November 23, 2017

Summary

We are pleased to introduce the ability to add a " Default Cost" to External Expenses.

Important Highlights From This Release

1. Default Cost for External Expense is now available
2. Resolved Issues

Default Cost for External Expense is now available

Adding a Default Cost to an External Expense allows you to define a cost for a service (expenses) that you outsource to a vendor or supplier. You can now define a default cost from the Admin section as shown below. To learn more, please click here.

Default Cost Field Under "Create New External Expense":

You can now view the "Default Cost" on the External Expenses list.

Default Cost Column on "Admin External Expense List":
 

The Default Cost will then appear when you add the Expense line item on the External Expenses or under Estimates as shown below:

You no longer have to remember the default rate you use for your External Expenses each time you create an External Expense line item.

Resolved Issues

FPA-697: "Job Financials and Costs" report calculating values with wrong cells.

FPA-799: Jobs numbers above 9999 are not sorting correctly in the Company Module.

FPA-755: Task status changes to Assigned when assignees updates for Shared Tasks- Should continue to be "In Progress" if initial status was "In Progress".

July 31, 2017

Invoice Printout - We've provided new options for the look of a single invoice printout. You can now choose new blocks for Invoice Summary and Invoice Details content. These options left align the content, to better match a similarly formatted Estimate layout.

July 19, 2017

Logged in as user name - When logged into FP, your name displays in the top right corner. The content of this field now pulls from your Contact name information, and not your login name information. 

July 12, 2017

Work Planning View - Are you a Traffic or Project Manager looking to see what's on you and your team's plate for the near future? Then you'll want to check out our Work Planning View, available under the Tasks menu on your main FP navigation bar.

Learn more via this article:Introduction to the Work Planning View

July 4, 2017

Client Portal experience enhancements - We’ve recently introduced several improvements to the Client Portal. This article offers a quick walk-through of the new look. You’ll notice the main changes affect the tabs for Requests and Active Work.

None of these changes should impact how you add requests or view works in the portal. Changes include:

• Improvement to system behavior for a Portal user password reset. Users are now taken to the Requests tab once the new password has been saved successfully.
• New look to the Requests tab including an improved order of fields.
• Renaming of the Admin tab to My Details.
• More screen space to the Active Work tab so full job names show in left side of page.

May 24, 2017

Job Find Page | New search field - We've added a handy new field to your Job Find page. Use the Activity Date field to search for jobs by either a single date, or a date range. The resulting list will be only those jobs for which time has been tracked, or an expense created for that date or date range. See screenshot below.

May 18, 2017

Batch Invoice default naming convention - Batch Invoicing is a method by which you can create several single invoices at one time, either for one client, or a mix of clients. When generating this batch, the FP system generates a name for this batch so that it can be stored and found again. We've made an improvement to the naming convention, so that newly created batches will pre-populate with the year, a dash, and the month. For example, a batch I make today would pre-populate with the batch name 2017-05. As an FP user, you can choose to add on to this date with more information about this batch, or type in an entirely different name. Please note that any batch name can only be used once.

May 9, 2017

Brief/ Request submission email alert | Portal Users - We've added some visibility on a required email alert your Portal users will receive upon submission of a brief/ request. Upon discovering this little nugget of code, we had initially removed it, but your protests were heard and we've put it back in action! And now under your Portal user subscriptions, you will see this alert listed. See screenshot below. 

April 19, 2017

Shared Tasks -We're pleased to announce the release of a new task type, that will allow for multiple assignees on a single Task. Shared Tasks are time trackable, can have predecessors and dependencies, and are visible on Dashboard tiles and Resource Allocation. Review this article for more information.

April 18, 2017

Schedule Gantt View - As on the Grid View, you can now easily add Task Groups or individual Tasks to your Schedule on the Gantt View. Look for the action buttons on the left side of the page, above the list of Tasks and their groups.

April 11, 2017

Printouts | New currency symbol supported - We've improved our printouts to support the currency symbol for the Indian Rupee. Should you add this symbol to your Admin area under Office Preferences, the symbol will print properly on printouts like Estimates and Invoices.

QuickBooks Online Integration - Users of our integration to QB Online tool, can now set up QB to sync to sub-customers. In FP, the individual company structure remains, but in QB you can navigate into your settings to enable the sub-customer routine. Upon your next sync, if all is mapped correctly, FP invoices will correspond to the correct sub-customer.

April 10, 2017

Briefs | New Brief Alert - Good news for those of you signed up to be alerted when a new brief is added to the system. Now when a brief/ request is submitted by your Client Portal users, the in-system alert includes the name of the Brief. Rather than the alert reading as only "A Portal User has Submitted a Brief" you will see "A Portal User has Submitted a Brief: Request for XYZ." 

Task View | Navigable Breadcrumb - One of our eagle eyed customers observed the following: When you are looking at a Task page for a Task that is part of a Schedule, yet not yet part of a Job, the navigable Task level breadcrumb does not display the associated Company name. With some minor digging we found this to be a small code oversight, meaning that users will now see this Company level information included in the breadcrumb at the Task level, regardless of the presence of a Job. 

April 4, 2017

Invoice Payment Notes - We've made a small change so that if you have a Payment Note marked as the default in the List Maintenance area, it will pull to any Interim, Final as well as Deposit Invoice you create.

Briefs | Add Brief Page - We've made an improvement to the "communication" between fields on the Add Brief page. Now, if you select a Company, and then go to the magnifying glass function on the Estimate field, the system will display estimates for that Company. Previously the system would display any/ all estimates regardless of Company.

March 23, 2017

Schedule Grid View - We've made several enhancements to the Schedule Grid View in an effort to make it more user friendly. Details below: 

1. All columns to the right of the Task Group and Task name column are now resizable. Use your mouse to drag column widths to sizes you prefer. The system will remember these preferences for you as you change them on individual schedules. 
2. We've added in an editable column for "By" - used to denote who is the person assigning out the Task. The content of this column can be populated with the name of any active Staff member and will display as their initials.
3. We've changed the behaviour of the field for Service Groups and Services. You no longer need to start typing to see content, and the services are more clearly displayed within their respective group. 

March 14, 2017

Multi-Job Invoice Printout | Print Option B - On a multi-job invoice printout, you can now choose to manually over-write the job names and dollar values that appear on the printout only. 

March 2, 2017

Gantt View | New Option to adjust dependent Tasks - On the Gantt View you can now find a new button mid page. Ticking this box before you drag and drop predecessor Tasks on this view, will mean that any associated dependent Tasks will shift accordingly. Screen shot below: 

Schedule | System remembers last view selected - When you're on a Schedule, you can choose to view this content on a Grid View or a Gantt View. And now, when you navigate away and come back to this Schedule, the system will remember the last view you'd chosen. 

March 1, 2017

Note Find - On the Note Find page, you now are able to select multiple Job Statuses as part of your search parameters.

February 21, 2017

Invoice Find List | Manage Columns -From the Manage Columns button on an Invoice Find list, you can now choose to display more content:

• Client Lead
• Lead Creative
• Payment Note Content

Timesheet Find List | Manage Columns - From the Manage Columns button on a Timesheet Find list, you can now choose to display the Task ID Number. Note that this content will only display if the time listed was tracked to a Task, and not just to the Job level.

Estimate Detailed Printout - Using the Printing Preferences area, you can now choose to set a version of the Estimate Detailed Printout that will not display the Service level descriptions on the printout. 

February 14, 2017

iOS Time Tracking App - We've made several updates to our iOS Time Tacking App, available for use on your iPhone and Apple Watch. Learn more here:iPhone & Apple Watch Timetracking App

January 16, 2017

List Maintenance | Role List - We have fixed where the cursor lands upon adding a new role to this list. Previously the cursor was focused into the role abbreviation box, rather than the role name field.

January 9, 2017

System Wide Change | Removal of iFrames -We're really pleased to announce that your fp. system is no longer living within an iFrame world.

