Project Margin

How profitable are my projects and what is the actual margin?

With the latest VOGSY-release, our new feature provides real-time insight into the calculated and actual project margin.
These margins are displayed on the project card including a detailed explanation of the actual margin per project deliverable.

Project margin and specification per deliverable

Also, it's possible to configure the algorithm that calculates the project weather so it visualizes if a project has a good or bad actual margin. This enables you to anticipate and take the correct actions to maximize project profitability.

For more information, please read this topic in the manual. The manual has a more detailed explanation and provides examples, describing exactly how the margin is calculated.

What's new?

Change allocated resources: create new planning is optional

When a resource allocation is changed, the planning is automatically generated. This could result in the loss of manual changes in the planning.

To prevent this, a new feature is added which allows you to keep the current planning or create a new planning based on the changed allocation:

Keep or create new planning

Planning projects and resources: New columns added

'Will I finish my project on budget?' And - in case of time and material - 'Will I spend all calculated hours?' These questions will be on top of your mind when planning projects and resources.

To give you a better insight into how your budgets will be spent at the end of the project, we introduced new columns in 'Planning projects' and 'Planning resources'. These columns show information which enables you to anticipate and adjust the planning so budgets will not be exceeded or - in case of time and material - prevent the loss of money because you didn't spend (and invoiced) all the calculated hours.

The following columns are added to 'Planning resources' and 'Planning Projects':

• 'Hours in draft until today': The number of hours in draft until today
• 'Planned from tomorrow': The number of hours which are planned from tomorrow.
• 'Hours to plan': How many hours do I need to plan to make sure my budget will be completely spent? 'Hours to plan' is calculated as follows: 'Calculated hours' minus 'Hours spent' minus 'Hours in draft until today' minus 'Planned from tomorrow'. When 'Hours to plan' shows a negative number of hours, there are to many hours planned. When it shows a positive number of hours, the budget (calculated activities) allows you to plan more hours.

Added columns in planning

These columns are available in the following functions:

- Planning Projects

- Planning Resources

- Report Projects (Back Office)

- Report Deliverables (Back Office)

Planning resources: Show available hours

There is a new option in 'Planning resources' which shows the available hours instead of the planned hours. This gives you a detailed view of the available hours of resources.

Availability resources

Plan time off and non-billable hours

A new feature is released which allows you to plan time off and non-billable hours! This will make your planning more realistic and precise. A big advantage is that the planned time off and billable hours are - just like planned hours for projects - synced to your Timesheets!

When tapping on 'Time off / Non-billable hours' in 'Planning resources' or 'My planning' a drop-down shows with a list of absence types and non-billable activities. The items on this list can be maintained with a new Back Office function 'Time off / Non-billable hours'.

Plan Time off / Non-billable hours

New logo!

We proudly present the new VOGSY logo:

We are very happy with it! 😄

What's new?

Create option added in search

A new option is released in the search functionality of VOGSY, which allows you to create persons, organizations, opportunities, and projects right from the search.
Previously you needed to go back to 'Home' and tap on the big orange plus to create new records. Now, it's a lot easier to create for example an organization after you searched for it and concluded that the organization doesn't exist in VOGSY en needs to be created.

Create option in search mode

Filter 'Expected order date' opportunities

It's now possible to filter opportunities by expected order date. This gives you a nice view of which opportunities should have your attention because they will be closed in the specified period.

Filter by expected order date

Remember filter settings

The search mode offers multiple filters and order options. When leaving the search mode by tapping on a card, the applied filter and order were reset. Recently this is solved by saving the filters and order settings and apply them when you return to the search view. This makes it much easier to browse thru search results.

Turn of events for submitted time entries

Submitting time entries is not an optional step in the process of booking time entries. Therefore the notification of event 'Time entries submitted' cannot be muted in the feed configuration. This goes for project managers because they need to approve these time entries, but not for team members or followers of the project. For these users, the notification is optional, but unfortunately could not be muted. From feedback, we've learned that this was desirable. Therefore this event is split into two separate events: 'Time entry submitted for approval' and 'Time entry submitted'. Only event 'Time entry submitted' can be muted.

Submit 'Time entry submitted' is split

Event 'Time entries submitted' improved

When multiple time entries are submitting at once by submitting a week, the text of the event which is generated for approval shows the exact date of the submitted time entries. This helps the project manager approving time entries.

Improved notification of submitted time entries

Planning: Navigate to date

To navigate quickly to a specific date, a date picker is added to 'Planning Projects' and 'Planning resources'. This ables you to jump directly to a selected date without scrolling thru weeks. Button 'Today' navigates back to the current day with one single tap.

Navigate to date

Planning resources: Navigate to project

When drilling down on a resource the line of the resource expands and shows the planned activities on projects. Now you can easily navigate to the project by tapping on the project logo.

Chart 'Resource utilization'

Some nice improvements for chart 'Resource Utilization' are released:

• New filters added which allows you to filter resources by activities and skill levels.
• The list of resources shows only resources which are - or should be - billable
• Information is presented in decimals to give a more precise view of utilization

Improved chart 'Resource utilization'

Show organization of contact persons

When a person is a contact person of an organization, it was hard to find out which organization was related to that contact person. Recently the person view is improved and shows the related organizations of the contact person.

Show organization of contact person

Show budget using sales rate

For each deliverable on a project card, an indicator is displayed which shows the actual utilization of the budget in percentage. This percentage is calculated by comparing the calculated costs with the actual spent costs. This way you can monitor the costs of your projects.
If you want to monitor the budgets by what was agreed with the customer of the project, the calculation of the budget should be using the sales rate of the calculation and spent hours.
A new setting is introduced in function 'Project settings' which allows you to display the budgets using cost rates or sales rates.

Display budget by sales rate or cost rate

Back office: Settings companies/departments

Two new features were added to function 'Companies/departments'.

• The possibility to delete a company or department. This delete option only appears when there are no references to the company or department (like invoices, projects, opportunities).
• A new configuration option which allows you to specify if the company or department can be selected for projects or opportunities. Only companies or departments which are selected will be displayed in the drop-down of field 'Department' in form 'Projects' and 'Opportunity'.

Delete option and new setting for 'Companies/departments'

Information added to reports 'Time entries' and 'Projects'

The following information is added to report 'Time entries':

• Billable hours: the number of billable hours which are booked as billable.
• Sales rate: the actual sales rate when the time entry was booked.
• Cost rate: the actual cost rate when the time entries was booked.

Additional columns are added to report 'Projects' which show the planned hours (in money) per month of the current year.

What's new?

New menu options added

Options 'People', Organizations', 'Opportunities' and 'Projects' are added to the VOGSY menu. Tapping on these options will give you the possibility to explore, search and filter people, organizations, opportunities, and projects.

Items added to the menu

Grid view

From feedback, we've learned that users want to see more cards in one view. Therefore a grid view is introduced which shows smaller cards and a better overview. Tapping on cards of the grid gives you more detailed information.

It's possible to toggle between the grid view and the regular view.

Toggle to show smaller cards

Improved 'My Timesheets'

Based on your valuable feedback we improved feature 'My Timesheet'. It has a brand new look and feel which is much more compact. Also, it's possible to collapse all days to get you a quick and easy insight of all your time entries of the week. 

Collapse all days of Timesheet

Approve multiple time entries at once

Tired of approving each time entry one by one? Now it's possible to approve multiple time entries at once if they are submitted per week.

Approve multiple time entries

Navigate to an employee in resource planning 

To improve navigation in Planning Resources, a new search field is introduced which makes it possible to select a resource and see it's planning in no-time.

Search employee in Planning Resources

Improved charts 'Billability'

Charts 'Billability per employee' and 'Billability per month' have an improved visualization which makes it possible to see the actual and planned hours in one view. This makes it easier to see the deviance between planned and actual hours.

Planned and actual hours in one view

Approvers quote (deputy manager)

A new option is introduced to gives more control over who can approve quotes. Default all employees with role 'Manager' can be selected for approval of quotes. Now you can specify an additional approver per company/department which gives more flexibility in the process of approval.

Add a deputy manager for quote approval

Order and archive items of master tables

Ever wanted to change the order of drop-down items or archive some items?
This month some new features are released which makes it possible to delete and change the order of the following drop-downs:
- Absence type
- Cost (calculation deliverable)
- Job title
- Vat / Sales tax
- Payment condition

The items of these drop-downs are configurable in the back office (see functions in section Master tables).

Delete and order items

Lock on historic time entries

By default, it's possible to change the time sheets of past weeks. This could be rather tricky in a situation that a month or book period is closed and the financial results are reported.
To prevent changing time entries of past weeks, VOGSY has a new feature which gives you the ability to lock historic time entries.

New back office function 'Timesheet setting' is released. With this function, you specify a date which locks the time entries of previous days.
This lock applies to all VOGSY-users except users which have role 'Staff employee'. They can change locked time entries.

Set lock on time entries

New look for organization view!

When you tap on a feed notification or search result of an organization, a brand new view appears:

New organization view on desktop

This new view has a better focus on being actionable instead of just summarizing info.

Maybe you want to call a contact, leave a comment or see if a certain opportunity already exists. This new view helps to achieve business tasks easier.

A nice feature is to create a project or opportunity right from this organization view:

Create opportunity from organization view

Besides making this view more actional, this new UI makes better use of screen space on desktop.

Soon we will develop more views like this, so keep an eye on this blog...

What's new?

This month we released some brand new features and made some great improvements!

Find out what they are in this post!

Improved date picker

Selecting a date in the far past or future took a lot of clicks because it was not possible to jump directly to the required date. 

The date picker is updated and now has the possibility to insert the date (with the keyboard), or by navigating to the required date with the date picker.

Insert date

Date picker

Select approvers for quote

When a quote is submitted for approval, it’s possible to select other employees than the managers. This makes the approval flow more flexible because now there are more options for selecting approvers for your quote.

Select other approvers

Email quote (use Gmail Client)

A nice improvement for sending quotes to the customer: when a quote is sent from VOGSY, a draft mail is generated and directly opened in your Gmail client. This draft email has the same templated subject and body. This gives you the possibility to edit and finetune the mail before sending it to the customer.

Sent quote via draft email

Register absence

How can I track my absence hours? A frequently asked question. There is a new option released in ‘My Timesheets’ which makes this possible. When creating a time entry select ‘Absent’ and choose an absent type to create a time entry for absent hours.

Track absent hours

Approval of absent hours can be configured per employee with setting ‘Absence hours approver’. There are 3 options:

• No approval
• Approval by employee manager 
• Approval by department manager

By default option 'No approval' is activated.

Configure the approval of absent hours

My Timesheets: Submit week

If you want to submit a timesheet, you'll need to submit all days separately. Now, there is a new option’ to submit a week. This action submits the time entries of all days of that week at once.  

Submit timesheet

Specify reason when rejecting time entry

If a time entry is rejected, you can specify the reason why. The employee of the time entry gets notified by a feed item which tells why the time entry is rejected. 

Specify reason when rejecting time entry

Allocate resource: specify hours per day

When allocating a resource to a calculated activity you can specify a day pattern. This pattern is used to automatically plan the hours on the selected days over the specified period.

The day pattern is extended with the option to specify the number of hours of a selected day. This makes it possible to automatically plan 6 hours on Tuesdays en 4 on Fridays. This will eliminate a lot of manual changes afterward because the generated planning meets reality better.

Specify hours in day pattern

Planning Projects: Filter ‘My Projects’

A minor but useful new option is filter 'My Projects' in function 'Planning Projects', which shows only the projects where you are involved in.

Filter 'My Projects'

Pin charts on board with filter settings

Ever felt the need to pin a chart with a particular filter setting so it shows the data for one specific department? Now it's possible! When pinning a chart on a board, the filter settings are saved for that board so the pinned chart always shows the right data!

Create draft invoices for selected period or department

Generating draft invoices is improved by making it possible to select the period which needs to be invoiced. If you specify a period only the time entries (when time and material) and billing periods (when fixed price) within the specified period will be invoiced.

It’s also possible to specify the company or departments for which you want to create draft invoices for.

New filter options in 'Create draft invoices'

Import customer data

To make a rolling start with VOGSY an import is released which enables you to convert your customer data into VOGSY in no-time. There are two import sheets added to section ‘Third party services’ in the back office. These sheets can be filled with customer data and pushed into VOGSY with the VOGSY sheet add-on.

Manage user access

By default, every user in your Google domain can access VOGSY. If you want to have full control of who’s able to access VOGSY, you can change the access permissions:

In function ‘User management’ (Back office), you can activate the option ‘Manually manage users’. This enables you to specify which employee can login to VOGSY. When this option is activated, a new field ‘User’ shows in function ‘Employees’ which determines if the employee is a VOGSY-user and can login to VOGSY.

Manage user access