v12.4 release overview

General enhancements

Multi-user experience:  Several key areas of the user interface have been enhanced to streamline the workflow where multiple users may potentially be working on the same data.  These areas are:

• Clients
• Jobs
• Opportunites
• Phases
• Activities
• Suppliers

The main changes are:

• Visibility of other users.  If a record is already open a small eye icon appears next to it in the list view.  Hovering your mouse cursor over the icon displays all users who are currently looking at this record.  This information is also displayed within the record in the header area of that record as a row of user avatars next to the eye icon.
• Losing unsaved changes.  Record saves now only occur if you make a change or execute an action that demands a save.  Previously record saving was done more or less continuously, leading to other users losing unsaved changes.
• Warning on loss of unsaved changes.  Inevitably two users will attempt to save changes to the same record at some point.  A new warning message to that effect is now displayed which allows you to refresh the data in your session with the latest version before continuing to make more changes.

Accounts

Revenue recognition: If you are using the feature to post recognised amounts on sales invoices to your accounts package rather than billed amounts there is a new feature to cater for the movement of billed amounts between jobs and phases.  The article dealing with this feature has been updates, read more here.

Xero:  New features for users linking to a Xero accounts database:

• Partner option for cloud sites provides a more permanent link, reducing the need to authenticate with every batch posting exercise.
• Option to include job / phase number in purchase invoice transactions sent to Xero.
• Purchase invoice import feature.  Synergist cloud users can automate the creation of purchase invoices in Synergist from a feed of invoices into Xero from another source.  Read more about setting this up here.

Activities

Details screen enhancements:  Some new fields and labels have been added to the activity input form, including shortcuts to set yourself as the owner and to include / remove yourself from the list of "watchers" - a new term used to replace "Others" to indicate other users who are interested parties on an activity.  Start date / time can now be set in addition to due date / time and duration, and a colour can be assigned to activities for display in the calendar.

Activities and timesheets:  New features allow organisations to assign work to their staff without creating estimates and budgets beforehand.  Requisitions (a type of activity) have allowed this in the past, but now users can create and submit timesheets direct from the requisition.  Read more about the process here.

Batch processing:  The activity list actions button now includes two batch processing options - create and update.  Read more here.

Attachments

New attachment types:  In addition to existing attachments created by either using and html template to create a Synergist document, or browsing your local file system to upload and attach an existing file, this version of Synergist introduces two new types of attachment.

• Cloud attachments.  This feature allows integration with cloud services such as Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Read more here.
• Hyperlinks.  A new attachment type "Link" allows any resource on the web to be stored as a link in Synergist. Read more here. 

Drag and drop:  Attaching files by browsing your local file system now allows drag and drop selection of single files.

Billing plans

Multi-job / phase view:  Several screens in Synergist which display a list of jobs or phases now have a new control to switch to a billing plan view of the selected data.  More information on this display can be found here.

New input options: 

• A more comprehensive quick add feature called quick billing plan has been added, which allows creation of a set of billing plan records for a job or phase.
• Duplicate selected billing plans allows one or more billing plan records to be copied (to the same job or phase).

Read more detail on these new data entry options here.

Calendar bookings

Monthly view:  A new view of calendar data aimed at organisations that need to plan bookings that span several months.

Spread loading:  A system of spreading a quantity of work per day across an extended period by either specifying a total amount of work, or a total number of repeat bookings.

Activities in the calendar:  Now that activities can be assigned a start date as well as an end date it is possible to have them display automatically in the calendar booking system.  This is intended to provide a more Agile workflow, rather than the more waterfall approach of building an estimate and then creating work allocations in the calendar based on the estimate. Read more here. 

Loading view enhancements:  The loading view already allows you to amend calendar bookings, but now it is possible to create new bookings in this interface via drag and drop.

Estimating

Time & bookings interface:  This is a new interface which provides a simple in-line editing view of the estimate.  Estimate lines can be quickly added and amended, and calendar bookings for the estimates.  Read more about this new interface here.

