Many Projjex users are professional services firms. Professional services firms have specific needs relating to tracking time and expenses, billing, and managing projects. This release has 11 major enhancements and dozens of minor tweaks that address those needs. So if you’re a professional services firm, you’ll find lots here for you; and if you’re not, you’ll also find lots to love.
The new release includes:
- the ability to track expenses and invoice them
- a brand-new Time Clock window: it’s now super-easy to calculate and track time
- a new Gantt chart: you can now see 8 weeks at once
- a new Date Manager: change multiple start and due dates at once
- a new TimeOnly user: perfect for sub-contractors and associates
- a new email scheduler: get daily update emails only on the days you want
- an updated Project Status Report: even better project tracking
- a new invoice style: clean, professional and it supports expenses
- create a group of projects: clean up your workspace and focus on just a few projects at a time
- revised Central Admin: much easier to use
You’ll also notice that we’ve removed the banner at the top of every Projjex page. This keeps the screen clean and improves performance.
We’ve also added a white paper that we think can help you revitalize your firm. It’s called “Improving Financial Performance Through Daily Time Tracking“. Download it directly right here:
http://www.projjex.com/whitepapers/time-tracking-benefits.pdf
This is a great release and we know you’ll love it! Keep reading for all the details.
New! Expense Tracking
Record expenses, write them up (or down), and then invoice them. You can now let Projjex track all your time and expenses.
To record an expense:
- click on the “time/expenses” tab
- click on the “expenses” sub-tab
- click on “+ ADD EXPENSE”
- choose the project that you want to add the expense to and click “Next”
- enter your expense details.
Note that the “Cost Amount” is the actual amount that you paid for the expense. The “Bill Amount” is how much you’d like to bill your client. These are often the same amount, however some firms “write up” their expenses by adding an administration fee or percentage. In this case the Bill Amount would be higher than the Cost Amount. And you may wish to bill your client less (“write down” the expense) for any number of reasons.
- if you’ve finished entering expenses, click on the “Close” button; if you’d like to add another expense, click on the “Add Another” button.
Your expenses will show on the “expenses” sub-tab. In addition, administrators will be able to see expenses on the “admin” sub-tab. Expenses will also appear during the invoicing process.
New! Time Clock: Track time anywhere, anytime.
The Time Clock is a small browser window in which you can track time against any of your projects, tasks and milestones. Time Clock will even calculate durations for you. Here’s how to use it:
- sign in to Projjex
- click on the “time/expenses” tab
- click on the “timesheet” sub-tab
- click on “Time Clock” and the Time Clock window appears
Note that Time Clock is in a separate browser window. You can sign out of the main Projjex window and Time Clock will continue to be available until you close its browser. This makes it very easy to always have a time tracking window available on your computer’s desktop.
To record time in Time Clock:
- select a project,
- select a task or milestone,
- confirm that the date is correct,
- add additional description if required,
- enter the time in a hh.hh format (ie. 1.25 is one and a quarter hours or one hour and 15 minutes),
- confirm whether the time is billable or not,
- and click on the “Save” button.
A message will briefly appear telling you that the time record was successfully saved.
If you prefer to have Time Clock calculate the duration, simply click the “Start” button. Time Clock will now remember this start time, even if you close the Time Clock window. When you click “Stop”, Time Clock calculates the elapsed time and puts the value in the “Hours” field. Feel free to change it and then click “Save” to save the time entry.
All time entries are saved into your project and can be viewed, edited and deleted in the “timesheet” and “admin” sub-tabs.
Updated! The Gantt Chart
Yes, Gantt Chart fans, you can now see up to 8 weeks on the Projjex Gantt Chart! Here’s how to see it:
- click on the “Calendar” tab
- select “Task (Gantt) View” from the pull down menu that appears on the left side
Remember: you can change dates by simply clicking on the date navigation keys. You can also change the view using the project and the resource filters: see the tasks, meetings and milestones for a single project, a group of projects or all projects; see the tasks, meetings and milestones for an individual or for everybody.
New! Date Manager
We wanted to give you the ability to make date changes to many tasks and milestones at once. However, in order to keep Projjex as easy to use as possible, we wanted to do this without resorting to dependencies (where, for example, the start date of task 2 depends on the end date of task 1). Dependencies can get very complicated and, for most people who are managing a project, dependencies are simply overkill. Many people simply want to do something like this: “For all tasks and milestones in the Acme project that haven’t started yet, delay them by 10 working days”.
The Date Manager accomplishes this.
Simply click the “Date Manager” link from either the “projects” tab or the “calendar” tab:
- Choose your project,
- the responsible person or people,
- whether you want to adjust tasks, milestones or both,
- how much you want the date to change (positive values make the dates later; negative values make the dates move earlier),
- confirm the working days of the week,
- select the appropriate date range(s),
- and click “Next”.
Date Manager will show you all of the items that will be affected and allows you to unselect those you don’t wish to be adjusted. When you are satisfied with the items that will be adjusted, click “Next” and Date Manager will make the changes.
Note that Date Manager won’t adjust any items that are complete.
Date Manager works well in conjunction with the Gantt Chart – changes are immediately updated so you can ensure that your changes are exactly what you want.
The Date Manager screen, below, will accomplish the simple query shown above (“For all tasks and milestones in the ‘Q2 Release’ project that haven’t started yet, delay them by 10 working days.”
New! TimeOnly User
Wouldn’t it be great if all of your staff and sub-contractors were using Projjex to record their time and expenses? That way your “Project Status Report” would always be completely up to date. It would also make it so much easier to create invoices if everyone’s time and expenses were always up to date.
Here’s a great way to ensure that all of your staff and sub-contractors are properly recording their time – without having to purchase the full version of Projjex for all of them.
Using Central Administration, you can now specify that somebody is a “TimeOnly” user. After they sign in to Projjex they will only see the “time/expenses” tab. This will allow them to use both the Timesheet and Time Clock to enter time; they’ll be able to record their expenses; and they can view or print the Timesheet report to get a record of their time.
Best of all, TimeOnly users cost only $5.95 per month!
TimeOnly users must be set up as part of a Central Admin group. They must be set up by the Central Admin manager. At least one person in the Central Admin group must be a full Projjex user.
New! Email Scheduling
Everybody loves getting the daily status emails from Projjex (well, almost everybody!) but some people would like to get them less frequently.
You can now tell Projjex which day(s) of the week you wish to receive the status email. Here’s how to adjust the email schedule:
- click on “Settings”
- click on the “Preferences” tab
- open “Email Settings” by clicking on the expand triangle
- choose the appropriate days of the week
- click the “Save” button (at the bottom)
- click “back to Projjex” in the top right menu
Updated! Project Status Report
If you use the “Project Status Report” you already know how valuable it is. If you don’t use it, here’s one more reason that you should review it every week for each of your projects.
We’ve added some additional information to the bottom of this report (click the image to see a larger version):
Click to see larger image.
We’ve added a “Project to Date” section. The first line in this section summarizes the budget and actual information for completed items. This is a great way to tell if your project is running ahead or behind schedule so far.
The next line is similar but shows budget and actual information for items that have been started but are not yet complete. The line below that shows a summary of items that are budgeted but that haven’t yet begun.
We’ve also added a “Project Invoicing” section at the end. This helps you to keep track of the financial aspect of the project.
At Projjex, we’re very strong believers in tracking time daily and then using the Project Status Report each week to keep on top of things. If you haven’t read it yet, click here to get our “Daily Time Tracking” white paper and click here to see our Quick Start video that shows you how to set budgets and then use the Project Status Report effectively. This is really important stuff.
New! Another Invoice Style
Here’s another invoice style that is very clean and professional-looking (click on the image to see a larger version):
To use this invoice style:
- click on the “invoices” tab
- click on the “setup” sub-tab
- choose “Style #2″
- click on the “Save Preferences” tab
New! Create a Group of Projects
You already know how to use the project pull-down menu to view a single project or to view all of them. However, if you have a lot of projects, you might find it convenient to work on a particular group of them. You can now do this by creating “Project Groups”.
Groups are created through Central Admin by the Central Admin manager. Here’s how:
- click on “settings”
- click on the “Central Admin” tab
- click on “Manage your central administration group”
- click on the “Project Groups” tab
- click on the “Add New Project Group” button
- give the group a name, select which projects will belong to this group, and click the “Save” button
- click “back to Projjex” in the top menu bar
To use the group, simply click on the “projects” pull-down menu (the menu at the far left immediately underneath the logo):
By selecting the group “Acme Client Projects”, Projjex will show only the projects that belong to this group. All tabs will respect this filter (for example, the new Gantt Chart will only show items from the projects in this group).
This is a great way to group projects by client or even by department.
Note that a project can belong to more than one group.
Here’s how to delete a project group:
- click on “settings”
- click on the “Central Admin” tab
- click on “Manage your central administration group”
- click on the “Project Groups” tab
- click on the name of a project group
- click the “Delete” button
- click “back to Projjex” in the top menu bar
Note that deleting a project group does NOT delete any of the projects that belong to it.
Thank you for your comments and suggestions!
We keep saying this but only because it’s so very true: we love hearing from you. We love your emails and your calls. We love your survey responses.
Thank you from all of us. Keep the comments coming!
Regards,
Alex Glassey and
The Projjex Team
Here’s how to reach us:
Support email: support@projjex.com
Suggestions: feedback@projjex.com
Telephone: (888) PROJJEX or (888) 776-5539
Send postcards to: 1-974 Sutcliffe Road, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8Y 1M8
Follow along on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexglassey
Isn’t it nice when you ask Santa for something really cool and then you get it? Well, you all must have been good this year because we’re happy to deliver iCal integration just in time for the Holidays!
we don’t mind if you share it with your business friends. But they must act quickly if they want to take advantage of it.
