the management, reporting, and compliance for Project Trust Accounts (PTA). Support for managing Subcontract Retention Trust Accounts (RTA) was released in September 2023 and can be used in conjuction with this new functionality.

Stage 1 - Jan 2024:

  • Support the creation of PTAs and assign them to projects.

  • Display PTA details on Contract Claims.

  • Eligible Costs: Identify a list of Activities for Costs that are eligible to be paid with funds from the PTA.
    A new report that will display what Claims and AP Invoices can be paid from what PTA, based on that list of eligible costs.


Stage 2 - March 2024:

  • View of Trust account transactions from a Contract.

  • Trust Account Ledger report.

  • Update of Financial integration using APIs to bring across to Workbench the Cash accounts for Payments and Receipts, to verify if these transactions have been done from/to the PTA on the Job. We will start with MYOB Advanced and Xero. Let us know if you use another Financial System and you intend to use PTAs.

  • Ability to indicate when a PTA Top-up has been done, a withdrawal of funds from PTA, transfer of retention funds from PTA to Retention Trust Account (RTA).

  • Utility to automatically send payment notifications to subcontractors, and notifications when retention money has been transferred from PTA to RTA.

Stage 3 - date to be defined and dependent on the Trust Account Ledger functionality:

  • Further reports required by QBCC (Queensland Building and Construction Commission): Record of deposits and withdrawals, Trial Balance report.

  • Any changes or enhancements based on feedback from our clients.


How to manage Project Trust Accounts in Workbench:

  1. Setup Project Trust Accounts

    1. Enable with Control Parameter: BETA FEATURE - Contract Project Trust Account = Yes

    2. A Contract can have a PTA assigned to it. A new PTA can be created from the same place where Subcontract Retention Trust Accounts are created: Trust Accounts menu.

    3. A PTA will have

      1. a Code to identify it internally,

      2. a name

      3. a description including:
        Financial institution - Bank account name - BSB number - Account number

      4. GL Account for this Cash account in the financial system. This is a memorandum only and will be used to reconcile the Receipts and payments coming from the Financial system. The system will be able to identify if any Payments or Receipts did not use the PTA account by comparing the Receipt/Payment Cash account used vs the GL account on the GL Account on the Trust Account in Workbench.

        image-20240115-035313.png
        Trust Accounts Mngt. screen



    4. Once the PTA has been created for a specific Job, it can be assigned to the Contract, from the Contract Tab:

       

       

  2. PTA on Contract Claims
    The Contract Claim now displays the PTA assigned to the Contract on the Job in the Details section. This will be locked once the Contract Claim is approved. For backwards compatibility, any past Claims created before a PTA was added to the Job, will not display a PTA, as it did not have a PTA when the Claim was approved.



  3. Contract Claim reports
    New footer setting: Report AR Invoice Project Trust Acc Footer
    The PTA on a Claim will be reflected on the footer of a Contract Claim report and also on one of the Job Invoice reports (for a Finalised Claim) for your clients’s reference:

    1. Reports supported:
      Detailed Payment Claim Certificate by Line Status (wbContractClaim015)
      Payment Claim Certificate (wbContractClaim003)
      Payment Claim Invoice (wbARInvoice006)

      If a PTA is populated in the Contract, the settings used for the Contract Claim footer and Job Sales Invoice footer (these settings usually show a generic bank account) will be ignored, and instead the new setting ‘Report AR Invoice Project Trust Acc Footer’ will be used. A token can be used to reference the PTA Trust Account Details on the PTA for the specific Job the Claim or Invoice is being printed.
      Token: $InvoicePTA
      Example:



  4. You can find Jobs that have a PTA set with the new filter on Jobs lits: Has Project Trust Account:

     

  5. Eligible Costs
    To assist Accounts Payable teams in identifying which costs can be paid from a PTA, a new report will display a list of Subcontract Claims and AP Invoices that are eligible to be paid with Project Trust Account funds. This report will include unpaid subcontract Claims (all subcontract claims are eligible costs) and also any AP Invoices that have at least one cost line with an eligible cost activity.
    The list of eligible activity codes can be set by opening the PTA Eligible Cost Activities link on the Trust Accounts screen. This will open an Activity group created by the system and used for the sole purpose of identifying activities that are valid for PTA Costs. This Activity Group PTACOSTS is not used for any other purpose:

 

 

 

Purchasing

  • History of Purchase Orders:
    In the next release there will be a new button on the Purchase Order screen called More. This groups a few less frequently used actions like Editing report Text & the new History screen.

