At last, after way, way too long, I have finally hooked up adderuppa’s payment processing system, and the subscription service is now live. Account holders have been given an extra 30 days free use; your subscription renewal date has been set to September 13th.

Two new options have been added under the ‘account’ navigation tab - ’subscription details’ and ’subscription history’, both simple and self-explanatory.

The details page allows you to amend your monthly contribution; if your subscription lapses, you will be presented with this page automatically, and will not be able to use the service.

The history page lists every contribution you have made, with a link allowing you to print off an invoice for each.

You can now create very simple invoices for each of your projects. To help manage this facility, a couple of extra fields have been added to the Project section.

Project Details > ‘Purchase Order No.’

Finance Details > ‘Invoice Date’ and ‘Invoice Number’

An extra section has also been added under the ‘finance’ navigation, ‘invoice settings’. This is where you define whether to charge tax, as well as the name and rate of the tax applied. Any rate applied is applied to the ‘Amount Charged’ field.

To start the process, click ‘produce invoice’ under the Project’s ‘Financial Details’ section.

This displays a text box into which you can add the Invoice Wording. You also have the choice of whether to display the pdf in the browser, or download it.

Hit Submit, and you’re done !

Thanks to Toby James Creative for the suggestion.

You can now upload your logo to your account so that it will be added to your Project PDFs. Logos can be uploaded via ‘account > Account Settings’.

A couple of additions have been made to the Produce a Project PDF page.
1. A ‘Select All’ checkbox has been added
2. ‘Viewing Preferance’, to indicate whether you would like to view the created pdf in the browser, or download it.

A new item has been added to the ‘Tasks’ navigation, ‘Completed Tasks’, and it does pretty much what you would expect. It displays tasks that have been completed within the last 1, 7, 30, 90 or 180 days, displaying them in exactly the same way as ‘Open Tasks’.

This addition is most useful for those businesses who have a number of employees, and who need an overview of who has completed what, without having to look at individual project details.

Thanks to Ludlow Kingsley for the suggestion.

I have added a couple of options to the Project PDF facility.  Under ‘Tasks’ you can now choose to display the Task Description, and under ‘Notes’ you can opt for Task Notes, as well as Project Notes.

The thinking behind this is that, as well as simply making the information complete, this facility could now be used as a Project Specification tool to create documents that can be presented to clients, listing a full, detailed breakdown of the work required, plus estimated hours, and the cost of those hours ( if necessary ).

Some amendments to how tasks are displayed, and one new feature were uploaded over the weekend.

Downloading Projects as a PDF
Users with financial privileges are presented with the following link at the top right of the Project Details page :

Clicking the link will display the following form:

As you can see,  a wide range of options are provided, giving fine control over what information is displayed. You can display as much, or as little as you need, depending on who you are showing the document to.

This feature makes use of Nicola Asuni’s excellent TCPDF php pdf class. Thanks to One Design for the request.

Tasklist modifications
I have made some changes to the way in which tasks are presented.

• Users with Account and Finance permissions can now view all users’ tasks. Previously, only the account owner could
• Open Tasks now shows only tasks associated with live projects. Previously, tasks associated with quotes were also being listed
• Accounts with multiple users now display tasks grouped by user, with each user’s recorded time being shown. This means that users sharing tasks will only see their own recorded hours displayed.

Thanks to Ludlow Kingsley for the request.

Every now and then you need to record blocks of time that you haven’t been able to time with the timer, such as meeting a client on the golf course, or staring at the car in front while stuck in a jam on the way to missing the meeting.

Previously, you had to assign a task to a project, start the timer then stop it, then edit the timed events to reflect the time spent watering at the 19th hole. Now, these miscellaneous events have a section all to themselves, making the whole process of recording them many times simpler.

Thanks to leap media for the suggestion.

If you employ freelancers, chances are you need to call them regularly to find out how they are progressing on a particular job. If you work as a freelancer, chances are you are called on a regular basis to be asked when you are likely to finish a particular job.

We are in both positions, and have been considering how to adapt adderuppa to allow project and task information to be shared between accounts.

In order to ensure that we build the facility so that it is truely useful to as many people as possible, we would like your feedback before bolting it together. The main points are listed below. You can give feedback either by posting a comment to this blog entry, or by emailing us at support[at]adderuppa.com. This feature will be made live very shortly, so please make your thoughts known if you have any.

General

•  Each account will be assigned a unique ‘Sharing Key’
• The shared information will be limited to Project Name and, for each of its tasks, Task Title,  Recorded Time, Value of that time, and status ( active or complete )
• The information will be viewable only. Accounts you share your information with will have no facility to edit or add to it
• Information is shared on a project-by-project basis
• You can allow multiple adderuppa accounts to view any particular project

Sharing a Project

• A new ‘Sharing’ sub section will be created in the Project Edit page, which only the Account Administrator will have access to
• To share information about this project, simply enter an account’s ‘Sharing Key’ in the relevant box, adding more if required
• For each shared project you can decide whether to display Recorded Time, and whether to display the Value of that time

Viewing Shared Projects

• In order to view Project information belonging to another adderuppa account, you will need to supply that account’s administrator with your ‘Sharing Key’
• A new ‘Shared Projects’ item will be created under the ‘Projects’ tab. This will list Project Name, and who the project belongs to.
• A detailed view of that Project will display the name of each Task assigned to it, its status ( active or complete ) and, if the account owner has allowed it, Recorded Time, and Value of that time
• You will not be able to edit any of the information displayed

We have enabled a new feature which allows you to create a client list in three easy steps.

1. Export the address book from your email client, creating a Comma Delimited, or Seperated, File ( .csv )
2. Go to ‘clients’ > ‘import address book’
3. Upload the .csv file you have just created

That’s it ! This has been tested on Thunderbird and Outlook, with Thunderbird giving the most consistent results.

As well as a Project’s task list displaying total recorded time, total estimated time, and their associated monetary values, Time Remaining is now displayed, which is the difference between the two. This is your time balance.