How to do a WIP Washup on Jobs in XPM

Background of Issue

When using XPM it is important we close jobs off once they are completed.  One reason for closing jobs off is it avoids having an ever growing list of jobs on your Job Manager screen.

The other reason we close jobs out in XPM is because it allows us to do a WIP washup on the jobs.  A WIP washup is when we allocate the total invoice value to the total time and cost on the job. For example, if we have more invoices than we have time and cost on the job, we will recognise a write up on that job.  But if we have invoiced less than our total time and cost on the job, we will have a write off. This is because we have had to write some of the time off.

Work in Progress is the term we use to define the unbilled time and cost on a job.  So if I have $600 of time on a job that I have not billed, I would say I have $600 work in progress.  Now let’s say I sent a progress invoice for $400, I would now only have $200 of work in progress remaining.  When I do a WIP washup, I am saying the job is finished which means the $200 is not ‘yet to be billed’, it is written off.  It says that although we did $600 of work, we were only able to bill $400 of it, so we have a $200 write off.

If you are not closing your jobs out and doing a WIP washup, you will be forever accumulating work in progress on your jobs, which makes it difficult to see what your billable work in progress is, and it also means we are unable to see which jobs and which staff are most profitable.

When we close a job out and do a WIP washup, that write up, or write off amount is recognised in our reports against the job, and against the staff.  Without closing the jobs and doing a WIP washup, you will never know which staff are performing well, and which jobs you are making money on.

How to Resolve

In Link Reporting click into the WIP Movements report in the WIP tab.  Run the report without changing any of the settings in the report criteria.  It will run the report for the last complete month and group it by your Job Managers.

You then want to run through this report and identify any jobs that have been completed and should not be showing work in progress on them.  Keep in mind that some jobs may be showing a negative work in progress balance. This just means we have invoiced more than our time and cost, so when we do our WIP washup, we will be recognising a Write Up rather than a Write Off.

It is important that when we do our WIP washup that the invoice values are in the same job as the time and cost.  It is not uncommon to bill from one job, and spread your timesheets across other jobs. This causes a big issue when we do our WIP washup, because the job with the invoice totals will get a large write up, and the jobs with the timesheets will get a large write off - because there was no invoiced amount to wash up against the timesheets.

We can easily see if this is the case when we run the WIP Movement report and we see a number of jobs under one client, where one job has a large negative closing WIP balance, and the other jobs have a large positive WIP balance.  This means one job has all the invoices, and the other jobs have the time and costs.  

To fix this, we need to move the time and costs into the job with the invoice because we do our WIP washup and close them out.  Fortunately, this is easy to do. Click into the jobs that do not have invoiced amounts, then go to ‘Options’ then ‘Move Timesheets’.  You then want to select the job for the client that is holding all the invoice totals and move the timesheets to it. Once you have done all the timesheets, you need to move the costs (if there are any).  This isn’t as simple as moving timesheets, but it is still easy. Just add an identical cost to the job with invoices, and delete it from the original job.

Once you have move all time and costs over to the job that has the invoices, you can hit ‘Remove from Invoice List’ in the Financial Tab of each job.  This button creates the WIP Washup. Once you have done that, change the job state to Completed. You can change the job state on the Information Tab of the job, then hit save.

Run through the list on the WIP Movement report closing out all jobs that you have completed work on, but still have WIP, or negative WIP on them.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email support@linkreporting.com for further assistance.