    History will show a list of events that happened on the PO like where was this PO created (Procurement List, a Service Log, a Plant Log, manually created, Purchase Requisition), changes to the Supplier and total PO amount, approvals, when the PO is emailed out and the emails it is sent to, the person and date the PO is completed, uncompleted, and unapproved.

     

 

 

Enhanced use of Bill of Materials (BOMs) in Quotes and Job Budgets

Using Bills of Materials (BOMs) on Quotes and Budgets can speed up the process of quoting and budgeting. However, some of our clients found sometimes that they had to manually update rates on lines every time they added a BOM because the rates on the BOMs were out of date.

These enhancements solve that challenge and more. Only apply to Revenue & Cost Element format.

  • New on BOMs:

    • The Fixed flag on the BOM lines now comes across to the Quote lines and is used by the system to decide whether to update Cost values and quantity on each BOM line.

    • The $ values on the BOM line can be unpopulated ($0 - see screenshot above), and this will indicate to the system that whenever a BOM is added to a Quote Costsheet or a Budget, the system will source the current rates from the activity or Stock item or employee class rates or Plant item rate, instead of using the value from the BOM. This ensures the correct up-to-date rates every time.

  • New on Quote & Budget:

    • If the line is Fixed, changes to the Revenue Line Quantity will not change the fixed line quantity. Also if the line is Fixed the rates used for that line will come from the BOM line.

    • When the Revenue line’s quantity is changed, ALL the Cost lines that resulted from the BOM will be updated to reflect the quantity change. Even if manual lines were added to the Cost lines, these would also reflect the change in the Revenue line quantity. Fixed lines, however, will not change, they will keep the values derived from the BOM.
      When a Revenue line quantity is changed, the cost lines' quantity will also change with the same ratio of the Revenue line change. Example: If I start with a Revenue line quantity of 2 and I add 1 BOM, the quantities on the Cost lines are assumed to be for a Revenue line quantity of 2. If I increase the Revenue line from the initial quantity of 2 to 3, that is a %50 increase, and so the Cost lines' quantity will increase by a %50.

    • Updates on the line rates will also be reflected in the Revenue line, as per previous functionality.

    • Manual lines can also be flagged as Fixed, so any quantity changes on the Revenue lines will not affect the manual line quantity.

  • New on Budget:

    • A quantity field to select the BOM quantity to be added. Also supporting the Qty for BOM on the Cost Element input format.

    • An option to add a BOM as a Revenue line and its cost lines with the new star [ * ] icon.

    • or the option to select an existing revenue line and add the BOM lines with the plus [ + ] icon



Feature Revisions

Jobs

  • Budgets

    • PO Line budget remaining:
      For a Budget to be included in the Budget remaining and Total budget calculations in the PO Line budget details, the Budget had to be approved. We have changed the rules so now the Budget is included in the calculation regardless of its approval status (it still requires a Budget type to be ‘In Forecast’).

  • Contracts:

    • Claim Schedule - manual ordering enforces level limit:
      The maximum number of levels allowed in a Claim Schedule is 3 (Parent / Child / Grandchild). We've enhanced the screen and an import procedure to be consistent with that maximum.

Purchasing

  • Job Procurement

    • Error when no Supplier has been selected:
      On Job Procurement, Procurement tab, when procuring a line with a Code in it (stock item) and no supplier has been specified, an informative error message now comes up, so the user can fix the line and try purchasing again.

       

  • Vouchers & AP Invoice

    • Remove control of Receipted columns in PO Lines tabs by control parameter:
      Control Parameter "Confirm POs Default Receipted" value determined if the Receipted columns in the PO Lines tab of a Voucher and AP Invoices (Get Order Lines columns) would be displayed or not. This has been changed, and a user can decide what columns to show or hide just by using Grid Management, rather than a combination of Grid Management and the Control Parameter value, as this was confusing.

  • AP Voucher

    • Improved error messages on Voucher approvals:
      Added more detailed error response for common exceptions when approving a voucher: No system batch can be generated, No invoice number can be generated. For any other unhandled errors, the actual error is now displayed instead of the generic message 'An unexpected error has occurred. See Application Log for more details', in order to assist the users to troubleshoot the issue and fix it.

