This article is an extract from the book 'Everything you need to know about Xero Practice Manager'
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Custom reports for scheduling
There are three custom reports required to roll out scheduling within your practice.
- Scheduling report
This custom report displays the jobs that require scheduling. The jobs are grouped under each client so you can click through to each job and allocate a date, duration and staff member(s) to each task. Once tasks are scheduled, they will display on the ‘Monthly Capacity Report’, and the ‘Staff Workflow Schedule’ for the staff that have been assigned the task.
- Monthly capacity report
Once the jobs have been scheduled using the ‘Scheduling Report’, they will display on the ‘Monthly Capacity Report’. This report will allow you to compare the total allocated task times by staff members for the month, enabling you to easily see if someone is over or under-booked for a month.
- Staff workflow report
This report is designed for individual staff to identify which jobs and tasks they have been assigned for the current month and to view the estimated task duration. Each billable staff member will have their own version of this report showing their jobs.
Scheduling report
The ‘Scheduling report’ contains all the jobs that have rolled over and need to be scheduled. It lists all the tasks to be completed for the year ahead, grouped by the client name. This report is used by clicking into each job in the report and scheduling the work. Once the tasks on the job have been scheduled, they will show on both the ‘Monthly capacity report’ and the ‘Staff workflow report’.
Here is how it is built:
Report type: Job Task
Fields to display on report (in order):
- [Job] Client
- [Job] Job Number
- [Job] Name
- [Job] Manager
- [Task] Name + Label
- [Task] Estimated Time
- [Task] Actual Time
- [Task] Due Date
- [Task] Staff
- [Task] Completed
Criteria for the report:
- [Job] Start Date – is on or after {the date your jobs have rolled over}
- [Task] Name – includes {the name of the tasks you want to schedule}
Rows are: Grouped and subtotalled by the first field
We use the task name in the criteria to reduce the list of tasks that need to be scheduled so you can chunk the work. Rather than having a massive list of every task, you may want to start by scheduling all your GST tasks first, then your payroll tasks, then your annual accounts tasks, then everything else. This makes the job less overwhelming because you are able to chunk the work. You might group the scheduling into five or so buckets, and do the work over five days.
Once you have created and previewed the report, you will see a list of tasks grouped by the client. Click into each job by opening a new tab so you don’t lose the report you are on. Once you have clicked into the job, scroll down to the tasks on the job, and hit the ‘Edit’ icon next to the task. This will take you into the task where you can:
- Check the task as a scheduled task
- Add the staff member(s) working on the task
- Add the estimated time for the task
- Add the due date for the task.
Make sure you tick the ‘Scheduled Task’ checkbox otherwise this information won’t save when you hit ‘Save’. Once you have checked this box and added these three bits of information, you can save the task and move on to the next task on the job. Once you have scheduled all tasks for that job, close the tab and refresh your scheduling report. You’ll notice that the estimated time, staff name and due date will have been populated. This job is now scheduled, so you can move on to the next one. Once all tasks are showing a staff member, an estimated time and a due date, you will have finished your list. You can then change your criteria to a different task and work through the next list.
Tips
- To speed up this process, open multiple tabs. When you open up a job, you may have six or 12 similar tasks that need to be scheduled. Open all tasks in different tabs, run through and schedule them, then close the tabs. This will save you a lot of time.
- Another way to chunk the work is to group by job manager rather than task. If you would prefer this approach, remove the task name from the criteria and add job manager as the criteria. This will produce a list of all tasks that the job manager has, rather than all tasks with the task name you defined in the criteria. Choose the approach that will work best for you.
- To help with scheduling annual tasks, you can push the job start date in the criteria back a year so the previous year’s jobs show in the report. This will show the task due date from the previous year, so you can use this as a reference for scheduling this year's task.
- Once you have done all your scheduling, remove the task name from the report criteria, and add new criteria that states: ‘Task scheduled’ is ‘No’. This will show you all the tasks that have not been scheduled. You can refer back to this report throughout the year to see if there are new tasks that have been created and have not been scheduled. This ensures every task is sitting on someone's list at all times.
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