As always, here’s an overview of some of the updates we’ve been working on this past week! Aside from the continued improvements and work being done on the Projects module and our new JIRA integration that’s nearly ready, this is a quick list of some other improvements:
Request your client’s approval, seamlessly: The signoffs tool is a great way for you to request a client’s approval as you work through projects and tickets with them. Before this update, it wasn't possible to create and send the signoff as part of a status progression. Now, you can automate your workflows even more by configuring signoff creation to occur within a project or issue status change!
Special Rates for Tasks in Retainers:�That's right - it is now possible to specify the billable rate to be used when work is logged against a task within a contract/retainer. Of course, if you don't configure a rate then the task will continue to use the rate set on the retainer. This enhancement is especially handy for those using Post-paid retainers where each task might relate to a different level of service or expertise, warranting the need for unique rates on each task.
Search your inbox more easily: This update will give your inbox screen a lot more functionality, similar to request inboxes, when it comes to searching for an activity/email by subject.
Handling tasks on non-billable issues/tickets: We recently made it possible for non-billable (Time only) issues to always have their time logged as non-billable. This also applies to tasks within the issue. The hiccup we've addressed here is that converting the issue back to billable didn't update the tasks - they were still set as non-billable so any time on them remained non-billable too. This has been fixed now so the tasks stay in step with the issue budget setting.
Better total info when editing a job or milestone budget:�As part of the improvements to the interface with editing budgets in a project plan, we've also added a Total value to the bottom of the modal to help explain the total cost of the job/milestone/task including materials, where applicable.
Invoicing retainer periods with zero excess:�A couple of you noticed a quirk with the retainer invoicing process whereby some periods were showing up with $0 excess to be invoiced. This was an anomaly with the system being too clever when comparing the amount invoiced with the amount of work done, and we've now sorted it out to ensure those periods don't keep popping up with nothing to invoice!�
Quotes module - Ability to "Show ID with Title":�As per most features in Accelo, showing the ID of the object alongside the title can be quite helpful. This wasn't possible with the Quotes module though, but we have just improved that now.�
Allowing email capture to use reply-to address as well:�Accelo's email capture system is very powerful, but it does have some important limitations and conditions to be able to run smoothly. One limitation, which we have just improved, was the reliance on using the "From" details of an email when working out whether to capture it. Some Accelo users need to capture requests (and potentially other emails) using the *Reply-to* header address as an alternative to the *From* header address, so we've opened up this option via some new preferences in the Admin > Activities & Emails > Settings screen.
