JL Web Release: Week Commencing 14th October 2024

Features scheduled for release on 17/10/2024. The functionality detailed will not be available in the system until this date. However, please note that this is an ETA and may be subject to change.

Release Topics

Subcontractor Portal and SOR’s Features

1. Auto Raise Subcontractor P.O’s Setting

2. SOR Library - Sharing with Subcontractors

3. SOR and Subcontractors – Hide Cost and Sell Values

Further SOR Updates

1. Additional Dropdown Information
2. New SOR Library Item Check Boxes and Description Field
3. SOR to Quote - Price Updates
4. Rate Splits

Improvements

1. Vehicle Tracking Enhancement

2. Increased Asset Panel Character Limit

3. Mapped Subcontractor Icon

4. Job Cost Screen - Profit Margin Percentage

Release Details

Subcontractor Portal and SOR’s Features

This week we have some new settings which will prove to be good ones for your service delivery teams all revolving around the subcontractor portal and SOR’s (Schedule or Rates).

1. Auto Raise Subcontractor P.O’s Setting

• Previously within the system whenever you assigned a subcontractor visit (outside of the subcontractor portal) the system would automatically raise a subcontractor P.O (Purchase order) for you

• While this is a useful feature we realise that it may not be applicable to every one of your users

• We have therefore added a new setting which will allow you to switch this function off or leave it on for each subcontractor that you work with

• Now you can choose to either:

1. Have the P.O’s raise for you automatically, saving you a manual task, if you choose to

2. Raise subcontractor P.O’s manually, as applicable if this works better for you alongside that subcontractor

3. Not raise subcontractor P.O’s at all if this does not apply to you and that subcontractor

• Either way you’ll now be able to manage subcontractor P.O’s how and when needed depending on how you work best alongside the subbie

• The setting can be found against each subcontractor set up in your system under Settings > Subcontractors > ‘select subcontractor as applicable’ > Details

2. SOR Library - Sharing with Subcontractors

• A further setting we have created to help manage subcontractor accounts is our new ‘SOR Library - Sharing with Subcontractors’ function

• When switched on this new setting will allow contractors to create SOR libraries and share these with the subcontractor via the portal

• It’ll create this library within the subcontractors Joblogic allowing them to use the preset SOR items

• This is a great one for keeping contractor’s and their subcontractor’s SOR’s uniform and in sync with one another

• With regards to switching it on for your Joblogic System in general, the setting can be found under Settings > System Setup > System Settings and is named ‘Share SOR Libraries with Subcontractor Portal Users’

• It can then be governed for each subcontractor under Settings > Subcontractors > ‘select subcontractor as applicable’ > Details

3. SOR and Subcontractors – Hide Cost and Sell Values

• We have also introduced a new setting related to the above that will allow you to hide the cost and sell fields within SOR libraries and job cost screens concerning subcontractors

• Similarly to the new SOR Library Sharing function above, this setting can be controlled at both system level and for specific subcontractors

• With regards to switching it on for your Joblogic System in general, the setting can be found under Settings > System Setup > System Settings and is named ‘Limited SOR Access’

• It can then be set for specific subcontractors under Settings > Subcontractors > ‘select the subcontractor as applicable’ > Details

• It’s a handy new tool for data structuring and allows you to hide unnecessary details if costs and sells aren’t relevant in your subcontractor jobs that entail SOR’s

For further details on Subcontractor’s and SOR’s in general within Joblogic, see here for our useful user guides on all things subbie related and here for our SOR resources

Further SOR Updates

We have also made some further SOR updates which will help to make the feature smoother and easier to use overall.

1. Additional Dropdown Information

• We have improved the job cost screen’s SOR item selection dropdown by showing the SOR’s code and description when selecting them.

