Workbench Release Notes

Upcoming Functionality & News

 New Webinar Plant Management

We’re excited to invite you to our upcoming Workbench Webinar. Our team will walk you through the powerful features of the Workbench Plant Module and showcase a range of recent enhancements designed to help you manage your equipment more efficiently.

Whether you're already using the module or just starting, this session will give you valuable insights into how Workbench can support your plant operations.

Tuesday 27th May

What you’ll learn:

✅ How to maintain a list of operational equipment
✅ Manage attributes and define service intervals by equipment type
✅ Track current locations, projects, and meter readings
✅ Create service orders and manage planned vs. completed services
✅ Define depreciation and track the financial position of your equipment
✅ Set up reminders and to-do items for smooth operations
✅ Explore our integration with Upvise Mobile for field access and updates

Jobs

• New default option when navigating to a Job:
  We intend to provide more flexibility and let users decide their preferred action when clicking on a Job on the Jobs list.
  The current default action opens Job Details, and we understand that this action is not the most practical one. A new Setting ‘Default Job List Link’ will allow a System Administrator to define the default action at Global and Person level. Most popular options are likely Job Enquiry or Job Contract.
  New default option will be Job Enquiry.

New Features

Plant Items controlled access to tabs and confidential data

Open

• A new tab called Finance has been added to group and display confidential extension fields.

• There are no fields displayed on the Finance tab by default.

• Visibility of the Plant tabs can now be controlled using the 'Plant Maintenance Tabs' setting with Global and Person level control.

Additional Cost to Complete Forecasting Method

We know an important aspect of the forecast process is completeness for a given Sub Job, Work Centre, Cost Category or Activity. We also know that there are different ways in which to measure the completeness:

a. Hours Worked vs Budget Hours
b. Actual Output Qty vs Scheduled Output Qty
c. Time Elapsed vs Total Time
d. Actual Cost to Date vs Budgeted Cost

All of the above methods are relevant depending on the circumstances and we envisage building out specific forecasting solutions for each of the use cases. However, we need to pick a starting point for this forecast journey and we believe the pragmatic approach is to start with a measure that applies across the majority of use cases, and that is to measure percent completed based on Actual Cost vs Budget.

Percent Complete Forecast Method

This enhancement introduces Forecast Method as an option on Contract introducing Percent Complete to the existing Lump Sum Adjustment.

Open

Available in v4.7.14 (Beta on 12 May and General Release on 19 May). If you missed the webinar preview you can see the recording [here].

Preparation

Cost Categories - The Percent Complete method allows for progress to be specified at Activity level or at Cost Category level. It is thus recommended that the like cost Activities be grouped into relevant Cost Categories prior to enabling Percent Complete as it is a key aspect to measuring completeness.

Balance of Budget Activities - These are specific activities to set up that are linked to each Cost Category for the system to calculates the balance of budget adjustments in these forecasts. Balance of Budget Activities are set with an Activity Type of “Forecast Bal” and need to be assigned to each Cost Category.

Balance of Budget on Work Centres - We recommend you set your Work Centres in the Forecast to calculate Balance of Budget by Cost Category to get to the most meaningful view of the Forecast.

Enablement

The Percent Complete method is enabled for the Contract by selecting the Forecast Method. The existing Lump Sum Adjustment method is the default.

Open

Progress Complete

The introduction of a % Complete measure and the ability to review and update progress directly from the main forecast screen greatly reduces the clicks required to review progress, and simplifies the adjustment calculation.

Open

A. Set the Contract - Forecast Method to use 'Percent Complete' to enable this feature. This allows control over the timing and scope for adoption of this feature. The Progress% Adjustment replaces using Uncommitted Adjustments.
B. New super headers display to improve understanding of the column contexts.
C. New progress related columns display and Progress is specified on Activity or Cost Category level, and calculated for display only at Work Centre and Job.

• Calculated (Progress) - a indication of budget used i.e. ActualCost / CurrentBudget

• Reviewed% (Progress) - the user specified progress assessment

• Comment (Progress) - an optional user comment on the progress

• Progress (Adjustment) - an adjustment calculated on assessed progress
  i.e. ActualCost – (Reviewed% * OriginalBudgetCost)

D. Saving the Reviewed% calculates the Progress Adjustment for the line
i.e. ProgressAdjustment = $15,318 – (20% * $55,000) = $4,318
E. The follow on calculations apply as usual
F. For backward compatibility the prior forecasts will display Uncommitted Adjustments in the Progress Adjustment column, and a link opens the Forecast Adjustment popup to view their details if required.
G. For Progress Adjustments the Unit, Quantity, and Rate columns are disabled to simplify usage.
H. Progress can also be specified at Cost Category to support seamless editing at both levels. Progress at Cost Category will distribute down to Activity weighted on Budget or Actual Costs depending upon the scenario, except where CurrentBudget or ActualCost is zero since in these cases there is no basis for distribution.

Note: Since there is no basis for calculating progress for a new period, Progress Adjustments will not auto-carry over, so progress should be reviewed each period. Risk Adjustments will carry over as per current behaviour.

I. When all the Cost Categories / Activities are 100%within a Work Centre and if there are no outstanding purchase commitments (i.e. Procurement = 0) then the Close Work Centre tickbox is enabled. When the Progress = 100% on the Work Centre then the user is asked if the Work Centre should be closed.

Open

This effectively prevents further costs being recorded against the Work Centre, and is equivalent to closing the Work Centre on the Work Centres tab.

Feature Revisions

Jobs

• Contract Fixed FC Rate:
  The creation of Contract Claims has been enhanced so that if the Contract has a Fixed Rate, then the Contract FC Rate is used and populated into the Contract Claim FC Rate.

• Contracts - Trust Ledgers export to excel rounding issues:

  • Values in excel now match values in trust tab screen, fixing 1 cent rounding issues.

  • Excel file name now has the Job code and the date stamp: [JobCode]JobContractPTA[DDMMYYYY]
    
    

Billing

Job Sales Invoices - Unit

• Added an editable 'Unit' column on Job Invoice lines that is hidden by default using the ‘Job Sales Invoice Detail’ grid. This is expected to be used in the case of manual invoice lines since derived invoice lines are aggregated and so Unit would not be applicable.

Quotes

• Quote - Client to default Price Code:
  The Price Code on a Quote is now defaulted from the selected Client.

Fixes & Technical changes

Integration

MYOB Acumatica

• Exporting Batch No:
  New customisation to support the export of Batch no when exporting AP/AR Invoices from Workbench to Acumatica. The Workbench Batch No will be populated in Acumatica as long as the new BatchNo column has been added to the Invoices table in Acumatica, and it has been exposed to the UI on the ‘Invoices and Memos’ screen in Acumatica.

Things we are busy working on...

New centralised Contract Bonds list to identify upcoming releases easily.

New status to track whether POs and WOs have been sent to Suppliers/Subcontractors.