    • Supplier picker on Stock Receipted tab on a Voucher:
      The supplier picker when searching for an approved PO on the Stock Receipted tab on a voucher is now limited to the supplier on the header of the AP Voucher.

  • AP Invoice

    • AP Invoice - support LogNo on lines
      Log numbers are now supported at the Invoice line level, to be aligned with the functionality on AP Vouchers.

      1. The Log Number on the header has been removed.

Subcontracts

  • Error sorting on Retention Management screen:
    The error when sorting by Retention Trust Account has been fixed.

  • Selecting a Retention Trust Account on Retention Management screen:
    We rectified an issue where users could not select an RTA to update the subcontract.

  • Workflow approvals to include Retention Release values:
    We have updated the workflow approvals logic to include the retention release component of the Subcontract Claim in the total document value, so the correct approvers are available for selection.

  • Retention Trust Account (RTA) field has been enabled on all instances; so it will now appear on all Subcontracts on the Subcontract tab.

Plant

  • Plant Service Logs

    • Improved widget readability:
      Made changes to the colors of the labels to improve contrast and ensure they can easily be read as per the Web Accessibility Initiative Guidelines (WCAG)



    • Plant Service Logs - Support for Internal Sales:

      We now support Internal Sales on Plant Maintenance Logs.
      A typical example would be work done on a Plant Maintenance Log (Plant in one financial company) that needs to be sold to a productive Job in another financial company. For this reason, Intercompany Sales is supported as well.
      New optional fields have been added:

      • Charge Type, Charge To Job, Charge To Activity, Charge To Log

      • The field Charge Type is always displayed.
        If the Charge Type on the Plant item or the Charge Type selected on the Log has ‘Internal Sales allowed’ ticked, then this will enable the Internal sales fields.

        Check out Internal Sales user documentation for more details.

  • Plant Enquiry:
    The Period filter on the Details tab did not pass through to the Transaction tab when clicking to drill through. This has been rectified.

  • Plant Items - Main tab:
    As announced recently, we have made the new design of the Plant Item Main tab the default design for everyone. Enjoy the new user experience

Timesheets

  • Rounding on Payroll Batch Report:
    Quantities are now displayed with 4 decimal places. This is to avoid rounding errors in the payroll batch reporting.

  • Buyer Created Invoice from Timesheet (BCI Timesheets):
    Enhancements have been done so in those cases when an activity is used to use different Cost Elements from an Employee Class then these costs are reflected on the invoice lines when generating the invoice.
    BaseCost + Time1Cost + Time2Cost + Time3Cost

Billing

  • Error Cancelling Job Sales Invoice:
    In some cases where an invice with a large amount of job outputs is canceled, the transaction used to time out and error. This has been improved to avoid this error.

Quotes

  • Retain Markup % on Stock items:
    There was an issue for stock items using Markup% where amending the Cost calculated the Sell incorrectly by using a rate. This is rectified to recognise the effective Sell by Markup% or Rate as applicable.

Service Desk

  • Enhancements:

    • When a Log is created from an email:

      • the Allocated To field is left blank and is not mandatory.

      • the scheduled start/expected end defaults to the created date.

      • if comments exceed 2000 characters, the comments will be trimmed and a warning message will be displayed. The original email is attached to the Log, so there is always a way to go back and check the email trail if required.

    • When importing logs from Upvise, if the log date is not set then it will import as the date it was created and a Start time of 9am and an Estimated End time of 10am (instead of 01-Jan-1970).

Month End

  • Period End Maintenance:
    When any change is done on Period End Maintenance, the cache on the application is now refreshed automatically, so a user does not need to remember to clear the cache and the changes are reflected on data entry.

Administration

  • Standard Licence:
    Users with this licence can now see the Create new Sub Job option in the ellipsis menu on a Job.

  • Administration folder in Standard Sitemap profile:
    Some of the functionality related to administration or configuration which is under the Administration folder were accessible by users with a Standard Sitemap profile and a Timesheet licence. We have limited these to Finance and System Admin licences.