• You can copy/ paste urls for Jobs, Tasks etc. and share them to a colleague or bookmark as needed.
• Once you get to know the naming/ numbering within fp. urls you can navigate by altering the url content.
• You can refresh any page within the system and NOT be taken back to the Dashboard.

January 4, 2017

Jobs | Basic Info tab - On the Basic Info tab of Jobs, the affiliated Office for the work was hidden unless you were in edit mode. You can now see the affiliated office on this tab, while in view only mode.

December 20, 2016

Wording Change - On the Dashboard super nav bar, we've changed the wording for the menu item that takes you to the Aha! Portal from "Feature Request" to "Submit an Idea".

Job Find & Estimate Find pages - On the Job Find page as well as the Estimate Find page, you can now search by one or more Estimate/ Job Type. In other words, we've changed this field from singe-select, to multi-select.

November 22, 2016

System Security Enhancements | Under the Hood - We released several "under the hood" items to the system with the shared goal of enhancing system security. 

Items that users might notice include:

• We have removed the Admin > System Preference setting to generate an embeddable iFrame. Please use your custom fp. url if you want to direct your team to a login link to your fp. system. 
• We have adjusted the behaviour of cookies, so that should 2 people be logged into fp. as the same user, and one of those people logs out, the other person will be logged out as well. 
• We have enhanced the method by which we scan files before upload. This will further prevent users from uploading executable/ potentially malicious files and file types. 
• We have enhanced the login page so that you will no longer be informed if it is the user name or the password that are incorrect. This design change would make it much more difficult for any attacker to attempt to login. 

None of these enhancements alter the general navigation within the system, or any user permissions etc. 

November 15, 2016

Gantt View | Shareble Link - We have added a "Share Gantt" button to this view, allowing users to easily generate a url of their Gantt.  You can control how much or how little content they "show" in this link. By default, the link will show all the Gantt content, but by ticking boxes along the far left side, you can limit the content as needed, and generate a link of that "view."

The url has a one year shelf life, and can be sent to clients and colleagues. Screenshot below.

November 7, 2016

fp. Accountant for QuickBooks Online - For users of Quickbooks Online there is a new account type option of "Credit Card." When set up and mapped properly, QBO users can sync those expenses from fp. to QBO and have them go into the correct account.

Admin Area |The Work Calendar - We have made some under the hood changes meaning that users can no longer input invalid start dates, due dates or negative hour values into this area of the system. Doing so was causing other pages and reports to not properly function.

Schedule Grid View - In an effort to make this page easier to use, we have added tool tips/ hover overs for the majority of the action buttons on the page, including scenarios in which particular buttons might be greyed out or inactive.

Auto Change Dependent "Draft" Task to "Assigned" when the Predecessor Task is marked as "Completed" - This is a big step for Schedules and Tasks in fp.  Now, if you have Task dependencies set up in your system, and a predecessor Task moves to a completed state, the associated dependent Task will move to an active/ assigned state.

November 1, 2016

Tasks/ To Dos tile & full screen view - You will now get a visual queue for both Tasks due today and overdue Tasks. Tasks that are overdue will show their due date in red, bold font. Tasks that are due today will show their due date in black, bold font.

Gantt View | Add or remove dependencies  - You can now add or remove dependency lines between your Tasks right from the Gantt View. You no longer need to drill into individual Tasks to create or remove these Task linkages.

October 20, 2016

Schedules | Tags on Tasks - We've restored some temporarily lost functionality when it comes to adding Tags to your Tasks. Should you create a Tag on Schedule A, you can re-use that same Tag on Schedule B. Just start typing in the Tag field (above Task Description field) to see any current Tags available. 

Gantt View | Drag & drop one or more row dates - You can now drag and drop to change the date(s) of one Task, and have that impact any other Tasks as well. Select one or more item from the far left check box and then drag/ drop as needed. The main Task you are changing will show in blue, with any of the other selected Tasks showing in grey. Changes are saved immediately. 

Schedules tabs on Jobs and Estimates | Auto-redirect - In an effort to both save users some clicks, and to stop displaying the older look of our Schedules, you may notice some new behaviour on the tab called "Schedules" as it appears on your Estimates and Jobs.  This tab will no longer show you an un-editable preview of the Schedule, but take you directly to the Schedule so you can begin editing or reviewing as needed. Want to go back to the Job? Do so easily through the breadcrumb in the top left of the Schedule. Screenshots below. 

Schedule tab change on a Job (example):

Navigate back to a Job from a Schedule via breadcrumb (example):

October 17, 2016

External Expense enhancements - Further to our release on September 22nd, we've carried these cool changes through to the related Job Financials and expense form. External expenses that you estimate for by quantity multiplied by rate will now show that quantity and rate per item on the Financials tab of the Job. And should you generate the expense form from the Financials tab, this info will also carry to the form. 

Schedule Grid View | Full Line Editing - We heard your feedback on the Grid View of our Schedules! Users told us they found things in edit mode to be a bit jumpy, and even disorienting. As such, the Grid View now opens the full row into an edit mode, and compacts the column widths as best it can to reduce the view shifting.

Gantt View | Drag & drop row order - We've added functionality similar to the Schedule Grid View, where you can drag and drop one or multiple items in the Gantt View, to change their vertical order. Select one or more item from the far left check box and then drag/ drop as needed. 

October 12, 2016

Gantt View | Refresh button - In the top left of the Gantt View tab of any Schedule, there is now a button called "Refresh." Click this button to update the Gantt View without having to navigate away.

Gantt View | Tasks without dates - You can now easily generate a start and due date onto a date-free Task via the Gantt View, rather than having to use the Schedule tab, or drill into a specific Task. Upon clicking the "set dates now" verbiage, the system will pop in a date for you. This Task can then be dragged to another date, as well as stretched to the best start/ due dates.

Schedule Grid View | Copy Task Group or Task - Now when you use the "Copy" function on the Schedule Grid View to copy a Task Group or Task, the system will make the copy for you, as well as add "Copy" to the end of that Task Group or Task name. This makes the copied version much easier to identify. The name can be edited as needed. 

Schedule Grid View | Expand a collapsed Task Group when adding a task to it - Now when you make a change to the Grid View of Schedules, and add a new Task is added to a Task Group, and that Task Group is collapsed, the group will expand so that you can easily see where the new Task has been added to the Schedule.

Invoice Printout | New Invoice Details block - We have created a new Invoice Details block that can be used on any configured Invoice printout. 

• Budget - The Estimated dollar values
• Previous Invoices - Any previous invoice values on this Job
• Current Invoices - The dollar value of this Invoice
• Balance in Budget - Invoiced dollars minus Estimated dollars
• % Complete - Invoiced amount divided by Estimated amount, shown as a percentage value

October 11, 2016

Estimate Printouts | Save routine - Many of our users need to save copies of the PDF printouts of Estimates. We've made a change so that the default name of this PDF follows a better naming convention. This will affect the Estimate (Printout), Estimate Detailed (Printout) and Project Estimate (Printout). 

Task Find Page - On the Task Find page, you can now look for Tasks based on a Tag. On the resulting list view, use Manage Columns to show Tags in their own column. 

October 6, 2016

Schedules | Adding new Tasks - A drop down option will show when creating new Tasks from the Schedule grid view. This option will let you pick the type of Task you're making before adding further details (like Service bucket, start date, assignee etc). You are not required to make new Tasks in this way, it's just a new option. This has been put in place in advance of the pending release of Meeting Tasks. 

October 3, 2016

Alerts/ Subscriptions wording - We've made a small change to the wording regarding filters on all of the Alerts/ Subscriptions in the system. Filters that previously read as (for example) "Only If: I am a Job Contact" now read as simply "If I am a Job Contact." Be encouraged to use these filters to better curate the number and type of alert messages you receive from the system.

September 28, 2016

External Expenses - We've improved the behaviour on External Expenses that you have marked as "Billed." If the "Billed" tick box is checked on the expense form, the expense will now no longer pull to any future invoice you create for the associated Job. 

Timesheets - We've improved the behaviour on Timesheets that you have marked as "Billed." If the Billed Status has been changed to "Billed", the timesheet will now no longer pull to any future invoice you create for the associated Job. 

Gantt View - We've made an improvement to the way in which the system handles especially long Task names. From the Gantt View, hovering over long Task names will now truncate the name so that it can properly appear in said hover over. 

Invoice Printouts | Save routine - Many of our users need to save copies of the PDF printouts of Invoices. We've made a change so that the default name of this PDF follows a better naming convention. The printout will now save with the Invoice number first, then the Invoice type, Client Company name, and finally the date and time of printing/ saving. For example, "219 - Interim Invoice - Great Atlantic Insurance.2016-09-28.10-58-51.pdf" 

Top Banner - Clicking the top left quadrant of your system banner will now bring you back to your Dashboard. Clicking the Dashboard icon, or the "fp.do more" logo will continue to also perform this function. 

September 22, 2016

Estimates | External Expense rows - We have made a cool improvement to the Estimates page, when that Estimate includes any External Expense rows. With the change we've made, users will have another way in which to enter the expense cost. Now you can calculate the expense by the quantity, multiplied by the rate per unit. This calculated Cost then multiplies by my mark up percentage to give you a row Total. Edit the values as needed via the familiar pencil icon. 

In the near future, we'll add on to this feature, by reflecting these values in the Job Financials, as well as the External Expense form. Stay tuned!

Screenshot below:

September 19, 2016

System Preferences | Work tab - We’ve improved the naming and wording regarding Role rates. When ticked on, this particular setting will automatically override the rates for any new staff users you add to your system, with the rate values for the role to which they are associated, as opposed to their staff or service rate.

September 14, 2016

QuickBooks Online Integration -Today we have released changes to our QuickBooks Online integration in order to qualify to be listed in their app store.

When a customer connects their fp. account to their QuickBooks account, fp. gets a token from QuickBooks to access on their behalf their QuickBooks account.

• We now encrypt these tokens when we store them.
• We clarified the wording on the 'Disconnect' link to more clearly reflect what it is doing (i.e. disconnect your fp. account from your QB account.)
• Periodically those tokens expire (this is normal).  We've improved the performance of the system when a user tries to sync and happens to have an expired system.  They'll be re-prompted to make the fp.-to-QB connection (thereby getting a new, valid token).
  

September 12, 2016

Gantt View - You can now adjust dates directly on the Gantt View. Click, drag and drop Task Groups as well as Tasks. And on individual Tasks, you can click into either end of the task bar, and stretch the start or due date(s). Changes you make are immediately carried to the rest of the system.

Further improvements to the Gantt are on the horizon, including the ability to manage dependencies from this view.  Stay tuned!

September 2, 2016

Multi-Job Single Invoice Printout - When creating multiple invoices for one company, there is the option to print a single invoice for all of those jobs. There was not an option to show an invoice contact name on that printout. As of now, when creating this kind of invoice, you will see a Contact dropdown menu, that will list the active contacts for the company the invoice is for, and through the printout settings, you can choose to display this contact name. 

Project List View - You will see three new options now on the Manage Columns section on a Project List View. Now, you can choose to show a column for Estimate Totals, Actual Totals and Invoice Totals, as they appear on the Basic Info tab of any Project in your system. This should prove to make it much easier to compare project budgets to overall project health, across multiple projects at once. 

August 24, 2016

Briefs & their templates - When building out Brief templates, you can choose from a variety of answer fields - such as radio buttons, drop down menus, date pickers etc. On fields where you are giving users a set of options to pick from, you can choose to set one of these options as the default choice, or have no default choice set.  What was happening was that even if no default was picked, the system was pre-picking the first item in the list of options. All fixed now!

Login Summary Email - There is a staff alert option called “Global” in the system. Signing up for this alert means the user will receive a daily email, upon first login that day. The top of this email message reads: “This is an automated message from the Function Point project management system.” What was happening, was that if you set your System Preferences to replace the word “Project” in your system, it was carrying that change to the message in the email alert. For example, in my system I changed the word Project to Chicken. Ergo my email alert read as “...the Function Point chicken management system.” Much aspoultry managementmight be a future vertical for us to explore, for now, we’re preventing the system settings from carrying to the login email message.

August 22, 2016

Client Facing Printouts - One of our users was disappointed when he observed on a client facing printout that the system shortened the month of June to “Jun.” The system was doing the same for July, showing it as “Jul” on printouts. So, we’ve added options into the Printing Preferences area for client facing printouts - such as Estimates and Invoices - allowing users to choose to “Use Non-Abbreviated Date” on that printout. 

August 17, 2016

Estimating by Service then changing to Staff/ Role - Here’s one that’s made a few of us batty I suspect. If you initially estimate a number of hours by a Service, but later add a Staff person or Role to that row on the estimate, the hours go poof. Now - if you should change an estimate row to be based on the Service, to be based on a Staff or Role rate, the hours at the Service level will pop to the first Staff or Role you add.

Login Summary Email - There is an email alert that you can choose to receive daily, upon logging into your fp. system. Up until now, this email would only include Tasks that had a Task Type picked. Not ideal behaviour, especially as Task Type is not a required field when creating a Task. Moving forward, this summary email is no longer limited in this way, which should make it a much more valuable feature to users.

August 11, 2016

Capitalization on Configured Printouts - On several printouts, such as Invoice Deposits, Invoices and Estimates, users have the option to replace the wording of particular fields. For example, on an Estimate, you can choose to replace the word “Title” with another word or phrase.

Up until this release, if I replaced Title with “Gary has great hair” (for example), the printout would print that up as “Gary Has Great Hair.” In other words, capitalizing all the words. We’ve implemented a fix so that the printout will display the word(s) as written on the printout parameters, including the capitalization or words or lack thereof. 

August 8, 2016

Company & Contact Find pages - It was pointed out that if you tried to find a company or contact by a part of the web name, the system was throwing an error message. It was set to insist upon the content of that field being a web address (ie. starkindustries.com), rather than just a portion of that web address name (ie. stark). All fixed!

Task Alerts  - It was brought to our attention that in-system alerts for tasks being due tomorrow, had to word tomorrow misspelled. All fixed!

Estimate Alerts - It was also brought to our attention that the descriptions for Estimate related alerts had some wording errors. The content was correct, we were just oddly doubling up on words here and there. All fixed!

Office Preferences page - We spotted a couple of items on this page that were required and needing user adjustment way back in the day, but really just causing confusion today. Items were “Expand Invoice Line Items” and “Daylight Savings Time.” Both these items have been hidden from the page.

August 4, 2016

Note Find and Task Find pages - Further to a client request, we’ve added the ability for users to search for any Note or Task by virtue of the content of any Comment. Be advised that the system cannot display all the comments for all time on any Note or Task in the list view - but any Note or Task in the resulting list can be drilled into to view the Comment there.

Tag filter on Schedule tab for Estimates/ Jobs - Estimates and Jobs that have an associated Schedule, will have an active tab through which users can see a read-only view of that Schedule. It was spotted that the option to filter by Task tag on this view, was being wonky, and not producing the proper filtered results. All fixed now!

External Expenses | Renaming Supplier to Supplier/ Vendor - A few weeks back we thought we had caught all the inconsistencies in fields that display this content, but we missed a few! Should be the case now, that no expense related field reads just as “Supplier” but reads as “Supplier/ Vendor.”

Estimate Total | Estimate view vs. Job Summary view - Occasionally, users were observing slight value differences on the Estimate Total on the estimate itself, versus the total as displayed on the Job Summary view. Turns out the system was using a different calculation in each place. We’ve fixed things so that the calculation is consistent throughout now.

