1. I'm trying to create a gridview report that will be used weekly to show our billing department which contractors need billing by a certain date. We have missed deadlines and our billing has been put off by the contractors a month when we do this. I know I can now add notes and alerts to the JC module. I'm trying to figure out a way to isolate the notes that deal with billing due dates for this report. Any suggestions?

2. Commission reports. I pay one particular salesperson a commission rate based on the "first billing" of the job. Commission is due only when the job is paid in full. We were able to create a report to calculate the commission percentage, but the report can only "see" last billing date, not the first. Steve came up with a workaround - but it's time consuming. Main report uses "due date" as the trigger for which percentage commission should be based on. However , it involves creating a 2nd report that lists which jobs need to have the due dates changed - by creating a change order - to have the due date actually represent the first billing date. Any suggestions on simplifying this for me? Unfortunately our salespeople are paid using different calculations for commission and this one is a pain.

Thanks in advance, Karen

Hi Karen,

1) Are you considering using the Notes function in Adagio JobCost to store the billing dates for contractors? If so, then use the 'Notes Header' file with GridView to read the notes, filtered by Date as appropriate. There is a 'Record Type' field that indicates where the note is stored (ie J for job notes, P for Phase notes, etc), so pick the type you want to print. For using the date, create a filter that perhaps selects notes dates for the upcoming seven days:
AND( {Date}-TODAY()>0 , {Date}-TODAY() <=7 )
Maybe also use a special user ID to 'label' these notes as billing dates, and have the user ID as part of the filter.

How you go about doing this report depends on where those billing dates are chosen to be stored, but the process will be similar to above.

2) As with any report, information is outputted based on available stored information. If you want to create a report based on a 'first billing date', that information has to be stored somewhere in order to be used. The Job Cost data structure does not store a 'first billing date' as you indicated, so you have to find a place to store this information. Steve found a workaround to put this date somewhere, but it sounds like you want a different way of dealing with this, that doesn't involve an additional report and posting Change Orders.

My first thought is to maintain a text file that stores the first billing date for each job number. This text file then can be used as a 'Named item file' that can be read into GridView as a calculated column. This new column could then be the 'due date' for your main report for calculating the commission. There may be other criteria in your situation, but doing this would replace the need to change the due dates on jobs or phases.

You can 'enter' the dates for jobs in the Edit Named Item Files in GridView, or maintain the text file manually. Then use a formula GetNamedItem({Job number}) to read the date from the text file. There is some information on the Help file for using Named Items, or Steve could certainly help.

Others may have simpler or better suggestions than these.

Hi,

Thank you for your responses to both questions. I think Steve will be able to use your suggestion utilizing a named item file for our commission report.

My first question however is more involved than I presented. I need a report that will show us on a weekly basis, what customers require billing "by" specific dates every month. When I enter a note in JC I can certainly put in the date of the month that the billing is due for that month, however, we may have subsequent invoices that will need to be billed over the course of perhaps 8 months, or even a year - and we need to know what day of the month those invoices need to be at the customers office to be included with that months requisition for payment. For each job, the date of the month our invoices must be in, would remain the same.

I don't know if I'm making my request clear. It's just that we've missed deadlines too many times and I would really like to avoid doing so going forward as it affects when we're paid.

Any help is very appreciated...as usual.
Thanks!

Hi Karen,

For your weekly billing question, can you present an example of what you are doing at at what level? Such as 'for job X, there are 8 bills that need to be generated, on the 15th of the month for each of the next 8 months'. And what the desired report would look like? Such as 'I want a list of all jobs that have a bill due in the next 7 days and requires generation.' That way, we can give some advice on how best to store the desired billing dates, and create the report to list the desired jobs and dates.

In the above example, you could enter 8 notes on the job, with note dates equal to the respective 8 billing dates. Then use GridView to select the job notes with a date in a particular date range. Essentially, the note date is the billing due date.

Hi Karen,

Another approach would be to create all the invoices in advance and place them in an archive batch for each of the months they come due. Of course, this would work best if the amounts of the invoices were known, but since the invoices can be edited after they are retrieved from the archive, you could always make any necessary adjustments before printing and posting them in the active batch.

Unfortunately, the invoices can't be created in advance as we have change orders frequently and therefore dollar amounts and dates change all the time.

I would love to send you a copy of an invoice and a related 2nd or 3rd one to use as an example. I don't think posting them here is what you're suggesting. How can I get them to you to "see"?

Hi Karen,

I wasn't thinking of getting physical documents, just a description of a simpler 'practical' example. So we could suggest what a report might look like. The information has to be put into the system in some way so a report can read it and display it in the desired way.

The Note date and text can be edited as required, so if using Notes was the desired way of logging future bills, these can be changed as required.