Release

A new release is here with some exciting changes to simplify the management of your contracting business. This is a summary of the changes:

Fall is almost upon us and we thought it would be the perfect occasion to summarize some of the enhancements we’ve released over the summer. We know you were busy, so most of these improvements have been applied to your account without disruption and you may have already noticed them. These are the highlights:

We are thrilled to announce the official release of the improved Manage Job Phases section. Now you can easily manage phases across multiple jobs and make sure you are not missing anything at the phase level. With this new section, located inside Contract Jobs, you will be able to make your project management even more productive!

Last weekend, Knowify’s minor release of new features contained many small changes requested by the Knowify community. These are the highlights:

We just released a new version of Knowify with a large number of new features and improvements. All these changes are based on your feedback so we hope you are as excited as we are!

This is the complete change log:

Our new release is out! As usual, this release includes many improvements, most of them based on your feedback. Please pay attention to the first two items below, which will definitely change the way you use Knowify (for the better!). Also, stay tuned because we’ll be releasing additional new features before the end of the year.

This is the complete change log:

1. We have changed the names of our job-types. Following your feedback, we are simplifying the names as follows:

This is just a change in names; all these job types will behave as usual. You can find more information in this video.

2. We have also simplified the status of a job in Plan & Track. From now on, the Plan & Track section will be Active by default when the job is active, and will stay in Edit mode while you are budgeting or bidding a job. You don’t need to remember to switch the status any longer; Knowify will do it for you.

3. Job creation: We are moving the Job Name to the top of the page. This will create a more logical flow and will allow us further improvements in upcoming releases.

4. Anti-spam filter measures: We continue to optimize the emails coming out of Knowify to ensure that they are delivered. Even though our tested delivery rate was already very high, this new release goes one step further and adds extra measures to avoid spam filters when sending emails via Knowify. While there is no technical way to guarantee 100% email reception, in large part because it depends on how each email user sets up their spam folder, these changes will continue to push our delivery rates up toward the targeted 100%.

5. Taxes for non-US companies: We’ve strengthen the rounding system to make sure there are no discrepancies when adding taxes to your invoices or purchases. Also, for those syncing with Quickbooks, we’ve been able to circumvent a Quickbooks API bug to sync purchases and bills with taxes.

6. Improved bidding process: We will be gradually including improvements in the process to prepare proposals in Knowify. For starters, you’ll see that breakdowns include now a way to label each line as labor, materials or other. This is just in preparation for upcoming releases where we plan on radically simplifying the breakdown process and giving you more options to display them to your customers. These labels will also help Knowify automatically build budgets and list of materials when working in Simple or Advanced job costing modes.

7. Time & materials work: We have strengthened all workflows related to time & materials work. Now, before invoicing, the system will prompt you to enter the timeframe for the invoice, which will help identify the correct billable items. The invoice will also give you internal information about the value in materials, the value in labor and the total number of hours included in the invoice.

8. Improved sync experience with QuickBooks: For those using QuickBooks, we’ve added a few improvements:

– After creating a bill, invoice or any other QuickBooks-related transaction, you will not need to refresh the page to see if it synced properly. Knowify will automatically display the updated status as soon as the transaction syncs with QuickBooks.

– Time entries will now take the Service used in Plan and Track (if any), which will take precedence over the general default service for time entries.

9. RFI link: In RFIs, we’ve seen recipients struggle at finding the attachments given that they didn’t think they had to click the link View RFI to get there. To make it clearer, if you use attachments in RFIs, the link in the email will read View RFI & Attachments from now on.

10. Improved display in contract jobs: We’ve restyled the display in the manage contract jobs page, to make it easier to read. Total values for jobs are now on the revenue side to give you a sense on how much you expect to generate for a given job.

11. Save reminders: While building your bids, Knowify will prompt you to save your work every 10 minutes. This is the first step towards making sure that you never lose any of your work. In upcoming release we’ll include additional enhancements.

12. Minor improvements:

– Faster search in contract jobs, and fewer display issues in low internet speed networks.

– PO numbers can be added or edited right in the invoice page.

– Both phases in the project plan and line items in proposals have a new sorting feature.

– Client and vendor exports include the full address.

– Sorting line items in the schedules of values are being properly displayed in the final invoice.

– RTF files are not accepted as attachments.

– Invoice items can be removed in bulk.

– Time overview page offers new filters.

– After deleting an invoice, you can return to the invoices section or to the job.