System Preferences | Custom Link feature - In the System Preferences area under the Login tab, there is an option for the user to use a custom link. This link can be used to embed the fp. login within an iframe, allowing an agency to brand the login page as they see fit. Up until now though, this custom link was grabbing some of our background content and tracking tool, making this feature not behave properly. All fixed now!

Schedule Printout new option - On the 25th of July we released the cool toggle feature, allowing users to show or not show any Task Group or Task to their portal users. What I failed to mention, was that this also results in a cool new printout. Under the Print button on a Schedule, you’ll see the option to print the “Client Visible” version of the printout(s). Screenshot below. 

July 28, 2016

We've had 2 releases today, knocking out a few fixes clients needed, and some feature enhancements that we wanted, and/ or were requested. Please find brief summaries on the released items below:

Printing Area Improvement - Under Admin > Printing Preferences > Standard Printouts Tab. I noticed that we had a "Clear Sort" button on this page, even though users couldn't in fact sort on this page at all. I asked that we remove the button, so we are no longer implying that functionality existed here!

Staff Rates Page Improvement - Under Admin > Rate & Staff Management > Manage Staff Rates page. A client pointed out that this page was really frustrating to use, as all staff, both past and present, were listed alphabetically along the left. If you have or have had over the years a lot of staff, this list can get bananas. The client was having to do a lot of scrolling to access his current people and input their rates. We've made it so that current/ active staff list first, and inactive staff are all organized at the bottom of the list, and marked as inactive. Should make this page easier to use.

System Set Up Wording Change - Under Admin > System Set Up > System Preferences > Branding tab. We've changed the wording pertaining to the optimal top banner parameters.

Timesheets List View - On a  list view of Timesheets, if you show the Posted column, it will show an X or a check mark, depending on the Posted status of the Timesheet. However, it was spotted that the column icon was not matching the factual state of the Timesheet - in other words, there would be an X in the list view, when the Timesheet was in fact Posted. All fixed! Column icon now consistently matches the Timesheet itself.

Company Find Page - One of our clients had set up a custom field to capture the approximate size of the organizations they were storing in fp. However, the system was returning no results when they tried to find an organization by one of these custom values. Dev worked their magic, and all is fixed now.

Batch Name breadcrumb vs. Batch Name field - Batch Name not matching the Batch Name in the breadcrumb, when moving an Invoice between Batches. I think a screenshot is in order for this one! Basically the name of the batch in the blue breadcrumb below, was not properly updating if the batch was changed in the name field. All fixed now!

All Printouts - Printouts showing the word Subtotal as Sub Total. Even though "Subtotal" is one word, all our printouts decided to print it as two. All fixed now!

Reports - Under the Reports module, and the Plan tab > Gross Revenue Forecast Report, we were doubling a value. The top portion of this report provides a summary view of the content within the report. If you had Estimates pulling to this report that both:

• Had an Estimate Approval Status of "Submitted"
• Were associated to an Open Job

The summary view was counting any values in the Revenue Schedule twice. So it made it look like your agency could expect to get let's say $2000 on August 15th, but in fact the agency could only expect $1000. All fixed now!

July 25, 2016

New Schedule View - A slew of improvements to this New Schedule Grid View were released earlier today. All in all, 13 items went out - the majority of which came from most welcome user feedback. 

• Making the left most column compact ie. buttons and padding more narrow.
• Replacement of icons to better show when a button is disabled.
• Adjusting page styling to make it easier to scan task rows horizontally.
• When a new Task is added to a Task Group, it appears at the bottom/ last row of that group (as opposed to the top).
• A tooltip added on the Status of a Task without an Assignee, to clarify why this field is disabled (see screenshot).

​

• Toggle column so users can choose to show/ not show any row to their fp. Portal users (see screenshot).

​

• The addition of an "Add Task" option on any Task row.
• Fix to the horizontal scroll bar.
• Add Task options now become re-enabled when a Schedule drops below 300 Tasks.
• When the Schedule exceeds 300 Tasks, the Task Total changes colour, and makes it clear it is only displaying (for example) 300 or 312 Tasks on the page.

Please keep further feedback coming, so that we can continue to improve the schedule making experience for you and your staff. 

July 20, 2016

Gantt View -We've released 2 improvements to the Gantt view of Schedules this afternoon.

• You can now toggle between a Weekly View and a Monthly View of the Gantt. 
• The Gantt will now give a visual of today.

Both changes can be seen in the screenshot below, and further changes will be released as they become available.

July 11, 2016

Naming of Multi-Job Single Invoices - The last remnants of the word “batch” have been removed from these printouts. Now when you configure your own version of the Multi-Job Single Invoice, or the Multi-Job Single Invoice Expanded,  or when you print either from a multi-job Invoice view, the word Batch will not appear.

And just to offer a refresher on the difference between a Multi-Job Invoice and a Batch Invoice:

Multi-Job Single Invoice/ Multi-Job Invoice Process= The creation of one invoice for one company, for multiple jobs.

Batch Invoice/ Batch Invoice Process= The creation of several stand-alone invoices, which might be for different companies and jobs.

Admin Staff List - This is one of my favourite new items. Users with access to the Admin area, will now be able to see some key information about their active and inactive seats in fp.  Hovering over the New Staff button will show you how many seats you’re using, how many have been used in the past, how many are on your account in total, and how many are available to be used. 

July 4, 2016

Task Dependencies -With the release of the new schedule grid view in April, and the Gantt view in May, Task dependencies are the latest step in our vision to make the planning of work easier, faster and more visual. Please review this article for a more detailed introduction as to how you can add and view these connections between Tasks that live on your fp. Schedules:Introduction to Task Dependencies  

Login Summary Email - There is an email alert that you can choose to receive daily, upon logging into your fp. system. This Login Summary email contains information on Tasks, but up until now really operated as just a list. This email has now been improved, to include links back to the listed Task. Just click and be taken to that Task, rather than searching based on Task name or number.

June 24, 2016

Expenses Tab on Jobs -We’ve adjusted what appears on this tab of a Job. This tab now includes information on the Invoiced Amount of External and Internal Expenses on the Job.

Wording Improvements to Portal User Permissions, Alerts & Portal Itself - The wording pertaining to permissions and alerts for portal users was pretty unclear, and we’ve done our best to make improvements.

For example, we had this sentence to describe the alert a portal user would see if a File was added:

“An event is sent to all subscribed Job Contacts when a file is added to the Job file tree. “ 

This has been re-worded to:

“An alert is sent if you are a Job Contact and a new files is added at the Job level. “

We won’t list all the tweaks here, but know that we’re always glad to make in-system wording more clear, so let us know if you see something fishy.

External Expense Forms -We were being inconsistent on External Expense pages when it came to the naming of the Supplier field. In a few places it was Supplier/ Vendor, and in others, just Supplier. We’re now working towards having any field that shows as “Supplier” be re-named to “Supplier/ Vendor.”

June 22, 2016

View Cost, Billable & Margins - On any Estimate, a button called View Cost, Billable & Margins is available on the Services tab. Clicking this button gives you a view into your Estimate level financials. One of our eagle eyed users pointed out that we were displaying one column’s worth of data in brackets, even though those values were not representing negative values. 

Job Find Page - At the request of one of our users, we’ve made a helpful update to the Job Find screen. The field for Company Name, is now a look-ahead, and can have multiple selections. This should make searching for Jobs by a particular client or clients all the friendlier.

Dashboard Customization options - At the request of a user, we’ve allowed for the Alerts tile to be a selectable option for Dashboard tiles with a larger share of horizontal screen real estate. We also heard from users that they were wanting to sort by financial values, when showing a wider version of the Jobs tile on their Dashboards. At this time, it is not an option to sort the Jobs tile by Estimated, Actual or Invoiced values, when on your Dashboard. You can absolutely do this by using the Job Find though. Contact us with questions.

