All design firms have to factor in overhead when calculating project profitability. There are two main approaches for doing this: the Job Cost Rate approach and the Overhead Allocation approach. Most software packages offer one approach or the other. Sema4, for example, uses Job Cost Rate, while Advantage and Vision use Overhead Allocation. InFocus is unique: it offers both approaches. Let’s review how each approach works.

The Job Cost Rate Approach

Job Cost Rate is often referred to as burdened payrate because it’s an hourly payrate plus an hourly overhead rate. Job Cost Rate is usually an employee’s pay rate times a standard multiplier. Typically that multiplier is based on a firm’s direct labor and overhead costs at the financial statement level. For example, a firm has the following on their books:

Annual overhead: $1,000,000
Annual direct labor: $500,000
Total: $1,500,000

You’ll notice that the total ($1.5m) is 3 times the direct labor amount ($500k). That means a good Job Cost Rate multiplier is 3.0. This multiplier can be set up in a Job Cost Rate schedule and applied to each direct hour charged in a timesheet.

Say John’s payrate is $100 per hour and he enters 5 hours on his timesheet. In this case here is how the Job Cost Rate is calculated:

$100 * 5 hours * 3.0 Jobcost multiplier = $1500

InFocus automatically stores the Job Cost Rate on John’s timesheet.

Summing up, having a Job Cost Rate makes estimating a project’s profit much more accurate since it accounts for both direct and indirect expenses. InFocus has a global setting that allows a Job Cost Rate to be used instead of Pay Cost in reports.

The Overhead Allocation Approach

This approach uses Pay Cost within the project reports. Overhead is calculated separately based either on a multiplier or a proportional allocation of actual periodic overhead.

Let’s use the amounts from the previous example. This time we will calculate an overhead multiplier not a Job Cost Rate multiplier. We do that by dividing the annual overhead ($1m) by the annual direct labor amount ($500k), which results in an overhead multiplier of 2.0. This multiplier can then be applied to periodic direct labor amounts to represent the allocated overhead for the job.

The InFocus overhead allocation utility provides the user with the ability to enter an overhead multiplier. InFocus then stores the resulting project overhead amounts.

Alternatively, the user can design overhead allocation scripts that will distribute actual overhead for a period across projects proportionally. For example, a project that is consuming 10% of the firm’s direct labor for a period will receive 10% of the overhead allocation.

Conclusion

Overhead has to be accounted for in order to estimate profit properly. Fortunately, InFocus makes this as easy as possible by providing two distinct approaches, the Job Cost Rate approach and the Overhead Allocation approach. There isn’t a right way and a wrong way. The approach you choose depends on your business and accounting practices.

As with every release, be sure to back up your database before updating.

New Features

General Notes

Added ‘Reset Criteria’ to lookups. This will clear all fields to the original lookup.

A/R Collections

In AR Collections there is a column called Firm Note. The popup is a note saved at the Firm (client) level.

Automated Invoicing

As of 1.4.0, you could select an unprintable invoice and view it. However, you could not use the print options for unprintable invoices. Now you can.

Benefit Accrual

There is now a print option on the toolbar that prints the loaded projects settings and members.

The report is also accessible from Custom Reports.

Contacts

On the Opportunity detail screen / Contacts tab, there is now a column to show the firm that the contact is associated with.

Credit Card Cash Posting

This new applet allows for an automated cash basis general journal entry for credit card charges. In order to use this you need to enable the “Seperate Credit Card Charges on Expense Sheet Import” option in the A/P tab of global settings. When this option is enabled the import of an expense sheet can potentially result in two employee reimbursable transactions; one for lines that are flagged as on credit card and one that is not.

Custom Reports

Aged WIP – This report shows unbilled transactions in five aging periods. The aging periods are fixed.

Employee Inquiry – This report is sorted by employee and allows for inquiry of time and expense for a given date range. You can also set filters for an employee, project or labor code.