– Service tickets include PO number field.

– Job tags can be added when creating a new job.

– For those using pay apps (in our Fixed Price with AIA billing jobs), now you can set a default for your preferred invoicing style. Wiping values in the invoices will also be easier.

– In non-US companies, there is a new display of holdback amounts.

– Fixed issue around marking phases with deleted resources as complete.

– Fixed issue when updating Advisor users.

All these improvements will help you work faster and spend less time in the office. Do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

Another exciting new release of Knowify is here! Our mission to modernize the contracting office continues!

This is the complete change log:

1. New job logs section: In order to improve your visibility and control over your jobs, we have created a new section that will display chronological job logs. This new section will merge user actions, comments, documents and emails to capture the whole job history, giving you the ability to see and analyze how the job has evolved. No better way to stay on top of your jobs than by having the full job history.

Along with this new section, we’ve added the ability to capture the email correspondence around your Knowify-generated proposals, change order, invoices, and more. This feature adds a unique ID to all your email subjects, which will allow Knowify to retrieve the emails and display them in the job log. If you wish to enable this feature, contact support@knowify.com.

2. Improved scheduling: This new release includes significant changes in the way you can schedule in Knowify. We’ve been collecting feedback over the last year, and we feel the new changes will translate that feedback into a smoother experience around scheduling. For starters, the Corporate Calendar will be the default view in the scheduling section, and you will be able to schedule and make changes in the Corporate Calendar itself.

Also, we have adjusted the look and feel of Job Board to display more information when scheduling your crews. Last but not least, scheduling dates in Plan and Track is back. You will be able to set dates or just go to Job Board if you also need to schedule your crews.

3. Improved management of time and materials jobs: While our support for T&M jobs was already very solid, we’ve strengthened certain areas around recording bills against POs, editing POs, and other edge cases.

Also, when invoicing your clients, we have created a new feature that will help you easily group your invoice items based on certain parameters, like labor vs materials, job phases, etc.

4. New form for purchases: We have improved the user experience around creating POs and expenses. The most relevant change is the ability to allocate items to multiple jobs within the same PO or expense.

5. Setting budgets in Simple and Advanced job costing modes: The popularity of our Simple and Advanced modes has grown so much that many of you have been requesting the ability to set cost budgets once the contract is approved. Now you can do it. Just go to the Plan and Track section and set materials, labor and subs budgets.

6. Feature to copy jobs: You can now copy a whole job. This is perfect if your jobs look alike and you just need to change the client information and adjust the quote values. (available on 9/8/17)

7. More powerful import of data from QuickBooks: We have added support to capture expense items with negative values and expenses against multiple jobs. We have also improved the logic behind the QuickBooks import to prevent duplicates and errors.

8. Hide/display contract breakdowns in customer outputs: Many of you have been using the BOM/breakdown feature in Contracts to come up with your bid values. However, you didn’t want to display the breakdown to the customer. Now, you have the ability to show/hide these values in the contract.

9. Service ticket history page: This page will look the same, but it should be working much smoother than before. We’ve changed the technology behind it to speed it up, which will be really convenient for those of you with many service jobs.

10. Advanced e-signature features: If you are using our e-signature features, now you will be able to prevent Knowify from attache the proposal pdf to the email (in case you want to force your customer to click on the e-signature link) or produce an e-signature link without sending any email (in case you prefer to use your our email to send the link, outside Knowify).

11. Improved exports of vendors and bills.

12. Improved display of information in Work Order outputs.

13. Editing job names will sync with QuickBooks Online.

14. Improvements in Pay Apps, like the ability to set retainage with decimals or invoice in full after just having invoiced for stored materials.

15. US companies can enable/disable taxes in purchases.

16. For non-US companies, we have improved the tax support in expenses and bills and now you can exclude certain tax rates from job costing calculations.

17. Complex tax codes in non-US companies will now be broken down into their individual rates in contract and invoice outputs.

18. Ability to add a contract summary page to your invoices to help your customer understand your progress billing. Contract support@knowify.com to enable this feature.

19. Ability to disable the recording of payments when using PaySimple. This will avoid duplicate payments in QuickBooks if you pul data from your bank feed.

20. Resolved glitches:

– Deposit invoices

– Deleting invoices and restoring billable items

– Welcome emails for users

For those of you interested in learning more about QuickBooks Online, click here.

Stayed tuned, because we have more enhancements in the immediate pipeline. In the meantime, do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.