This new-year round of updates brings some pretty neat improvements to PDF invoicing and some really useful functionality for managing your client retainers.
Inserting custom page breaks into your invoice templates as well as at the point of previewing/publishing an invoice to PDF means you have ultimate control over the look and feel of your client-facing invoices. We've made it easy to insert and remove page breaks at the end of every section/table throughout the invoice. Soon we'll roll this enhancement out for Quote and Purchase PDFs too!
You can now configure your retainers to steal allowance/budget from the subsequent (future) period, if the current period allowance goes into Excess. This triggers when you close the current period. This new setting can be enabled in the Edit Retainer and Edit Retainer Type screen - and it works in conjunction with the current rollover feature (where unused balance can roll into the next period).
For example, a period with 10hrs budgeted hits 13hr 20m usage. When that period is closed, instead of billing for the 3hr 20m excess, Accelo simply takes this time from the next period. So, now the current period budget is 6h 40m.
This means that your custom select and multi-select fields - which usually have a bunch of options in the drop-down - are able to be re-configured, so the ordering of those options can be changed. This saves you from having to delete and re-create the field if the old ordering wasn't practical. Simply drag & drop the options in the custom field config area to update them.
The configuration of a task inside a status progression (a "Create Task Action") and the templating of a task inside a Retainer have both been upgraded with the new look & feel task modal. Stay tuned for more improvements, including the addition of Checklists inside template tasks.
To protect the integrity of your project plan, we now disable the option to delete that row when it, or its children, have been invoiced.
This improvement ensures that private and confidential relationships are still respected despite a BCC recipient being detected during email capture. Previously, a BCC on the email (whether being captured or sent from Accelo) would cause the email to be captured as visible to all, which wasn't ideal when the rest of the From, To and Cc recipients fell under a private or confidential relationship. Now we'll try harder to keep those communications respecting the privacy settings.
To reduce friction for admins who are managing permissions of users - particularly contractors and temporary staff who don't need access to all of your data - we have made it easier to view tasks when you can already view the parent record, such as the milestone, ticket, retainer period, and so on. Previously these users would be able to see the list of tasks on that record, but clicking on the task to view more detail was blocked (unless they have View Tasks permission).
A small but very handy improvement to the process of logging a call activity: Now the main phone for the company will also show in the list of phone numbers when logging a call with a contact.
If you like to toggle the work on your Weekly Timesheet screen to only show certain categories - such as Suggested Work and Committed Tasks - we'll now remember those filters next time you visit the screen, making your time entry experience that little bit better.
We have rolled out a great update for the Timesheet so that you can now move activities/work with ease using a new relocate experience.
Since contacts often keep the same mobile number when changing company (or when associated with multiple companies), we have improved the process of linking an existing contact with a company so that their mobile/cell number will carry across.
To bring the functionality of the retainer configuration area up to parity with Projects and Tickets, you can now copy the Triggers from one retainer type to another when creating or editing your types - which could be a massive time saver for admin users.