Labor By Location – This report sorts labor transactions based on location as entered in timesheets.

Expense Codes

In Utilities an Applet has been added called Comment Templates. Comment Templates are formatted questions that can be assigned to expense codes. When assigned, the use of the respective expense code will cause the comment field in Expense Sheets to pop up a form to fill out the defined fields.

Expense Groups

Expense codes can now be flagged as non-reimbursable for expense sheets.

Expense Sheets

Checking the Credit Card zero’s out the reimbursable amount.

Now, unchecking it restores the amount.

Global Settings

In Permissions / Users, you can now add a Windows Domain\Username to the User account. Additionally, we’ve added a setting to Global Settings under the General tab to allow for Windows Integrated Login.

The login modes are:

1) InFocus Only – this is the default and is the same as before

2) Windows Only – this requires the Domain\Username be added to the user record. If present, when the login screen comes up, it will look up the InFocus user based on the Windows user when logging in.

3) Both – If both, you will be able to log in with either login button.

Opportunities

Exposed the four internal contacts on the Clients screen to the Firms in Marketing as well.

PA Bill Review

In PA/PM Bill Review, added Last Invoice Date column in Show All Columns grid.

Projects

You can now copy a Roll-Up Project.

In the Project / General Tab, there is now an option to require comments in Expense. Expense refers to the Purchase Journal, Disbursement Journal, Employee Reimbursable Journal, and Expense Sheets.

Purchase Journal

Can now tab through cells in the journals.

Based on permissions, users can now override the expense markup type and markup in the expense journals.

Based on permissions, users can now link transactions to any sales journal record directly from the expense journals.

Resource Scheduler

Added project name to the resource scheduler grids.

Time Sheets

In Global Settings / Time & Expense there is a new option to set a Timesheet Header Mask. This mask will allow you to customize the header format for the days of a timesheet period.

As of 1.4.0, when submitting a timesheet where the employee was also listed as an approver, the timesheet would auto-approve.

Added an option in Global Settings to optionally prevent auto-approval.

UDF Designer

A field has been added to the UDFs called Validation Script. The purpose of this field is to validate the value entered into the UDF field via SQL script. The script can use two variables:

^udfvalue^ (the value being validated)

and

^keyid^ (the primary key of the record holding the udf)

The SQL script must return at least three values:

1) reterr (>=0 equals no error, <0 equals error)
2) retmsg (the error message if reterr <0)
3) retvalue (this can either be the same as the value passed in or it can be a new value. In either case, whatever is returned will be the value in the UDF field.

Vendors

A field has been added to the vendor record to called “Alt Name”. If there is a value there, then that name will be used for 1099′s.

Bug Fixes

A/P Check Writing

Checks/EFTs can now be voided properly.

A/P Reports

The A/P and E/R reports have been changed to print column headings on all pages.

Clients

You can now use the terms “Yes” and “No” as default values for UDF fields of the Boolean data type.

Contacts

Unchecking Show Employees would cause an error.

Dashboard Groups

Contract Dollars and any Project UDF were previously not accessible in Current Period or Current Billing Period Mode of the My Projects Widget.

Renaming a Widget did not previously use that name in the Widget View popup.

‘My Projects’ widget now saves the column display order.

Employee Reimbursables

Unit rates do not round to two decimal places.

Added change E/R Account utility to the Employee Reimbursables applet.

Employees

Object reference error now resolved when logged in as Admin and using the employee lookup in the Employees applet.

Linking to timesheets from the Recent tab does not generate a metadata error and retrieves the correct timesheet.

Expense Sheets

When using the F2 key to copy a row in Expense Sheets, two rows would be created.

Firms

When editing a Firm in Marketing that did not have a corresponding UDF record, an error would occur that prevented the loading of the Firm detail screen.

General Journal

Can now view the Debit and Credit columns when cycling through revisions.

Import Tools

UDFs are not duplicated in the mapping tab.

Mapping and Review grids are set the correct size.

Invoice Design

Syntax error resolved when scripting an invoice design with a combined section.

Marketing Lists

When a list was “Shared” with can edit rights only the owner could edit the list.

When attempting to import by query for the Opportunities, an error would come up.

Opportunities

When attempting to edit an opportunity, an unhandled exception error occurred.

Opportunity Queries

When clicking a project link in Opportunity Queries, if the Project has a charge type of Opportunity, the Opportunity screen will open rather than the Project screen.

Permissions

Previously, when a user had access only to a custom report within a given module, the module would not show on the navigation menu.

PM Bill Review

In PM (and PA) Bill Review, the “As Of” date field will remember the last setting until the Invoicing Period is changed. At that point, everyone will have that date, until they change it. It will then stick until the next change.

Project Planning

When working in Planning the random ‘Key already exists’ error has been corrected.

Projects

When using the address popup form, the country would not get saved.

Added Country field to the addresses tab.

Copy and paste of WBS intermittently generated an Object Reference Not Set error.

Purchase Journal

Purchases now shows correct A/P account when a transaction is launched from a link.

Receipt Journal

Last search criteria in Cash Receipts now ‘sticks’.

Resource Scheduler

Performance has been increased significantly when loading a large number of employees and/or projects.

Sales Journal

Client/Vendor lookups do not allow carriage returns.

Time Sheets

When creating new timesheets for a Time Sheet Group, clicking the preview affected button did not factor in the dates if they had been changed.

Timesheet Adjustments

Negative numbers are now allowed for extended amounts.

1.4.0 introduced a bug in which the Employee and Work Date were not passed into the Project lookup.

Once you have run the update, you will need to rebuild the invoices using the Utiltiles / Invoice Design / Rebuild All Invoices option.

As with any major release, make sure you do a database backup prior to upgrading.

New Features

Benefit Accrual

In the HR module, there is a new applet called Benefit Accrual. To learn more about it, check out the Video Tutorial.

EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer)

Using the ACH format, InFocus now supports EFT. To learn more about it, check out the Video Tutorial.

Marketing Lists (and other Marketing enhancements)

In the Marketing module, there have been several additions and enhancements. The first of which is Marketing Lists. A marketing list is a named list of either Contacts, Firms, or Opportunities. Additionally, we’ve added the ability to customize the columns for Contacts and Opportunities in addition to Firms. To learn more about the changes, check out the Video Tutorial.

Retainer Wizard

One of the more frequent support requests comes from the process of entering a retainer. We’ve heard the cries and have added a Retainer Wizard. To see how it works, check out the Video Tutorial.

Project Auto-Complete

In Time Sheets, Time Sheet Adjustments, Expense Sheets, Sales Journal, Receipt Journal, Purchase Journal, Disbursement Journal, Employee Reimbursable Journal, and General Journal there is a new Project look-up control.

As you begin typing in your project path, the system will narrow down the possible options. Each time you hit the project delimiter (in this case a period), the system will retrieve the next level of the project. This can be disabled in Global Settings. Additionally, you can also use the F4 key as you previously could in Time/Expense.

Project Team Member Wizard

You can now manage the members of your project teams globally using the Project Team Member Wizard.

Resource Groups

In Project Management Module, there is a new applet called Resource Groups. Resource Groups are named groups of employees. The purpose of a resource groups is to limit the list of possible employees to schedule in Project Planning.

In Project Planning, you can assign resource groups to various levels of the project using the Resource Groups button on the toolbar.

From here, you can assign 1 or more resource groups to a specific level of the project (plan).

Once a resource groups has been assigned, the list of employees that come up in the scheduling side are limited to the group members for the particular part of the project.

Dashboard

Added the ability to rename the widgets.

Added a new widget called Activities. The Activities Widget can display either the logged in user’s activities or someone else’s.

Automated Invoicing

Added the ability to view zero dollar invoices. To do so, click on the unprintable tab, select the invoice, and click view active.

Project Planning

Added a notes field (you will find it under the Other type in the column chooser).

PA Bill Review

Added the ability to set the Current Retainer Amount (See the Retainer Wizard Tutorial Video to see it in action.)

Added the name of the top level Rate Schedule to the Project header.

Exposed the General Note field of the Project (PA only)

Added column to display Billed-To-Date Percentage

Invoice Design

Added the ability to de-activate system invoice designs so they do not show in the list of possible invoices. It is located on the toolbar in Invoice Design, called “System Invoice Management”.

New Invoice SQL Query Section called AllocateICCRevenueByPct.  This query section will allocate ICC Revenue based on the same percent completes used in a fixed fee invoice.  For this new SQL section to work it needs to be added to your fixed fee designs and placed anywhere after the fixed fee section with respect to the order of the sections.

General Journal

Added the ability to optionally show distinct Debit and Credit columns. Accessible through the toolbar / view.

My Projects Widget

Added Contract Value column

Added Expected Revenue Column

Exposed Project Level UDF fields

Sales Journal

Added a check all option when linking/unlinking transactions

Reports

Project Earnings by Profit Center – New project summary report that can be grouped by organizational unit.  It also can filter based on a common org code at a given level.

Pay When Paid Reports – Now supports vendor purchases that cite more than one project.  Additionally, inactive projects can be excluded.

Bug Fixes

PA / PM Bill Review

Could not edit the time/expense comments on line items

Project Planning

Copying a plan did not bring over the schedule and allocations

Drop down in allocations included inactive job titles

ODCBudgetPC, OCCBudgetPC, and ICCBudgetPC were not exposed in the WBS grid

Invoice Design

The SQL Invoice section did not script properly

Vendors

The code field was not disabled by default

G/L Budgets

Not properly spreading to 12 periods

Receipt Journal

When applying a cash receipt and paying off open invoices, it was not picking up credits.

Labor Distribution

Previously unable to blank out the payroll group.

Data Entry / Functional Data / Report

Data Entry / Functional Data / Report

SQL stands for structured query language and has been around for decades. The primary purpose of SQL is to retrieve and store data from and to a relational database. The database server, itself, must be SQL compliant and while there are many providers of SQL servers the only ones Infocus works with are Microsoft SQL 2005 and Microsoft SQL 2008.

What is a relation database?

Before we can learn the SQL language we first must have a basic understanding of a relational database. A relational database is primarily a set of inter-related tables. A table can be thought of as a two dimensional spreadsheet. The columns of the spreadsheet represent fields and the rows represent records. Below is an example of what a table holding three employees might look like.

Now consider what a table of timesheets might look like

Terminology

In the above example the timesheet table is related to the employee table by the field employeecode. When we relate tables in SQL the field between the two tables does not necessarily have to have the same column name but it is good practice. In the timesheet table we can see we have two records for John, four for Jane and none for Jim. What this depicts is what is commonly referred to as a one-to-many relationship. In other words one record from employees can link to many records in timesheets. While other relationships such as on-to-one or many-to-many can exist the vast majority of table relationships will be one-to-many.

The term we use to designate the column (or in some cases multiple columns) that is used to link two tables is known as a key field. A key field is generally called either a primary key or foreign key. Primary key means that the field is unique within the table. That is, no two records can have the same value. In our example the employeecode field in the employees table is a primary key. A foreign key dictates that the value in this field (unless empty) must exist in the related table. The employeecode field in timesheets is a foreign key to the employees table.

The Infocus database Structure

A database such as Infocus has many tables. Currently, there are over 400 tables in Infocus. At first this may seem to be a daunting task to navigate but thankfully there are some aids.

First off, Infocus comes with a complete up-to-date built in data dictionary report. This report is located in the Utilities module and is aptly name Data Dictionary Report. The report list the tables, the columns within the table, the column data type (e.g. money, text, date) and a description of what the tables and their columns are used for.

