There are many settings available to configure your Projectworks environment. These will often be checked and set up once and may not be revisited often.
The settings cover:
- Forecast exception reporting
- Entering forecasts
- Project features
- Rate cards
- Recoverability exception reporting
- Timecodes and timesheets
- Utilisation reporting
Also refer to the articles covering expense settings, invoice settings and project defaults.
Settings related to forecast exception reporting
These settings relate to how forecasting exceptions are presented on the Month End Billing report.
Forecasting exceptions and limits, Forecasting exception percent lower limit, Forecasting exception percent upper limit and Forecasting delta limit
- Limits can be set to measure the accuracy of the amount invoice compared to the amount forecast for a project in a month. On the Month End Billing report, if the project is outside the limits it will be shaded red, and shaded green if within the limits.
- If the invoice amount is < than the lower limit or > the upper limit of the amount forecast it will be shaded red.
- If the invoice amount compared to the forecast amount is within the limits it will be shaded green.
- The exception limit can be used to set a minimum value to highlight (eg forecast might be for $500 and only $200 was invoiced).
- If there are no forecasts there won't be an exception
- There are also options in the "more options" of an access level to allow a person to add/edit a comment when there is an exception. A speech bubble will be shown if a comment can be added.
Settings related to entering forecasts
Edit historical forecasts: number of previous months editable
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By default only one previous calendar month is able to have forecasts edited
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Enter a number to allow a greater number of historic months to have forecasts edited
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Can be set to zero if you don’t want any historic months to be edited
Show cumulative forecasting percentages
- Enabled by default (set to true) making the “Per month % complete” column available on the forecast screens
Settings related to project features
Enable the project schedule
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Enabled by default (set to true) making the schedule feature available within projects
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Can be disabled if preferred, making the schedule feature unavailable
Enable project pricing options
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Enabled by default (set to true) making the three project pricing methods available for use
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Disabling this option will result in only the budget level pricing (most basic option) being available for use within projects
Settings related to creating rate cards
Default hours per day on rate cards
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Set to 8 hrs by default
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This value can be used when setting up billable or cost rate cards, to convert a daily rate into an hourly rate (note that all rates in Projectworks are set as hourly rates)
Default rate cards to daily rate
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Disabled by default, when creating a rate card it will be defaulted to hourly rates
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Can be enabled if the preference is for rate cards to default selected as daily, allowing a daily rate to be entered which will be converted to an hourly rate using the default hours per day on rate cards value
Settings related to recoverability exception reporting
These settings relate to how recoverability exceptions are presented on the Month End Billing report.
Recoverability exception balance limit, Recoverability exception percent lower limit and Recoverability exception percent upper limit
Limits can be set when comparing the value of time entries that are included on an invoice to the value they were invoiced for. It's a way of looking at how much time had been written off/on for invoices issued in a month.
- If the difference is < than the lower limit or > the upper limit it will be shaded red.
- If the difference is within the limits it will be shaded green.
- The exception limit can be used to set a minimum value to highlight (eg difference might be for $500 so don't need to highlight that).
- There are also options in the "more options" of an access level to allow a person to add/edit a comment when there is an exception. A speech bubble will be shown if a comment can be added.
Settings related to timecodes and timesheets
Timecode: Always default comments to be mandatory for new timecodes
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Disabled by default, new timecodes that are created will have comments set as optional
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Can be enabled if the preference is for timecodes to be created set to require comments to be entered to be able to submit
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There is always the option to make comments mandatory or optional on a timecode by timecode basis within a project
Timesheets require submitting
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Enabled by default, the option to submit timesheets is available
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Can be disabled if required
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The ability for timesheets to be submitted is controlled by how access levels are set up, so if no access levels allow a timesheet to be submitted this setting is not important
Restrict timesheet entries to expected hours
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Disabled by default, people will not be restricted to the number of hours they can log against a timecode
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If enabled, people will not be able to enter more than the number of expected hours that have been set for them on a timecode
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This is a system wide setting, if enabled the rule will apply to all people and all timecodes
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Note the restriction does only apply when expected hours are set on timecodes - if no expected hours are set for a person on a timecode they are able to log any number of hours
Settings related to utilisation reporting
Include leave in the utilisation calculations by default
Utilisation can either be measured against the total capacity of a person (all available working days) or by reducing their capacity to account for leave that is taken in the period.
- Set to Measure against total capacity by default
- Can be set to Measure against capacity minus leave if preferred
- Refer to the Utilisation Target report article for details on how values are calculated →
Include non-billable timecodes in the utilisation calculations by default
Specify whether time logged on non-billable timecodes within billable projects is included or excluded for utilisation reporting.
- Enabled by default, time logged to non-billable timecodes in billable projects counts for utilisation
- Disable if the preference is to exclude time logged on non-billable projects
- Refer to the Utilisation Target report article for details on how values are calculated →
Utilisation limit
This limit is only used on the Utilisation Target report. It essentially lets you set a limit to highlight when a utilisation target result should be highlighted as "bad" . For example, if you achieve 90% or your target that won’t be shown in red (bad)
All settings starting with "Scheduling:" are grandfathered settings and are not relevant for environments created after mid 2023.
Populating these settings will not impact the behaviour of your Projectworks environment