Jobs / opportunities

Jobs and opportunities are the main work areas of Synergist. All time, materials, purchases, estimates, quotes and invoices need to have a job to link to in order to be entered.

An opportunity is essentially a job that has not yet gone live. As such, a live job cannot be created for a prospect - the prospect it is created for must first be promoted to a client. So, in the main, we will refer to everything here as job. Any major differences for opportunities will be highlighted at the end.

Jobs and opportunities do each have their own section and both can be accessed via the left hand navigation panel under Clients & Jobs:

The list will appear in a new tab, labelled as appropriate, in the main work area of the Synergist interface. The list uses many controls common to lists in Synergist, such as views and filters. Read more about common user interface controls in the overview section for further information on these.

Unless a job is deleted, which is only possible if it has no data associated to it and you have permission to do so, it will always remain on the system. The default view is for all open jobs and quotes.

The new button allows you to either copy an existing job you have ticked or set up a new one from scratch:

From here, you are prompted to select the client who the job is for as well as selecting a template or additional options if relevant (own job number can be set via the additional option concertina, which can be useful when generating an internal job or template with a special number):

You can also set options for what to copy from a template by saving a view in the 'Options view' drop-down in this window.  By default billing plans, quote lines, stages and all estimate lines are copied, but you can amend this, save as a view and set your view to be used by default instead.

Once past this, you will enter into the details screen for the new job - enter description, dates, handler etc. In addition to this, you may also need to input some details for your 1st phase if mandatory fields exist there. (See more information on 'Phases' here). The job won't be created in full with all the tabs until it is saved, at which point the full input form is displayed.  Every job is made up of a common set of tabs. Some tabs are added in addition if you are using certain parts of the system (such as billing plans and stages):

Details:
This is the initial screen you are prompted to fill in when creating a new job. It may contain some mandatory fields (defined in company settings), such as job type, handler, due date etc. and contains all the general information about the job.

Key dates are displayed here - start / due / expected close, along with a change dates button.  This resets all associated dates on the job to new start / due dates and can be used irrespective of any other date controls you may have in place that, for example, derive job and stage dates from phase dates.

The personnel associated with this job are displayed here as well - a client contact and an internal handler can be set, along with the internal team taking ownership for this job.  If the handler selected is in a team, the job will default to that team, but it can be re-assigned to a different team without changing the handler.

Any custom fields that have been set up also appear on this tab.

Sales information, which is generally entered at the opportunity stage is displayed here, often used in pipeline reporting.

It is also on this tab that you choose to mark it as either a template or with a 2 tier structure.

Dashboard:
All the live financial information is displayed on this tab, along with any estimated and quoted values.
There are various views by which the information here can be displayed.
For full information on this tab, please see the article dedicated to the dashboard tab.

Invoices:
Here you will see all the existing invoices, including drafts, credit notes and write offs. New invoices can be created from this screen as well as draft invoices deleted.

Billing plan:
Billing plans are an option that can be switched on within company settings, so may not be displayed on all systems. Here you can map out what and when you intend to invoice. For further information on this, please see the phase level billing plans section.

Phases:
Every job comes with one phase and cannot exist without a phase. It is the phase where all the costs and estimates go and the job holds all these together. You can add and delete phases that have no data on them, but one phase must always remain. On this tab you can view all the phases, get into any phase to edit it and create new phases. Full details on phases themselves can be found in the phases section.

The default view of the phases on a job is a simple list, but you can choose to view them as a Gantt chart of you wish.  There is also a billing plan view that allows you to see all the billing plans from phases, if that is how the billing plan is structured.

For more information on Gantt views read the article here.

Estimate:
Estimates are generated at phase level only. This tab rolls up all the phase estimates into one and allows you to double click into existing estimate lines to edit. The estimate tab show a variety of information on the estimated figures as well as any actuals that have been added. Information on phase level estimating can be found in our estimating section.

A time and bookings view of the estimate provides a simple in-line edit mode and also a view of estimated time vs bookings and timesheets.  Read more about it here.

Phase Quotes / Quote:
Depending on how your system is set up, this tab will be displayed with either of these titles.
Phase Quotes mean that you only have the option to generate quotes at phase level so the tab will display a roll up of the quotes generated there - this is the more typical setup.
Quote, means you have the option to generate quotes here and may also have the option to generate quotes at phase level too - though this is not so typical.
Further information on quoting can be found on phase level quoting in our quoting section.

Pending:
Any pending costs, which would be blocking the job or phase from being final invoiced, can be found here.

Activities:
Any activities that have been filed against the job or phase can be found here. New activities can also be generated here. For full details please see the activities section.

Attachments:
Any existing attachments to the job phase can be viewed, downloaded or deleted from here. New attachments can also be created here.

Schedule:
Stages can be created at job or phase level, but not both. On a 2 tier job they can only be created at phase level. This tab shows a summary of all stages within the job. More detail of this can be found on phase level schedules in our schedules section.

Contacts:
Any additional client contacts that should be could be associated to the job can be added here.

Opportunities vs Jobs:
As already mentioned, an opportunity is simply a job at quote status so as such cannot be promoted to a live for a prospect - only a client - but the setup and fundamentals are the same. However, if an opportunity does not go ahead and never becomes a live job, you can deaden the opportunity. This enables you to close it down, but record the reason it was lost to enable you to report on this if you wish. This field is customisable:

It is also possible to block certain costs going onto an opportunity (such as purchase) until it is a live job. This is done in the company settings, forced/blocked tab: