You'll find detailed definitions for commonly used terms in this glossary. These definitions are used in glossary pop-upsThis is a sample glossary pop-up in articles throughout this help centre.
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Activities are tasks or to-do items that you can add to a lead. They can act as reminders to ensure that you (or another staff member) fully progress the lead within a set time (such as following up with the client).
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Add-ons and API connections allow you to integrate with your other business systems. For further information, go to
> General Settings > Integration in . See also Interfaces.
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Application Programming Interface. The API allows you to integrate with other business systems.
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Once an invoice has been approved, it is ready to send to the intended recipient. None of its financial details can be modified.
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Base rates apply to both staff and tasks in . These rates represent the cost to your business of an hour of one of your staff members' time or an hour spent working on a task. For details, see Staff base rate and Task base rate.
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Billing rates apply to both staff and tasks in . These rates represent the cost to your client of an hour of one of your staff members' time or an hour spent working on a task. For details, see Staff billing rate and Task billing rate.
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In most jobs, you send invoices directly to your client, so your client is the 'billing client' as well. However, that is not always the case. In some jobs, for example, the client may be a subsidiary company within a group of companies and the invoice is sent to the parent company for payment. In this case, the parent company is the 'billing client'.
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Bulk purchase orders are used to order items that may be used during work on several jobs. When you create a bulk purchase order, you can specify which jobs to include.
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Calculated price is one of two pricing modes available when you are creating a quote, estimate or invoice. If you select the Calculated Price option, the prices shown in the quote/estimate/invoice for tasks and costs are calculated, based on hourly rates and time worked (for tasks) and actual costs and quantities (for cost items). The mode you select in a quote/estimate becomes the default for the invoice, although you can change it if required. See Fixed price.
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A client is an organisation or an individual that you are doing work for, usually on a billable basis. See also: billing client.
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The Client Manager feature of allows you to create new clients as well as work with existing ones.
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The Client order number (CON) is a database field provided in job and invoice records. If the Client order number is entered on the job when the job is created (or by editing the job once it has been created) then the CON will be included on all invoices created from that job. The CON can also be added directly to an invoice, and will update the job's CON. Where the CON is included on an invoice, this will populate the Ref (reference) field on the invoice when it exports to Xero.
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A client type is a named set of payment terms, used to ensure consistency across your client base. For example, you might set up two client types: Premium, with a markup rate of 30% and payment terms of by 20th of next month, and Standard, with a markup rate of 40% and payment terms of within 7 days. When you add a new client, you can then allocate Premium or Standard payment terms, as required.
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In , comments can be added to notes for clients, jobs, job tasks, leads, quotes or estimates, or suppliers to raise (or answer) questions, or simply to allow staff members to record their ideas or discussions.
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A contact is a person within a client organisation that staff in your organisation may deal with.
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In , the costs of the products, materials or recurring expenses that you typically use while working on a job can be stored in the Cost Admin database (at
> General Settings > Costs). When you are working on an estimate, quote or job you can quickly access a cost from the database, simply by typing its name in the description field (on the cost information screen).
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In , the term 'costs' is used to refer to expenses that you will incur when working on jobs. These costs do not include staff labour costs, which are based on the time worked on tasks. Costs may relate to physical items (such as plant, machinery, consumables) or to other expenses such as subcontractors or mileage.
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Comma Separated Value. A type of text file that you can use to import data into from other applications. You can also export data from data tables into CSV format.
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Staff who are currently available to be assigned to jobs have the checkbox "Currently Working" selected (on the General Settings > Staff > Staff information screen). If this checkbox is not selected, the staff member is not shown in the drop-down list of staff to be assigned to a job.
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You can use custom fields to extend the range of standard data fields in the database. These custom fields can then be used in custom reports - ensuring that you get maximum value from your reports. Custom fields can be added to any of the following data tables: Clients, Contacts, Jobs, Job Costs, Job Tasks, Leads, Quotes, Suppliers and Timesheets.
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Custom print templates are Microsoft Word .docx documents that contain a combination of text, tables, images and merge fields. A custom template can be developed from scratch (starting with an empty document) or based on a suitable sample template that already contains relevant information.
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A disbursement is a payment made by an organisation or individual to a third party and then on-charged to (or claimed back from) the client.
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Each data record stored in a data table includes a unique identifier (such as the job number in the Jobs data table). This unique identifier is known as the 'primary key'. When you create a new job in , the system allocates a new, unique, primary key to identify that data record. However, if you import data into the Jobs data table from an external source (such as a spreadsheet), you may end up trying to import one or more data records that have primary keys that already exist on the data table. A record that contains a primary key that already exists is called a 'duplicate record' or just a 'duplicate'. will normally ignore duplicate records. This means that you can re-import a spreadsheet after making changes to it (such as adding some new records), and any duplicate records will simply be ignored. This behaviour is generally acceptable, but there are some cases where you might wish to re-import a record to update the information that is already on file (such as a client address). To cater for this, some data tables support the 'Update Existing?' feature, which allows existing data records to be updated with imported information.
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You can use the Collaboration Manager to set up email addresses in that allow you to email documents and notes directly to quotes/estimates and jobs. This is a different email address from your personal email address, which you use to log in to .
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An estimate contains details of your best estimate of time or costs for completing a job. Your client should understand that an estimate is not a firm quotation for the exact number of hours or cost. In there is no difference between an estimate and a quote, apart from the name. In practice, the client may expect that quoted costs will be more accurate than estimated costs, if the job goes ahead. See also Quote and Master quote.
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A filter provides a quick way to display only selected clients, jobs, quotes or estimates, work in progress, invoices and purchase orders based on pre-defined criteria.
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The last invoice produced for a completed job.
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The Job financial summary report is a powerful standard report that lets you track your income, expenditure, profit – and more – on each job. You can produce this report from the Financial tab of a job (Print Financial Summary) or for multiple jobs from Reports > All Reports > Performance Reports.
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Fixed price is one of two pricing modes available when you are creating a quote, estimate or invoice. If you select the Fixed Price option, you can enter specific prices directly into the quote/estimate/invoice for each task or cost item. This allows you to override the calculated prices shown on the quote/estimate/invoice. The mode you select in a quote/estimate becomes the default for the invoice, although you can change it if required. See Calculated price.
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supports an interface to the Xero accounting system. If you are using Xero, you should set up the interface to simplify the transfer of information between systems.
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An interim payment (an 'interim') is created on a job where you have invoiced an amount that is to be taken off the total outstanding billable amount for the job.
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The Invoice Manager screen allows you to quickly sort, browse and find all current invoices. You can also create invoices in the Job Manager, WIP Manager and Client Manager screens.
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allows you to create, print and send invoices to your clients. See the Invoices help topic for full details of types of invoice and ways of controlling the content of your invoices.
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A job is the overall project that you or your organisation works on for a client.
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Job categories are primarily a way to group various types of jobs (or tracking categories in Xero) together for reporting and viewing purposes. Whenever a job is invoiced, the information specified in the category, such as Xero Tracking Category, Income Account and Cost of Sale Account, is brought across in the invoices that flow through to your accounting system.
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A powerful standard report that lets you track your income, expenditure, profit – and more – on each job. You can produce this report from the Financial tab of a job (Print Financial Summary) or for multiple jobs from Reports > All Reports > Performance Reports.
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The Job Manager allows you to create new jobs and to view and work with existing ones.
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Job states usually match the stages in your company's job workflow, such as Planned, In Progress or Completed. By adding notifications to each job state, you can communicate to key people how a job is progressing - and when it's time for them to take action.
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A job template can contain a pre-defined set of phases, tasks, to-do items, milestones and disbursements. By providing a standardised job structure, job templates can save you time when you need to set up jobs of a similar type that occur on a regular basis.
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In tasks, a label allows you to use the same task multiple times. The label is automatically appended to the task name. For example, in a specific job, designs are required for a brochure, flyer and a handbook. So, a label can be used to identify the Design task for each item: "Design - Brochure", "Design - Flyer" and "Design - Handbook".
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A lead is a possible sale opportunity for a new or existing client.
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Lead categories are used to group leads for reporting purposes. For example, they could be used to identify the probability of a lead becoming a job: Hot, Warm, Cold, or the type of work this lead relates to: Website, Brochure, Annual accounts, Property maintenance.
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A lead client is a new client, added at the same time as a lead is created. A lead client has an initial Status of Lead, which is changed to Active when the lead they relate to is marked as Won and converted into a job.
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The Lead Manager module is an add-on to , allowing you to create leads, manage your sales pipeline, and track your contact history. When a lead is won, you can easily convert it to a job, eliminating double entry.
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A Lead template allows you to identify pre-defined activities that need to be carried out as you progress each lead. Each lead template can specify the activities for a lead relating to a specific type of work. Using pre-defined activities results in each lead moving through a consistent sales process – leaving nothing to chance.
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A lead can be linked to a quote/estimate if required. This provides rapid access (in both directions) between leads and related quotes/estimates. This relationship also reduces the work required to make the lead, quote or estimate into a job when the lead is 'won' (or the quote/estimate is accepted). Compare Unlinked lead.
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Invoices, quotes and estimates can be marked as sent. This indicates that the invoice, quote or estimate has been sent out to the intended recipient. When an item is marked as sent, displays a 'green tick' icon under the Sent column on the invoice or quote manager screen.
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Markup is a percentage amount that is applied to a cost to cover business overheads. For example, an organisation might mark up the price they pay for printing a brochure by 30% and pass on the marked up price to their client. You can set a default percentage value for markup in your Organisation settings. Unless you specifically override it, the default markup is applied to each cost before it is included in a client invoice.
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operates on the basis of one 'master quote' per job. The master quote is the most recently accepted quote on that job. It is this master quote that will determine what can be invoiced. If you create a new quote to deal with variations to the quoted work, the new quote becomes the master quote and supersedes the previous master quote. The previous master quote is retained and is still associated with the job, but it is available for reference purposes only.
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Merge fields are a special feature of Microsoft Word, which act as placeholders for data that will be imported into a document from an external data source. For example, the sample invoice template contains the <<ClientBillingAddress>> merge field. When you use the template to print an invoice, the <<ClientBillingAddress>> merge field is replaced by the client's billing address that is stored in the invoice you're printing.
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A milestone is a scheduled event that marks the completion of a significant deliverable element or component of a job. For example: send first draft to client; building inspector signoff.
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Create an invoice for miscellaneous costs when you need to invoice a client for work that is not directly related to a specific job, such as a monthly retainer.
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The Work in Progress Manager can create invoices for multiple clients at the same time. These invoices can be progress or final invoices, which can be for actual time and costs or based on a quote/estimate.
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Notes can be stored directly against clients, jobs and job tasks, leads, quotes or estimates, or suppliers, so you no longer have to hunt around for sticky notes or scrap pieces of paper. Everyone who can see the client, job, job task, lead, quote or estimate, or supplier will be able to see the notes against it, streamlining collaboration within your team.
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uses notifications as a way of informing selected people when certain job-related events occur. When one of these events occurs, team members, staff assigned to the job or the job manager can be notified by email.
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When you set up your company or business in , you create an organisation, which you can then log in to as a user.
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These settings control key features of the way operates for your business. It's important to at least review (and possibly change) these settings before you start using .
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Portable Document Format. A proprietary document format created by Adobe Systems Inc. PDF files can be read using a free Acrobat Reader program, so the format is commonly used for sharing reports, quotes and invoices and other documents.
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As part if the setup process for , you can personalise the way that your invoices, quotes, purchase orders are presented. You can also set up your own company logo and define your own email settings. For further details, see Customising .
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Phases allow you to organise your job tasks, milestones, costs, notes or documents into logical groups for costing, reporting and management purposes, providing you with greater visibility and context. Phases are specific to each job, so if you create phases for one job they will not be available to another job. Job templates can contain phases and those phases can be pre-populated with selected tasks, costs and milestones.
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The Portal allows you to manage your Xero account profile and to connect to other accounts. To open the Portal, click your company name (top-left of the menu bar).
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A range of security privileges control staff access to the features and functions of . These privileges are usually set when a new staff member is added. They can be changed later, if required.
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uses the term 'product' to describe physical products or services used by your organisation when working on jobs. Each product is stored as a cost item in the Items database. See Items.
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A Progress invoice should be used for on-going jobs, or jobs where there is a likelihood of further time or costs being added to the job.
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In , projects are called jobs.
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Purchase orders are used to order items that may be used during work on your jobs. You can create a purchase order for items for a single job, or a purchase order for items for several jobs (a bulk purchase order).
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The Purchase Order Manager screen allows you to quickly sort, browse and find all current purchase orders.
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The quick time entry pop-up provides a timer that lets you record time as you work it. You can also enter time directly against job tasks.
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A quote contains details of the costs that your client should expect to incur if they proceed with the job. There may be some variation between the quoted costs and actual costs, but your client should have some confidence that this variation will be small. In there is no difference between an estimate and a quote, apart from the name. In practice, the client may expect that quoted costs will be more accurate than estimated costs, if the job goes ahead. See also Master quote.
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The Quote Manager screen allows you to quickly sort, browse and find all current unaccepted quotes and estimates.
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In , Job templates can used as the basis for creating quotes and estimates.
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The recurring job function is useful for businesses that provide regular ongoing work to clients, such as IT support or other contract-based businesses. Once a job has been set up to recur, will automatically use it to create new jobs on the required dates or frequency.
