Change Orders simplified

JobOrder has a complete Change Order system. To enable it, please select System Preferences: Jobs 2: Related Areas displayed in Jobs: 'Change Orders enabled in individual Jobs'.

The complete Change Order system is intended for companies such as construction companies that require detailed approval and management of multiple Change Orders in a single Job. Because the complete Change Order system requires all items added or modified in a Job to be controlled through the Change Order system, managing simple Change Orders can become more effort if it is worth.

If you need occasional Change Orders, it is much simpler to create a new Estimate with a single Phase called 'Change Order for Specific Items', where you replace 'Specific Items' with the details of your specific Change Order.

In that Estimate, add the appropriate Activities and outside Expenses. After the Change Order Estimate has been approved by your Client, go to Jobs and Approve the new Estimate. The Change Order Phase will be added to the Job as a new Phase and you can then schedule the Activities and purchase the outside Expenses. You can then manage and schedule the Job with the new Change Order Phase exactly as you manage and schedule regular Jobs.

Please email if any of this information needs additional clarification.

Victor Siegle

JobOrder is ingenious.

Information about JobOrder and Snow Leopard

Apple's latest operating system release, Macintosh OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") is now available.

Please DO NOT install Macintosh OS X 10.6 on Macintosh computers running JobOrder at the present time.

Please DO NOT RUN JobOrder on new Macintosh computers preinstalled with Macintosh OS X 10.6.

Apple has changed some System privileges in the Library/Application Support folder that affect 4D, our development language.

We will post more information soon as we either have a workaround or more information about an upgrade. This information is current at 3:00 PM on Friday, August 28, 2009.

Please call or email if you have any questions.

Victor Siegle

Apple, Mac, OS X, and Snow Leopard are all registered trademarks of Apple Corporation. 4D is a registered trademark of 4D, Inc.

Bank Reconciliation

Bank Reconciliation in JobOrder 2009 is an example of a profound solution to a very complex real-life problem.

Bank Statements can now be reconciled for any period in the 3 current accounting years. JobOrder now stores both the Date of Bank Reconciliation (the date that appears on your bank statement) and the Date of Actual Reconciliation, which is the calendar date when you perform the reconciliation. Items are now color coded to show their reconciliation state, either un-reconciled or reconciled within the date range displayed or reconciled at a date later than the displayed date range. Until you see this feature in action you will not be able to visualize how powerful and useful it will be.

Bank Reconciliation also stores a History of Bank Statement Balances In a new area called 'Bank Reconciliation Snapshot', accessible through JobOrder Accounting.

Bank Reconciliation in JobOrder is an invaluable tool for monitoring cash on hand and resolving cash balance discrepancies. There are, however, several best practice procedures to make reconciling your cash accounts even easier:

Always have your bank statement on hand when reconciling. Reconciling from memory or based on a memo or email cannot match the accuracy of an official statement.

Reconcile as soon as you receive a statement from your bank. Reconciliation is a somewhat tedious, but necessary, exercise. Reconciling in a timely fashion just makes life easier.

Use deposit tickets. Either lump deposits using your own ticket number and store a copy with your receipt from the bank, or wait to create deposits in JobOrder until you have a ticket number from a bank receipt. Sometimes your bank statement will not itemize checks you deposit on your statement. Having a ticket number from your bank to reference in JobOrder makes reconciling deposits that much easier.

Please email if any of this information needs additional clarification.

Victor Siegle

JobOrder - Amplify business intelligence

Work Orders - Configure and Create

Work Orders are a valuable new feature in JobOrder. JobOrder has a powerful feature called Priorities, useful for assigning tasks in order of priority. A JobOrder customer wanted to assign Work Orders to Activities and to maintain a historical record of these Work Orders. By using the 'Terminology' feature of JobOrder to change 'Priorities' to 'Work Orders' we were able to provide them with a powerful Work Order subsystem almost effortlessly.

Go to System Preferences: Priorities and enter the values shown here:

You can create new Work Orders either via the 'Manage Work Orders' Power Tool or directly in an Activity. We will discuss 'Manage Work Orders' first. In the Navigator search box at the top right, enter 'Manage Work Orders' and select it. You will see:

Using the Filters at the top, you can display Activities by Job, Project, Client, Project Manager or Resource.

When you have found the Activity for which you want to create a Work Order, please select it by clicking on it, and then click 'Add a new Work Order for the Selected Activity'.

You will then see a new window to enter the Work Order details:

Generally, you will NOT enter a Resource and will leave the Work Order blank ('Unassigned') at this stage. After entering appropriate information, please click 'Create Work Order'.

The Work Order will be created and a dialog about printing the Work Order will be displayed, as follows:

If you click 'Yes', the regular Custom Form dialog will be displayed and the new Work Order will be printed. Please make sure that you have added an appropriate Custom Form with the Form Name 'Work Order'.