  • General Config - Control Parameters:
    The following
    BETA control parameters have passed their Beta phase and are now standard Control parameters. Their names have changed to reflect this:

    • BETA FEATURE - Structured Addresses → Structured Addresses

    • BETA FEATURE - Subcontract Contract Awarded date required before subclaim → Subcontract Contract Awarded date required before subclaim

    • BETA FEATURE - Subcontract Original Practical Completion date required before subclaim → Subcontract Original Practical Completion date required before subclaim

Integration


MYOB AccountRight

  • Transfer SubJob AP transactions from subjob to header Job:
    A new option on control parameter 'MYOB Job Field' has been added to allow the transfer of AP transactions from a subjob to the header job when exported to MYOB.

Upvise

File attachments synced to Workbench:
Workbench can now handle invalid characters on file names on files synced from Upvise to Workbench. Users were getting a photo not found error. This has been rectified. Affected files attachments on:

  • Dockets

  • Expense Claims

  • Job (Log) Attachments

  • Purchase Orders

Send SMS from Upvise

  • Real-Time Schedule Notifications:Upvise's Resource Scheduler empowers construction teams to notify employees promptly about their Project schedules through outbound SMS notifications.The application allows for the precise filtering of SMS alerts based on specific date periods, ensuring that employees receive timely and relevant information about upcoming tasks and assignments.

    • Streamlined Coordination: SMS notifications from Upvise streamline communication by reaching employees directly on their mobile devices.Construction managers can efficiently coordinate work schedules, minimising the risk of miscommunication and ensuring that the right personnel are aware of their duties.

    • Trackable SMS History: Upvise provides a transparent record of all SMS notifications sent to employees, recorded as notes against their contact records.Managers gain visibility into the delivery status of each SMS, distinguishing between those successfully sent and those that failed. This auto-categorization and journaling facilitate easy tracking and follow-up.

    • Versatile Sending Options: Upvise's SMS functionality extends beyond the Resource Scheduler to include Jobs and the contact list.Construction professionals can send SMS notifications from various touchpoints within the platform, offering flexibility in communication based on the specific needs of the project.

    • Enhanced Safety Alerts: In construction, safety is paramount. Upvise SMS functionality can be leveraged to send safety alerts and reminders to employees on-site.Critical safety information can be communicated instantly, promoting a proactive safety culture and reducing the likelihood of incidents.

    • Cost-Effective Communication: The included outbound SMS options in Upvise's standard licensing fee make it a cost-effective solution for construction companies.Avoiding the need for additional third-party messaging services, Upvise provides an all-in-one platform for communication needs.


    • Summary of features, read more:  SMS from Upvise

  1. Job SMS with SMS default options available

  2. SMS from Resource Scheduler with SMS default option available

  3. Send SMS to contacts in Upvise

 

 

Device & Operating System Minimum Requirements

 

Jobs- Open, Completed & Repair Columns Displayed

  • A new Job control option has been deployed by Upvise to allow clients to select the columns they would like displayed in the Open, Completed, and Repair jobs list views.

    1. You can now customise columns for Open & Completed Jobs lists under Job Web App > Options > Display > Custom Columns

 

 

  1. You can also customise columns for Equipment Repair jobs under Equipment Web App > Options > Display > Custom Columns

 

In light of this enhancement, we will be removing the custom view developed by workbench to enable to standard function to work. After the custom view is removed, these job lists will default to the standard Upvise columns and additional columns can be added using the display options detailed above.

 

 

Subforms- Export PDF Show/Hide

  1. A new setting has been introduced on subforms where you can indicate the fields you want displayed on the PDF output. This will allow you to capture and display the data required at data capture stage and when outputting the data to provide to a client, the fields can be suppressed in the PDF.

  2. You can find the control on individual templates by navigating to the Subform template> Export PDF> “If Used As a subform” and select the fields in “Show only these fields”

 

 

 

Equipment Repair Jobs

·       A new “repair Job” flag has been introduced by Upvise to provide better visibility to Equipment Repair and Maintenance jobs in Upvise. How does this work?

·       When an Equipment Repair Job is created from an equipment item, there is now a "Repair Job" indicator that is auto-selected. 

 

·       Where a repair Job is created via the Jobs module, users must manually select the "repair Job" flag. 

·       Where the flag is selected, you now see via Equipment the equipment module, the repair jobs in a list view available here

 

 

 

Selection of Leave Jobs for Upvise Instances with multiple Fin Co's

  1. The Leave integration has been updated to use the financial company on the employee's profit centre to determine which default leave job to use

    1. ie. employee profit centre belongs to the financial company 01, use leave job set up in the Upvise integration for finco 01: