Working with Jobs

Overview

Jobs represent a piece of work that you are doing for a Customer. Sometimes this can be referred to as a Project. Typically you agree with the Customer the terms of the Job (e.g. fixed price or time and materials), then issue Sales Quotes for the various stages of the Job. When you start work on the Job a variety of activities can take place, for example:

•	Workers may be able to book time to the Job.

•	You may want to issue Invoices from the Job.

•	You may want to make purchases and associate them with the Job.

•	You may want Workers to book various expenses to the Job.

•	You may want to issue further quotations from the Job.

The Job Document makes all these activities possible, and is very convenient for accessing all information and transactions for a particular Job in a single place.

Using Jobs gives you some great advantages over simply issuing Transactional Documents, such as Quotes, and Invoices in a ad-hoc manor. Some of these advantages are:

•	All time, purchases and expenses booked to the Job can be seen in one place, on the Job's Booked Items table.

•	You can see at a glance which booked items have been Invoiced, and which have not.

•	You can easily Invoice/Quote from the non-invoiced Line Items.

•	You can easily List all Transactional Documents associated with the Job, such as overdue and open invoices.

•	You can instantly report on the Job's Profitability, Progress, and Estimates vs Actuals figures.

I hope we have said enough to convince you that Jobs are quite useful!

IMPORTANT: If you want to work with Jobs you need the Job column enabled on Transactional Documents. This is done in Job Configuration, see Configuring Jobs.

Prerequisites

Using salesorder.com the basics

Working with Customers

Working with Transactional Documents

Working with Items

Entering and Editing

Creating a new Customer Job

Creating a Customer Job is very similar to creating a new Transactional Document. See Creating new Transactions.

The new Job Document is shown below.

New Job Document

Although the Document looks quite complicated, since there are many fields, its is actually quite straightforward since most of the fields are self explanatory. Indeed, you can think of the Job Document as a modified Transactional Document such as Sales Quote.

The main difference is the behaviour of the Booked Items Line Item table. Unlike a normal Transactional Document you cannot add Line Items directly to this table. Instead, the table shows Line Items that have been booked to the Job. For example you can book Line Items to Job from Timesheets, Bills and Expense Claims. This is done via the Job column on the associated Document's Line Item Table. The picture below show's how this works.

Booking Line Items to a Job

So, if you have a number of different staff working on the same Job, they can all book time, expenses and purchases to the Job at the same time, from different locations and the Job Booked Line Item will always show what has been booked.

Creating a Quote for a Job

A Quote can be created for a Job in two ways, either from the Job itself, or alternatively from the associated Customer and then attaching it to the Job.

From the Job

This is done by simply selecting which Line Items you wish to Quote, then clicking on 'Create Sales Quote' for the Actions drop-down. This will create a new Sales Quote containing the selected Line Items. For more information on how to do this see Creating related Documents.

From the Customer

Create the Sales Quote from the associated Customer, for more details see Creating new Transactions. Then from the Job field simply click the icon and select from the Customer's list of Jobs.

Creating an Invoice from a Job

Once the Job has Booked Line Items you can easily create a Sales Invoice from the Line Item Table. This is done by simply selecting which Line Items you wish to Invoice, then clicking on 'Create Sales Invoice' for the Actions drop-down. This will create a new Sales Invoice containing the selected Line Items. For more information on how to do this see Creating related Documents.

Tracking the Invoiced Line Items

The Job keeps track of which Line Items have been Invoiced, and the amount Invoiced. The picture below shows one Line Item has been Invoiced.

Tracking Invoiced Line Items

Tracking Job Profitability and Progress using Quick Reports

As mentioned above another advantage of using Jobs is the ability to track Profitability, Progress and similar metrics relating to the Job. This can be done directly from the Job using Quick Reports. Simply select which report you require from the Quick Reports drop-down, and the report will popup in a separate window for the specific Job. These reports represent a subset of the main Job Reports residing in the Reports section of the Explorer.

Running a Quick report

Job Key Facts

•	Jobs represent work or projects done for your Customers.

•	You can book Line Items to Jobs from Documents such as Expense Claims, Timesheets and Bills.

•	You can create related Documents from Jobs, such as Sales Quotes, and you can also Invoice from the booked Line Items.

•	For Invoices the Job keeps track of which Booked Line Items have been invoiced, and by how much.

•	The Job keeps track of all associated Transactions, these can be accessed easily from the 'Transactions' tab.

•	At any time you can run 'Quick Reports' to give you real-time information about metrics such as Job Profitability and Progress.

Related tasks and information

Configuring Jobs

Working with Sales Quotes

Working with Cash Sales

Working with Sales Invoices

Working with Timesheets

Working with Expense Claims

Working with Bills (Supplier Invoices)

Working with Purchase Orders

Working with Sales Opportunities

Working with Memos

Working with Classifications