External Expense Forms - At the suggestion of one of our users, we’ve added a Save & Continue option to all of the External Expense forms. I know this will be a feature I use whenever I’m filling in a lengthy and fiddly expense form! The Save & Continue button can be found in the bottom right of the Add Expense, Fill Expense, and Insertion Order forms.

June 8, 2016

Payment Notes - On an Invoice, if you added hard returns/ line spaces into the Payment Notes area, they would display fine when in edit mode, but then on save, appear as though the system had failed to capture them. This is now resolved, so that users will see in both edit an save mode, any line spaces they add to this optional section on Invoices.

Timesheets Tab on Jobs - Further to some welcome user feedback. we’ve made changes to the content on the Timesheets tab of a Job. On this tab you will now not only see the Invoice to which the time may have been applied, but also the Invoiced Amount of the Timesheet.

Show/ No-Show $0.00 Rows on Invoices - Our Support team was hearing concerns from users on how we were handling blank line items on Invoice printouts. Moving forward, the Invoice (Printout) will behave in the following way:

(i) Rows that are blank/ empty in the Invoice columnwill notshow on the printout;

(ii) Rows that have a $0.00 value in the Invoice columnwillprint as a $0.00 row by default;

(iii) Users can configure any of the Invoice printouts toNOTprint $0.00 rows;

(iv) The option to show/ not show $0.00 rows lives in the block type called “Invoice Details”

Please note this change only applies to the printout called Invoice (Printout), which is used for Interim, Final and Batch Invoices. Not applicable to Deposits or Multi-Job Single Invoice printouts.

May 26, 2016

Timesheet Find Page - On the Timesheet Find page, the Staff Name field is now a multi-select. Previously you could only pick all or one member of your team. This should enable users to get a nice list of timesheets for only certain members of their team.

Contact Add/ Edit Page - We've given the phone extension field some more screen real estate when adding or editing Contacts. Should make things easier when trying to input phone extensions that are 3 digits or more.

Line Spacing in Multi-Job Single Invoice Descriptions - When adding or editing the description for a multi-job single invoice (aka one invoice on which you're invoicing several Jobs for the same Company or Project) you can now add AND see AND successfully print any line spaces/ hard returns you add to that description. Hooray for formatting!

Print Parameters button on Deposit Invoices - We've beefed up the options within the Print Parameters of Deposit Invoices. You will now be able to input alternate information for the Deposit, and have that display on the resulting printout.

Batch Invoice Wizard - Now, when you create a Batch of Invoices, before you choose to add an Invoice to the Batch, you can see the potential content of that Invoice. Hovering over the "+" icon (which is shown on Step 2 of the Batch Add Wizard) will display if there are any uninvoiced timesheets or expenses on this Job - just like you see when creating a single invoice. Very cool.

Batch/ Multi-Job Invoices - If and when you create these kinds of invoices from the Company level, the system will only pull Jobs that are in an active state, to use as the basis for the Invoices.

Post Timesheet Day - This function has been removed from the Reports area of the system. You can still complete this function via the Timesheets modules.

May 17, 2016

Top Navigation Bar Change - In your fp. system, hovering over the question mark icon produces a drop down menu of helpful links - and now there's one more in the mix! Use this menu to quickly navigate to our most excellent and up-to-date webinar web page, your source for upcoming sessions, and recordings of past sessions.

Estimate Details button on Schedules - On Schedules that are connected to an Estimate, or Estimate and Job, an "Estimate Details" button shows in the top right of that Schedule. Up until today, that button was navigating you to the Schedule tab of the Estimate. This button will now navigate you to the Services tab of the Estimate, where you can see your service and expense rows, and their associated values. 

May 10, 2016

Contact Find page - We've made a cool update to the method by which you can search for Contacts in your system. You can now look for Contacts, based on the content of any Company level Custom Fields you have created. 

May 4, 2016

New Gantt View - We've released version 1 of our new Gantt View. For now, this view is read only. Over the coming months we will be introducing tasking features that will drive an improved experience for all of our users. 

May 2, 2016

External Expense descriptions - Should your Estimate/ Job have External Expenses, and those expense line items have descriptions, when you use the "+" icon on the Job Financials tab to create an expense form for that expense row, the descriptions comes across now too. They'll appear on the line item description field on the expense form.

Timesheet List view - Now when you've performed a timesheet find, and are in the list view, when you go into Manage Columns you'll see a new option to show the Invoiced Amount of the particular timesheet. 

Subscriptions tab wording fixes - One of our eagle-eyed clients noticed that we had some out of date wording/ incorrect when it came to task alerts. The wording pertaining to the affected alert descriptions is now all fixed. 

Profit Analysis Report - This will be a good one for client systems that have more than one Office - you can now choose to filter the Profit Analysis by Office. This option is right at the top of the report parameters area, and like other areas with an Office option, picking none or neither (in a multi-office scenario) means you want to show content for all Offices.

April 26, 2016

Invoice Find & List View - You can now search for Invoices by the email address of the contact on that Invoice. You can also choose to show contact email in the list view through the use of Manage Columns, and print this content when you push to PDF or CSV. 

New Schedule View Improvement - We heard your feedback, and thank you for sharing it. Now, when you click into the Task Tags & Description area on a Schedule, your cursor will focus into the description area, rather than auto-open and display a list of Tags. 

April 20, 2016

New Schedule View - Creating and editing Schedules in Function Point is getting faster, easier and better! Now the “Preview New Schedule” tab that you've been enjoying is your default view, full of cool features including:

• In-line editing with the ability to tab across editable fields in your Schedule
• Placeholder text to indicate information you may still need to add to your Schedule
• The ability to copy both Task Groups & individual Tasks right on the Schedule
• One-button click to print all Schedule data, and the option to print only a selection of rows

These enhancements will improve the performance and speed to both load and edit your Schedules. For now, bulk editing is accessible by clicking the Bulk Edit button.

Watch a recorded webinar here, from our fp. Expert Series. This session covers Project and Task Management best practices, and includes the use of the new schedule view:fp. Expert Webinar Recording

New Gantt View Coming Soon

We're also excited to announce that we’ll be introducing a new Gantt view and tasking features over the coming months. Make sure to keep an eye out for:

• A read-only Gantt view coming in approximately two weeks, and it's just the start!
• Predecessor dependencies
• Meeting tasks (allowing multiple people to be assigned to an event-like task)
• Milestone tasks
• Recurring tasks
• Drag-and-drop and task editing capabilities to be introduced to the Gantt view as they are ready

April 7, 2016

Project Statuses - Now if and when you create new Project Statuses in List Maintenance, they will operate the same as the default status of "Open." This means that you will be able to associate any existing Estimates in your system back to a Project that is using your newly named status. 

New Tabs on Job pages- To make viewing your Job level financial data even easier to access and view, we've added two more tabs to all Job pages. Now, along with a Summary tab, Contacts tab, etc., you will see a tab for Expenses, and another tab for Timesheets. See screenshot below. 

April 4, 2016

Company Find & List View - Further to a request from our very own staff members, we have added the option to find companies in your system by the field called 'Default AR Account.' You can also choose to show this field in the on-screen list view via Manage Columns, and this content will show on list printouts or csv exports. 

Schedules View - Free floating Tasks are now organized under a group called 'Ungrouped Tasks' - was previously labeled as No Task Group. 

March 7, 2016

Gross Revenue & Outsourced Revenue Reports - Under Reports > Plan tab, there are 3 reports that pull from Estimate level Revenue Schedules - the Net Revenue Forecast, Gross Revenue Forecast and Outsourced Revenue Forecast. Up until now, only the Net Revenue report had a start month picker to help users narrow down report results. Now, all 3 reports include this option.

Estimate Find Page - On the Estimate find page, you've been able to find Estimates that do have an approved Revenue Schedule. If you wanted to find Estimates without an approved schedule, you could sort of reverse engineer this, by finding all Estimates, and then filtering data using the Manage Columns option(s). Now, on the Estimate find page, you'll see the option to find Estimates "with approved Schedules" or "without approved Schedules."