• This will help make them easier to identify when selecting

2. New SOR Library Item Check Boxes and Description Field

• We’ve added a new description field and some check boxes to the SOR items within the SOR library

• Now when adding or editing an SOR item a new ‘Long Description’ field will be available allowing users to describe the SOR in further detail when there is a large amount of information regarding it

• There is also a new ‘Comments Required’ checkbox which will allow you to mark that SOR item as requiring a mandatory comment to be added whenever a user adds that SOR as a cost to a job

• Finally, a ‘Fixed Value Rate’ checkbox has been added allowing users to identify if that item is a set/non-changing rate

3. SOR to Quote - Price Updates

• Now when a SOR library item’s price is updated, if it is then added against an unapproved quote the system will show a warning popup giving you the option to update the SOR Item’s new price against the quote

4. Rate Splits

• You can now add Rate Splits against SOR library items providing improved transparency of costs and sells for the related work

• The cost and sell of these rate splits will auto accumulate within the cost and sell of the applicable SOR item

• A new “SOR Rate Splits” tab has been added within the Schedule of Rates Library

• This new tab has an ‘Add Rate Split’ area whereby rate splits can be manually set up and an ‘Import’ option to import the rate splits via CSV

For further details on SOR’s in general within Joblogic, see here for our useful user guides on all things SOR

Improvements

We also have some further improvements that’ll be great for your service delivery teams but relating to other areas of the system

1. Vehicle Tracking Enhancement

• We've made some improvements to our Vehicle Tracking feature to enhance accuracy and reduce remedial unneeded data

• Now, when a user views a journey’s details in live tracking, they will see the mileage for each specific journey made by the vehicle on that day

• If a vehicle stops for less than an hour during its journey, the system will now recognise it as a stop (as opposed to a journey continuation) allowing for more accurate journey breakdowns

• Short, seemingly random movements previously caused by GPS inaccuracies will no longer be logged as journeys, ensuring that only stable and accurate journey data is displayed

• For further details on our vehicle tracking function check out our useful user guide here

2. Increased Asset Panel Character Limit

• This is one that will help make asset data entry a little easier

• We've made an improvement to the Asset Panel Information area by increasing the character limit

• You can now input and view more detailed information within the asset panel without having to cut any relevant data out

• The character limit has been increased to 6 characters before a decimal point and 4 afterwards

• It’s just in the back office this week but keep an eye out for our mobile release next week where we’ll get this applied on the app too for your engineers

• For more details on assets in general check out our assets area of the support portal here

3. Mapped Subcontractor Icon

• Another one for the subcontractor portal is a small but useful one

• We have added a new icon to the ‘All Subcontractors’ page which will be displayed to indicate that a subcontractor portal link has been made

• It’ll help make reviewing your subcontractor accounts and how you communicate with them much easier at a glance

• Check out our subbie user guides here for more info on subcontractors within Joblogic

4. Job Cost Screen - Profit Margin Percentage

• Finally, we have another one that that’ll make items easier to view at a glance and may also help out your finance teams

• We’ve added a profit margin percentage field to job cost screen which will prove to be a great tool for understanding a job’s revenue after paying those all important business expenses

• See our users guides here for more details on jobs and costs

Bug Fixes

While we don’t like or want system bugs, they can sometimes occur. We’ve detailed those that have been fixed in this release below:

• An issue where jobs marked as requiring approval were not showing up in the approval tab on the all jobs page has been corrected

• There was a problem where email addresses were not saving in the contact field on the subcontractor details page. This has now been fixed

• We've fixed an issue where the Site Address was not displaying on invoice portal links

• There was also a problem with grouped invoice template formats distorting which has now been corrected

• An issue with credit tags not displaying correctly on document templates has been taken care of too

• A problem with the "No Deposit Required" option not showing on quote templates has been fixed

• An issue where jobsheet options were showing for purchase order templates under customer configurations has been rectified

• There was a problem with the total cost column on the ‘All Stock Valuation’ report showing incorrect values. This has now been fixed and displays correctly

• There was also a problem where an error message would appear, locking the system for a short period of time when updating job descriptions. This has now been resolved

• There was an issue on the all jobs screen when searching via job reference fields. It would sometimes pull through the wrong results. This has been corrected

• We fixed an issue where the system was incorrectly assigning a priority when selecting "Log Job" and "Log Quote" without choosing a customer or site first

• Finally, a problem where the forms logbook would continuously load when attempting to edit has been fixed

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience cause by these bugs and thank you for your understanding and patience whilst they were being fixed, if you noticed them

That’s it for this month in the back office but keep an eye out for our mobile release next week and let our support team know if you need any help with the above (0800 326 5561 Support@joblogic.com).