Invoicing

Revenue recognition:  A new option for automatically suggesting a value to recognise based on tick off has been added to the auto-allocate button.  This adds up the recommended chargeable value of any ticked off costs and recognises those amounts per phase.  The difference between these amounts and the billed amount is shown as deferred revenue.

Calculator:  We've added a simple calculator to the financial tab of draft sales invoices to assist with profit calculations.

Batch printing:  Cloud users can now select multiple invoices from the list and create PDFs of them all in a single action via the print button at the top of the list.

Allocating costs:  The interface used for allocating costs to a sales invoice (ticking off) has been overhauled.  Read more about it here.

Jobs & Phases

Dashboard - new tab:  The old Financial tab has been replaced with a new Dashboard tab.  For more information on what this tab displays read here.

Copy quote:  New feature that allows the information in a quote to be re-used on another job by copying it across.  Only quote line information is copied.

Copy phase:  If you wish to copy more than just the quote lines from a job or phase, you can now choose to copy a phase or phases from another job to the current job.  This opens a new interface with options controlling what is copied, very similar to new job creation based on a template, or another job.  See the release notes PDF for a full description.

Stage dates and key stage:  If you create a schedule of stages on a job or phase it is now possible to adjust the dates on all stages by changing the dates on a single "key" stage.  Only one key stage is allowed per schedule.  When you edit the start / due dates on the key stage you will be able to choose which other stages in the schedule are affected - only those prior to the key stage, only those after the key stage, or all stages.

Phase order:  By default phases on a job are displayed in the order they are created.  The phases tab of a job now support drag and drop to allow re-ordering (note this does not affect the job and phase numbers).

Kanban boards

Requisitions:  Requisition activities can now be used as kanban work tickets.

Kanban card enhancements:  Cards in kanban boards are more compact and can show charge code in the case of requisitions.  Colours can be set for each kanban status, which appear as a coloured stripe above each card.

Activity types:  You can control in file maintenance which activity types are available for display on your kanban boards.

Purchases

Consolidated POs:  A consolidated PO is a single document that can be PDFd and sent to a supplier with a single PO number, but which can relate to estimated purchase costs on multiple jobs and phases.  They are created from the purchase estimate list via the new button - select several estimates for the same supplier and choose create consolidated PO from selected estimates.  For more information on consolidated read here.

Quick purchase invoice:  Adding a purchase invoice from the invoices tab of a purchase order has been updated such that you can now enter a reference, and the purchase invoice date.

Purchase invoice allocation:  A search facility has been added to the screen used for selecting which purchase order(s) to allocate to a purchase invoice.

Reporting

Saved & Custom reports:  Selection of data for custom reports is now possible via a similar interface as the standard reports use.  A report view will still be required in order for a custom report to be selected, but ad-hoc selections of data can now be used rather than relying on the view to do all the data selection for you. Read more here. 

New reports available:  The Estimate vs Actual report can now be generated as a PDF.  The Missing Timesheet report can now be generated as a PDF.

Updated reports:  The WIP Aged report, export version, now has an option to split the total WIP by cost type (time, material, purchase).  The default behaviour of the Purchase Invoices Awaited report has been changed such that expenses are now included.

Suppliers

Batch update:  Batch update of suppliers now allows custom fields to be updated

Notes:  The notes field has been moved from the financial tab on suppliers to its own tab.

Timesheets

Copy row:  Weekly timesheet now allows any rows to be copied, not just those with unsubmitted time.

Non-working days:  The background colour of a non-working day column in weekly timesheets is grey, the same as weekends.  Time can still be entered, this is just a visual aid.

Timesheet approval filter by handler:  The approval interface now allows you to select a phase handler as a filter for timesheets displayed for approval.

Timesheet viewing & reversal:  Posted timesheets can now be viewed and if required, reversed in bulk. Read more here.