Job Pages - On any Job page, you see a series of tabs - ie. Summary, Contacts, & Invoices. On the Invoices tab, the content of a column labeled "Name" was displaying the name of the Job (which you probably already know, given that you're on the Job page). This column content and label has been changed to instead display "Invoice Name".

February 10, 2016

Profit Analysis Report - We've improved the behaviour of the parameters form that appears on screen when you choose to generate this report. Previous to this change, if you had chosen to show the "Advanced Options", one would then have to drag the dialog up on your screen in order to see the Submit button. Now the dialog will adjust so that you can still easily access this button. 

Task Find - If you choose to find Tasks by the person to whom the Task is assigned (the "Assigned To" field) you'll see that the list of staff names that appears, now shows you your active staff before listing your inactive staff. 

Invoice Find - When using the Invoice Find page, you can now search for invoices by their Batch Number. This field is on the left side of the find page, below the field for Invoice Name, and above the field for Batch Name. 

February 9, 2016

Preview New Schedule tab - New functionality has been released today. More still to come within the next 2 weeks. On this tab you can now: (i) In-line edit Task Descriptions and task Tags; (ii) Select a Task, multiple Tasks, or Task Group, and delete. Changes made on the Preview New Schedule tab will be reflected on the regular Schedule tab, and vice versa. 

February 1, 2016

Multiple Invoice Creation Routines - We've made some minor UI and wording changes, in an effort to better distinguish the creation of a Batch Invoice, versus the creation of a Multi-Job Single Invoice. 

January 28, 2016

Estimate, Actual & Invoiced Dollars by Company, Project & Job Report - A couple of new filters have been added to this report. (i) When you generate this report, look for a tick box which should be used in conjunction with the date range fields, that will enable you to limit the report results to only those jobs that have timesheets or expenses that fall within the selected date range. And (ii) you will now see date range fields for Job Opened Date. Input dates here to limit report results to Jobs opened within that range.

January 22, 2016

It’s not even Christmas, but we bring you more enhancement gifts. You’re welcome :)

Purchase Order & Request for Quote printouts - If you do not have a fax number on your Office company address record, then a blank field for “FAX” will no longer appear when you print these documents.

Cost Centers description - In the Admin area, under System Set Up > System Preferences, you can turn on a feature called Cost Centers. The on-screen description for this feature was out of date, and has now been updated to accurately reflect the functionality. 

External Expense List printout - When on an external expense page, there is a printout option for External Expense List. This printout displays supplier company code, project code, job name, service group, service type, supplier name and billable amount, in a PDF format. We’ve now added a new option for this printout, that can you control via the Admin > Printing Preferences area. Here, you can adjust the printout to show Total values, rather than Billable, and/ or adjust the printout to show both.

Profit Analysis Report - Another new filter has been added to this powerful report. When you generate this report, under the Advanced Options, you will now see date range fields for Job Opened Date. Input dates here to limit report results to Jobs opened within that range.

Project Level Estimate printout - We’ve made a bunch of improvements to this printout, and now provide many more options by which you can configure this printout.

Standard Header (Office address display)

• If no fax number on record, the field “FAX” no longer shows.

Project Header block

• You can now - (i) Show Client (project) PO Number; (ii) Show or not show Project Name; (iii) Re-name "Project Name" to something else you prefer to display on the printout; (iv) Re-name "Date" to something else you prefer this to read as; (v) Tick box through which you can choose to have the printout use the Revision Date on the printout. Until now, the project level estimate could only show the project creation date.

Project Estimates block

• Tick a box to Show Taxes on the printout.

Terms block

• Tick a box to Show Tax Number
• Rename the field "Terms and Conditions" to something else of your choosing.

January 21, 2016

The week of wins continues! We have released even more product enhancements to you. More details listed below:

Purchase Order printout - Through the Printing Preference setting for the PO printout, you can now choose to display the name of the client company on the associated Job on the printout.

Brief Template form Key Contact field - We’ve made a change so that the field called Key Contact is no longer set to be required. This is true if you are adding a Brief within your fp. system, as well as if you are an fp. Portal user, adding a Brief Request via the portal tool.

Deposit tab helpers - If you add a Deposit Invoice to the Company, Project or Job level, this invoice will store in a tab called Deposits for that Company, Project or Job. We were hearing from our clients that the content of the columns here was not abundantly clear, so we’ve added hover over helpers. You can now see a tip for “Balance” (the payment balance or amount owed by the client to your agency) and “Applied” (the amount that has been used of this deposit against an interim or final invoice). Learn more here about using Deposit Invoices:Creating Deposit Invoices

Task List View -We've done a few things here that should make data more clear, and provide more data options pertaining to tasks. The column called "%" has been re-labeled to Percent (Pct) Complete. We've also added the option to view the task Variance Percentage - variance being the difference between the amount of time estimated for this task, versus the amount of time tracked to it. Use the Mange Columns option from the Task list view to decide which columns to display and in what order. This data will also push to PDF and CSV reports for Tasks.

Salutation field on Contacts - You have always been able to associate a Contact in your system to one of a set of pre-made salutations (ie. Mr. or Mrs.). We’ve now added this menu into the List Maintenance area, so that you can create your own Contact Salutations, or edit/ de-activate those that are there currently. 

Display of Office website address on client facing printouts - If your Office address includes your website address, it will show on the standard client facing printouts. However, the web address was including “http” content in the printout, which wasn’t as visually pleasing as it could be. As such, we’ve worked some magic so that this portion of your web address will no longer show on printouts you send out, such as invoices and estimates.

Invoice Find page - On the Invoice Find page, you can search for invoices by the field called Batch Name. This field has had a slight change of location on the find page. It now lives under the field for Invoice Name, mid page on the left side column.

January 18, 2016

We’re in the midst of a high velocity sprint, resulting in heaps of small (but mighty!) changes being released to you. 

Profit Analysis Report - A new filter has been added to this powerful report. When you generate this report, look for a tick box which should be used in conjunction with the date range fields, that will enable you to limit the report results to only those jobs that have timesheets or expenses that fall within the selected date range.

Email Flagged Action page - This page had mysteriously missed out on look & feel updates to the user interface that we’d rolled out in June 2015. All fixed now!

External Expense Terms field size - Client with lengthy expense terms (aka PO Disclaimer) found that this data was really hogging screen real estate when trying to view POs or External Expenses in their system. We’ve upgraded the terms field on this form, so that it only displays a maximum of 3 rows, and allows any further rows to be viewed via a scroll bar.

Company Find page - You can now search for Companies in your system by another field - Rate Category. You can also choose to see this information as a column in your list view of Companies, via the Manage Columns button.

Job List View - When you’re in a Job list view, and use the Manage Columns feature, you can now choose to show Project Budget data. This will certainly make it easy to assess the health of jobs that are a part of a project or campaign, as you now compare job financials against the overall budget to perform all the work within the project.

Estimate List View - You’ve always been able to find Estimates in your system by the Estimate/ Main Contact field, but you were not able to display this field in the estimate list view. Well times have changed! Please enjoy the newfound ability to both search by and display the Estimate Contact information.

Invoice Find & List view - You can now search for Invoices in your system by 2 new fields - Company Code, and Job Status. You can also choose to see these columns in your list view of Invoices, via the Manage Columns button.

Brief Find page - We’ve made finding completed Briefs (aka Opportunities) in your system a lot easier. On the Brief Find page, the field for Brief Type (sometimes re-labeled as Brief Template or Job Type) is now in a type-ahead format. Meaning, you can enter some portion of the type name to see a list of close matches, or just click the magnifying glass to see all the brief types within your system from which a Brief may have been created.