Because the Work Order is a Custom Form, you can create essentially ANY format, fonts, images, and content for your Work Order. Either we can program the Work Order Custom Form for you or you can create your own, by learning to use the tools in the Custom Forms area.

When you return to the 'Manage Work Order' form, you will see the newly created Work Order in the 'Work Orders for selected Activity' grid at the bottom of the first page.

You can use the 'Arrange' tab to assign Work Orders to specific Resources, if necessary, by dragging Work Orders between Resources. The 'Select Resource' popup lists all Active Resources. If you scroll to the bottom of the popup, you will find an 'Unassigned' selection which can be used to show all Work Orders that have not been assigned to specific Resources.

If you leave the 'Manage Work Orders' area and go into the Activities area, either by drilling down through a Job or by going directly to Activities, you will see a tab called "Work Orders'. This will display all the Work Orders that have been created for this Activity.

You can click on a Work Order and click 'Print Selected Work Order' to reprint an existing Work Order.

You can click 'Create Work Orders' to add a new Work Order to this Activity.

You can double-click on an existing Work Order to edit the Work Order. You will see:

This form contains all of the information related to a Work Order.

On the 'Print Fields' tab, JobOrder stores the values from when the Work Order was FIRST created, whether it was printed or not. 'Update Print Fields' will overwrite these values with the current values of the parent Activity.

Please email if any of this information needs additional clarification.

Victor Siegle

JobOrder - Bond with your business

Activity Allocation

An Activity is a component of a Phase, which is a component of a Job. If you think of a Phase as the stages of development of a Job (or a proposed Job, as created through an Estimate), then the Activities are the discrete parts of a Phase. They are the specific things you do, or steps you take, to accomplish a Job. Whereas a Phase may encompass weeks or even months, Activities are often only a few days or hours long.

Every Activity must be attached to a Phase. A Phase could theoretically have no Activities, only Expenses or Materials, but in most Jobs, every Phase will have at least one Activity.

Activities allow you to budget time in advance, to bill for time on completed Jobs, and to compose a work schedule. For this reason, Activities are one of the key ingredients of Jobs, and since Jobs are at the heart of JobOrder, you will likely visit the Activities Area frequently, usually through a Job.

In the process of creating an Estimate or Job, you may not know the detailed Activities that will be created later, but you do know the total number of hours that will be budgeted. JobOrder has recently introduced a concept called Activity Allocation that allows you to split up the total number of hours into specific Activities.

In an Estimate Overview or Job Overview, please select an existing Activity. When you select it, the green area display information about the selected Activity and displays an "Allocate" button. If you select the Allocate button, JobOrder will create a new Activity to use some or all of the budgeted hours of the original Activity. JobOrder will ask you to name the new Activity, will create it automatically, and will then display it for you to allocate some or all hours. The new Activity will have its Budget Hours default to the remaining hours of the original Activity.

After you Accept the new Activity, JobOrder will return to the Overview screen. The original Activity will now be displayed in orange with a "◊" sign in from of the Activity Description and the new Activity will be displayed in green indented below the original Activity. The original Activity will be adjusted to show the remaining Budgeted Hours that have not been allocated.

If you edit the new Activity, a new button called "Activity Allocation" will display the status of all the allocated Activities, as shown here:

Activity Allocation can be very useful if you have only an approximate idea of how much time will be required and want to learn from your actual experience by allocating from a pool of time. This is another good example of how JobOrder includes practical, easy to use features which provide great rewards to management.

Please email if any of this information needs additional clarification.

Victor Siegle

JobOrder – Bliss through knowledge

'To Do Manager' and 'Personal To Do' items

JobOrder has an interesting area called 'Priorities'. The Priorities Area is used to store records for the Prioritizer. A Priority is an Activity that has been assigned the order, precedence, or importance in which it should be completed. Priorities can be assigned to individual resources or can be temporarily left unassigned. You can only create Priorities in the Prioritizer, but you can edit them in the Priorities area. The Prioritizer allows you to manage Priorities by resource and to reassign them to other resources.

Because Activities are always contained in a specific Job, each Priority is, by definition, always connected to a specific Job. But it can be very useful to manage simpler Priorities, not assigned to specific Jobs. JobOrder calls these 'To Do' items and allows you to assign them either to specific resources or to leave them temporarily unassigned.

To Do items are managed in the 'To Do Manager' and in 'To Do Personal' which is a simplified manager designed for use by individuals managing their own To Do list. At the top of this post is a screen shot from JobOrder showing the relationship between Priorities, Work Orders, and To Do items.

In the To Do Manager, you can display To Do lists for 2 resources and you can drag between the 2 resources to reassign To Do items. You can also drag up-and-down an individual's list to reschedule their To Dos. Although To Do items can have an optional 'Date Required', generally To Do items are performed sequentially.

To Do items are a rapidly evolving concept in JobOrder. Please email with any suggestions or enhancement requests.

Victor Siegle

JobOrder is simple.