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The way that a client heard about your company or services. This might be a Google search, LinkedIn or another social media channel.
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The report builder lets you create custom reports on the data stored in . Report builder can create table reports (standard column and row report format), bar charts and pie charts.
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If your client does not accept your original quote, you can revise the quote to adjust costs or scope of work. The revised quote is automatically allocated a revision number (Q001234/1 for example) and the original quote (Q001234) is archived.
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When you start a free trial of , your account is automatically loaded with sample data by default. By providing sample tasks, jobs and other data, the sample data is intended to allow you to start using more quickly.
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See Marked as sent.
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Staff are members of your organisation who perform work for your clients. Staff are usually set up as users in so that they can login to enter time sheets, produce reports or invoices or perform other job-related activities.
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The staff base rate reflects the cost to your business of an hour of a staff member's time. It is not simply their hourly rate but needs to include an allowance for other costs such as holidays, superannuation, sick leave.
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Staff billing is a client billing method based on billable rates associated with specific staff members. This method is useful if you have several staff working on a task but wish to charge them out at different rates, based on their experience, for example. Compare Task billing.
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The staff billing rate is the cost to your client of an hour of your staff member's time. The billing rate has a default value for each staff member that can be overridden on a task, job or client basis if required.
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Suppliers provide your organisation with the products and services that you need in order to complete jobs for your clients.
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Tasks are the labour components of a job - the activities that staff perform as they work to complete the job. Time can be recorded against specific tasks, and those tasks can display as line items on the invoice. A job must include at least one task if time is to be recorded against that job.
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The task base rate reflects the cost to your business of your staff working for an hour on that task. The task base rate is only ever used at the quote stage, and only if you do not assign staff to the tasks in the quote.
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Task billing is a client billing method based on billable rates associated with specific tasks. This method is useful if you usually have standard rates for a specific task, regardless of which staff members are working on it. Compare Staff billing.
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The task billing rate is the cost to your client of your staff working for an hour on that task. The rate has a default value for each task that can be overridden on a job or client basis if required.
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The Task Invoice Rate is a key configuration setting (set in
> General Settings > Organisation Settings > Job (Section) ). If it is set to Staff Billable, will use Staff billing when calculating the cost of time spent working on a task. If it is set to Task Billable, will use Task billing when calculating the cost of time spent working on a task.
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A team is a group of staff identified by a name such as "Accounts" or "Designers". Teams are a convenient way of notifying staff, who are not assigned to a specific job, that the job's job state has changed.
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In , time sheets contain details of the time worked on specific tasks by each staff member during a given week.
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The quick time entry pop-up provides a timer that lets you record time as you work it. You can also enter time directly against job tasks. For details, search on "quick time entry".
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In , time sheets contain details of the time worked on specific tasks by each staff member during a given week.
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To-do items are checklist items within a job task. They provide useful reminders of specific action items within the task, such as "confirm delivery" or "contact client". Staff can tick off completed to-do items as they work their way through the task.
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Leads are called 'unlinked' if they are not linked to any quotes or estimates. Linking leads to quotes/estimates provides rapid access (in both directions) between leads and related quotes/estimates. This relationship also reduces the work required to make the lead, quote or estimate into a job when the lead is 'won' (or the quote/estimate is accepted). Compare Linked lead.
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A user is anyone (staff, manager, administrator, employee, subcontractor) who: * needs to log in to to administer or use it, and/or * needs to have their time recorded against tasks which are assigned to them, regardless of whether they or someone else logs that time.
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A change in scope of the work included in a quote or estimate. It may be necessary to issue a new quote/estimate for the work in order to cover the change in tasks or costs.
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Work In Progress in is all uninvoiced staff time and disbursements recorded on client jobs.
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In , a write off is a reduction in the amount you will charge for time or costs (or both). For example, if an inexperienced employee spends more time on a job than expected, you might charge for less time than was actually worked. See also: Write on.
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In , a write on is an increase in the amount you will charge for time or costs (or both). For example, you might do this if you charge a minimum of an hour's time for the first hour worked even if you worked less than this. See also: Write off.
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When a staff member records or enters into the details of the time they worked on a job task, this is called "writing time".
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Powerful cloud-based accounting software that is closely integrated with for invoicing, payments and reporting.
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Xero Tracking Categories allow you to report on your financial information at a more granular level in Xero (once your - Xero interface is set up). For example, you might set up your Catering - Weddings and Catering - Functions job categories so that they use a Xero tracking category called Sales Region. This would allow you to report on your catering work, broken down by region.