Estimate Status Change notices - In an effort to make fp. all the more friendly to new and current users, we’ve clarified the wording that appears on screen when you move an Estimate to either an Approved or Declined status. If you make changes to estimates that are in these statuses, those changes will save as revised versions of the estimate. Revised version save under their own tab on the Estimate, and you can revert to historical versions of the Estimate, so long as no time has been tracked to the associated Job.

Note & Email Template area - This section of the Admin area, allows you to create as many templates as you wish, which can then be used when creating notes, or using the “Notify Client” buttons (on estimates and invoices) in your system. This area incorrectly showed the option to make templates as Text or HTML, when in fact they can only be text at this time. This area is now cleaned up, and no longer displaying non-existing functionality.

Contact titles - When adding or editing Contacts, there is an optional field for Title. This information though, could only be seen when in edit mode of a Contact page. No more! If a Contact in your system has an associated Title, you can now see this Title on a Contact page, without the need to be in edit mode for that Contact.

Schedule to Estimate workflow - We’ve got 2 cool improvements here - (1) When you generate an Estimate from a Schedule, you will now land on the Estimate Services tab, rather than the Basic Info tab. (2) The button from which you generate an Estimate from a Schedule, has been re-labeled to read “Add Estimate & Job”. This button formerly read as “Add Estimate” but the button does in fact also create a Job for you when clicked. Learn more about this workflow here:Create an Estimate & Job From a Schedule

Job Costing - Job Costing is a feature many clients use to bulk add time across different time trackable services on their Jobs. A column on this page was mislabelled as “Cost” when it in fact was displaying a total value of hours entered, times the billable rate associated to that service. This column is now labeled as “Total”. 

Invoice printouts - Your fp. system can generate 4 types of Invoice printouts - Deposit, Interim or Final, Batch and Batch Expanded. Now on each of these printouts, you have the option to not show payment terms. Much as we recommend you do have such terms (ie. Net 30, Net 60, Due Upon Receipt) we understand your need for flexibility. 

Cost Rates availability - Creating a Cost Rate Card, and adding hourly wage data to your staff pages, is an excellent way to capture and track your agency costs. Should you create a rate card, and mark it as your Cost Rate, you will only be able to see it via the Admin area. This rate will no longer appear as an option when creating or editing Estimates, or when associating a Company to one of your billable value rate cards. 

Batch Status/ Expanded Summary report - From the resulting list view of a Job Find, you will see a dropdown menu of available reports, one of which is the Batch Status/ Expanded Summary report. When pulling this report, you can now limit the results to only invoiced and/ or only non-invoiced time and expenses. Invoiced time and expenses will continue to be marked with an asterisk.

January 15, 2016

New Schedules Preview View v4 -What began in October 2015 as a view-only version of our new Schedule, now offers even more new features to try for yourself.

On this Preview New Schedule tab you can: Copy Tasks, Copy Task Groups, Create New Tasks & Create New Task Groups. You can also (in-line) edit the content of Task and Task Group names, Task Group descriptions, Services, the Assignee (To), Start and Due Dates and Times, Status, Percent Complete, Estimated Hours, Priority and Milestone.

December 3, 2015

New Schedules Preview View v3 - We just keep putting the fun in functionality! From this Preview tab you can now copy both Tasks and Task Groups. You can also check out the edit in place feature on Task Group names and descriptions.

November 16, 2015

New Schedules Preview View v2 - Cool news! This tab is no longer preview only! From this view you can now copy tasks (woot!), as well as create new Task Groups and Tasks. Anything you create or copy will be available for further editing on the current Schedule tab.

October 27, 2015

Preview the New Schedules View - As of today, you will see a Preview tab on your fp. Schedules. For now, this tab is limited to view only.

October 21, 2015

Estimate Services & Job Financials pages - Scrolling these pages is now much improved. The header row, which displays the column names for the data within these pages, will now stay visible when you scroll down to view the page data. A small but impactful change, especially for larger scopes of work in your system.

September 21, 2015

September 18, 2015

Time Tracking App - The new fp. iPhone and Apple Watch time-tracking app is now available for download in the iTunes App Store. For a link to the app on the iTunes site, please click here. 

August 13, 2015

Reports Module - For those of you with access to the Reports module, you will see (what we hope) is clearer wording as to what each report includes, and to what format it will output (ie. PDF, XML). Our goal is make finding and using reports on your data a painless and common practice in your day-to-day use of fp.

Turning Off Page Numbers on Printouts - Up until now, most anything you print from your fp. system has defaulted to include page numbers. There was a work-around to hide them, but we admit it wasn’t a painless process. Well - things have made a change for the better. You will now be able to turn off page numbering without the need to upload a blank brand template. I’ll update this area shortly with a link to a document, but for now, look for the new feature on any printout under Printing Preferences, and the “show details” area.

Printing of Bulk Invoices - Up until now, when printing a batch of invoices, the system would not give you an option of printout layout to use. Those days are done! Now, when printing a batch of invoices, you will see the option to select from your available invoice printout options.

July 30, 2015

Length of Company & Project Codes - Good news if you’ve ever been frustrated by the limitations on the number of characters that were offered for Company Codes (5) and Project Codes (10). You can now go to town with up to 16 character Company Codes and Project Codes. Enjoy!

Request for Quote (RFQ) Printout - We’ve brought law and order back to the world of the RFQ Printout. This printout will now no longer display any dollar values, as the RFQ tends to happen before any prices have been established.

User Permissions Clean Up - We’ve been able to do some minor tidying of the lengthy list of staff user permissions. The rows for “Configure Shipping” and “Shipping Categories” have been removed, as they no longer carry any weight in the system. Tidy is better.

July 28, 2015

Finding  Companies - When searching for Companies in your fp. system, you will now be able to find by associated Tax Group. So, if you want to find all the companies in your system missing a Tax Group, or all the companies that are associated to a particular state tax, you can do so.

July 27, 2015

Brief Printouts - When printing out a Brief, the Office address was including a label and space for “FAX” regardless of if your office even had a fax line on record. As this was making a few of us mildly bananas, we’ve removed this field, keeping the brief printout in line with other printouts from the system - none of which display a space or label for a Fax number.

July 24, 2015

Dashboard Tile Option for Jobs - One of our eagle eyed clients observed that somewhere along the line, we lost the option to show the Jobs tile on a customized dashboard in a particular shape - namely that the Jobs tile could be 1/3 of the screen width, and full height. This option is now back in play and ready to be used in your custom dashboard builds as you wish.

July 22, 2015

Selecting a Service on a Timesheet - When adding a Timesheet on the Dashboard, and selecting the Service to which you performed work, it wasn’t abundantly clear what was a Service Group, and what was a Service. We’ve now improved the visuals, making it easier to pick the appropriate Service, and keep on diligently tracking your time.

June 29, 2015

Syncing with QuickBooks Online & with fp. Accountant - You will see a new button on Invoices in your fp. system, that will allow you to sever the sync between an exported invoice and QuickBooks. Through the "Stop QuickBooks Sync" button, you will be able to make a change to an invoice in fp. but not have those changes update the same invoice in QuickBooks when you next run a sync. 

Integration with Zapier - Zaps are new even better! You can now get that Company and Contact data flowing both into and out of fp. quicker than ever with Zapier! It's as simple as connecting the apps you use (choose from the 400+ supported ones) to directly move the information either from or to your fp. system. And it's totally free!

Sign-up to use the private version immediately by clicking herehttps://zapier.com/developer/invite/22705/2299010a5bdaa80b6280187e06296cad/

June 1, 2015

A message from our CEO:

TodayI am writing you to let you know about some exciting and important changes with Function Point. OnJune 9, 2015we will be releasing a significant update to the fp. user interface (UI). This is the beginning of a gradual transition to bigger and better things yet to come.

In the past year, our product team, led by Tate Lillies (VP of Product) has worked closely with a number of clients in an effort to understand the issues at the core of your business, and to see how we can continue to evolve our product to best serve you. Our goal is to continue to provide you with a simple but powerful all-in-one financial, planning and workflow tracking solution that provides a clear view into the health of your business.

Over the next year we will be introducing changes that will drive an improved experience for all of our users, including studio staff, traffic managers, agency accountants and owners or management.

I want to thank you for your ongoing business and support. If you have any questions or comments for our team, please let us know. Any feedback that you can provide is extremely valuable, as it helps us to evolve to meet your needs.

I also want to thank the entire fp. team and their commitment each and every day. This is the foundation of our company and we are proud to be in service of you.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Respectfully,

Chris Wilson
CEO and President 

604.731.2522x224
chris@functionpoint.com

April 22, 2015

Custom Fields  - The creation of Custom Fields at the Company and Contact levels of your fp. system has always been a great way to capture additional data about your clients, vendors and prospects. Adding and managing these fields is now easier than ever, thanks to a well-deserved make-over on this CRM feature. Navigate over to your ADMIN area, and look under System Set Up > Custom Fields to see for yourself.

March 17, 2015

System Access - In keeping with our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, you will see a new login related option in your fp. system. Under your System Preferences there is now an option to restrict access to your system to your own team, preventing access by fp. team members. By default this option will be “on”, meaning that fp. staff can access your system in order to better support and trouble-shoot any technical issues.

Changing this system preference is permission based. In order to change your system setting, you will need an Administrator permission called Update Permissions. Please direct questions tosupport@functionpoint.com

February 7, 2015

QuickBooks Online - When using our integration tool to QuickBooks Online, payments will now sync back to fp. when a full sync is performed.

If you would like to discuss pricing for QuickBooks Online, and have this added to your account, please contactsales@functionpoint.com

November 21, 2014

Finding External Expenses - When performing a find for the external expenses in your system, you are now able to search by a new parameter called Expense View. This field allows you to narrow your search to one or more of the external expense form options, including Insertion Order and Fill Expense Form. Once on the list view, you can also use the Manage Columns feature to include this data on screen and in printouts.
 
Option to Choose No Accounting Package - Historically in fp. if you wanted to create invoices and expenses, you needed to select for the available accounting packages in the Office Preferences area. You now can choose a Manual Entry option, not have to fill in a chart of accounts, and have all the invoice and expense creation functionality, as well as the option to mark those invoices and expenses as posted or exported.

October 30, 2014

Notes - Notes have always been a great way to capture records of calls, conversations, meeting minutes and even email correspondence. Although notes are associated to a company record, you now have the ability to move that note to another company, contact or job as needed.

Estimates - The backend code of the estimates module has been upgraded. The most visible difference is that the re-ordering of line items is now on the left hand side, keeping consistent with other modules that allow drag and drop line changes.

October 27, 2014

Email Alerts - If you have alert subscriptions within fp. that come via email, you may have noticed an improved look and feel to many these messages in the past week. The remaining emails are being updated right now, and will be out soon. 

October 1, 2014

Batch Invoice Exports - Clients who use QB for Mac or Xero as their accounting packages, can now export batch invoices.

Staff Changes to Estimates - When and if you ever need to change the AE, Client Lead, or Lead Creative on an Approved Estimate, the system will automatically add those staff as Job Contacts to the associated Job.

Portal User Password -  When and if you change the password for one of your fp.Portal users, the system will now display a confirmation message of that change.

Adding Notes - The Note Category field will now accurately display as a required (highlighted in yellow) field. Choose a default category in your List Maintenance area.

Adding Estimates - The Estimate Terms field will now accurately display as a required (highlighted in yellow) field. Choose a default set of terms in your List Maintenance area.

Service Rates & Markups - In this section of your ADMIN area, any services or expenses that are no longer active/ in-use, will now display in a different font colour.

Accounting Package Options - You now have the option to choose “Manual Entry” as an Accounting Package option, back in the Office Preferences area of your ADMIN area. This means that clients who do not push invoices or expenses from fp. to an accounting system, can still mark invoices and expenses as posted or exported, as part of an approval routine.

September 15th, 2014

Type-ahead search  - Added to All of the Following
This is a replacement of previous "smart-search" functionality. Doing this makes search more user friendly.
Fields affected are:

• Notes - (Contact To) (Company Name) (Job Name)
• Briefs - (Key Contact) (Estimate Name)
• Estimates - (Brief Name)
• Jobs - (Batch Name)
• External Expense (Supplier Name)
• Timesheets (Task) (Batch Name)
• Invoices (Batch Name) (Invoice Contact)

Replacement of staff drop-downs. Doing this makes searching for items related to both current and inactive staff much simpler.
Fields affected are:

• Timesheet Find (created by) (Job AE)
• Note Find (created by)
• Task Find (assigned to) (assigned by) (Created By)
• Project Find (created by)
• Estimate Find (approved by) (declined by) (created by) (AE)
• Job Find (created by) (AE)
• External Expense Find (created by)
• Internal Expense Find (created by)
• Invoice Find (AE) (Created By)
• Schedule Find (Managed by)
• Company Find (AE)
• Contact Find (Created By) (AE)
• Brief Find (Created By) (AE)

Separation of status and action buttons for financial exports:

• Separating the status from the action makes it easier for users to understand exactly what has happened to an invoice or expense export.
• In order to allow fp.Accountant users to be able to make manual adjustments there is a new status "Manually Exported" being introduced.
• This will not affect previous expenses or invoices that have manually been set to "Exported" - it will be a new status moving forward.

August 17th, 2014

Captcha at Login Page - Should you fail to type your password correctly 3 times, you'll be asked to type in a captcha. How this information displays has been improved, making it easier to access fp. once you type in your password correctly. 

August 11th, 2014

Quick Search - This handy search function in the top right of your screen, will now remember by what module you last searched, saving you having to pick one (notes, jobs, estimates etc) each time. 

August 6th, 2014

Staff Changes – Need to set a staff person as no longer an active fp. user? Changing the status of a staff person in your ADMIN area, now automatically mimics that change on the contact details page for that person.

Staff Associated to Jobs – Changing the AE, Client Lead, and/ or Lead Creative on an estimate, will now automatically add those staff as Job Contacts to that job.

Finding Invoices – You now have more fields by which you can search for invoices in your system.  Search by Job Type, Job Category, or Work Type, to get the list view you need.

Job List Views – Job related reports are now easier to choose from, as you will now see all the available reports named and listed in a drop down menu, rather than displaying as individual icons.  

Show Number of Days Open on Job List Views – Using the Manage Columns button on a job list view, will provide the option to display the number of days a job has been open (today’s date minus the job creation date).

Exporting to .csv -  There has always been the option to push data to .csv (aka comma separated value, best opened with Excel) but you can now choose to only push the data you choose. Use the Manage Columns button from any list view to display only the data you need, and in the column order of your choosing. Then from the CSV drop down, choose to just Export Current View.

Job Find List Views - Using the Manage Columns button, you can choose to add a column called "Days Open" to display on the list view as you see fit. 

Task Report  -  Under the Reports module, provided you have the required permissions, you'll see a new task related report. Named the Staff Task Assignment report, you are able to see tasks by a variety of date ranges, and statuses, across your team members.

July 2014

Refreshed Look to Dashboard Interface - Quick Search now at top of page, Click fp. do more to get back to your Dashboard, click the Dashboard icon to create and manage new Dashboards, System Alerts now display at the top of page in orange.

Manage Taxes Updated  

Manage Services/ Service Groups Updated 

Job Costing Updated

The Work Calendar Updated 

April 2014

Find & List View Changes + Job Financial Views

March 2014

Brief (Request) Creation Upgrades 

January 2014

Expense Form Makeover & more

December 2013

List Maintenance Makeover & Improved Project Terms 

October 2013

New Invoicing Module 

August 2013

Business Intelligence Visuals for the Dashboard & more -click here for more details

July 2013

Email Integration