Infocus attempts to use real world words for tables and columns and minimize the use of abbreviations. So for instance, the table that holds employees is called EMPLOYEES while the table that holds projects is called PROJECTS.

Infocus makes use of naming conventions to help in navigation of the tables. Primary key fields always end with ID and usually have all or part of the table name in the column. For instance the primary key field in the employees table is called EMPID while the primary key field in projects is called PROJECTID. Primary key fields in Infocus are auto-generated. They are always positive integers (e.g. 1, 2, 3 etc..).

Tables such as EMPLOYEES or PROJECTS are often referred to as master tables. Master tables are what most other tables link to. The important master tables in Infocus are EMPLOYEES, PROJECTS, FIRMS, GLBASECODES, EXPENSECODES, LABORCODES, PROJECTFACTS, VENDORS and CLIENTS. Master files often have a secondary key field that while not the primary key field also must be unique within the table. This is called the real world key. An example would be the EMPCODE in employees. This is the field that the user enters in for a given employee and is displayed on reports and in screens. Each employee must have a unique EMPCODE. So while the EMPID is the primary key and what is used to link to TIMESHEETS, the EMPCODE field is what will ultimately be visible to the user. As you may notice the primary key and real world key (EMPID and EMPCODE respectively) both begin with the string EMP. This is another convention that is adhered to in Infocus. Another convention example is the name field in master files. Most master files will have a descriptive name. The field name will always be the same name as the primary key with the ID replaced with NAME. So in the EMPLOYEES table that would be EMPNAME and in the PROJECTS table that would be PROJECTNAME.

There are two tables that are a notable extension to the ID, CODE and NAME convention. The tables are PROJECTS and ORGUNITS. These two tables are self-linking tables. In other words one record in PROJECTS may link to another record in projects to form a sort of hierarchy or parent-to-child relationship. The PROJECTS table for instance, holds all levels of the projects (e.g. phases, tasks, subtasks etc..) . Therefore, the PROJECTCODE is not unique across the entire table. It is only unique with respect to parent. What this means is that the projectcode when it is the uppermost parent of a project tree then it is unique across the table. However a child must only be unique with respect to its parent. Consider two projects (9801 and 9802) each with a phase called Schematic Design with a phase code of 10. Below is what that would look like in the PROJECT TABLE.

In this example the two children records with a primary key (PROJECTID) of 3 and 4 are linked to the projects records 1 and 2 respectively via the field PARENTPROJECTID. The PARENTPROJECTID field is a foreign key to the PROJECTS Table. This is what is known as a self-link and is used to form hierarchies. In tables that use hierarchies a PATH field is used as the real world unique key. This field is unique for every record in the table and is automatically formed by Infocus by concatenating the CODE file with all the CODE fields of the related parents separated by a single character known as a delimiter. In this case the delimiter being used is a dash. You may also notice the LONGNAME field. Like the CODE field this is the concatenation of all the NAME vales of the parents separated by again a dash. If you looked at ORGUNITS (the table that holds company, office, departments etc…) you would see a similar structure.

Let’s reconsider the employees and timesheets tables as they more closely exist in Infocus. Below is a more accurate depiction.

EMPLOYEES

TIMESHEETS

TIMESHEETITEMS

As you can probably see EMPLOYEES links to TIMESHEETS on the EMPID field. The TIMESHEETS table contains timesheet header records, i.e. the employee the period start date and the period end date. The TIMESHEETS records in turn link to the TIMESHEETITEMS table by use of the TIME field. This is the table that holds the employees timesheet line items. Projects, naturally also link to this table.

SQL Views

The Infocus use of the auto-generating primary keys fields (ID fields) may at first glance seem to make looking at the data difficult and therefore why would Clearview use such a method. In answer to why is for performance. This method of internal keys is called the surrogate key technique. It yields much faster retrievals and storage rates compared to systems that use the more straight forward real world key method. Currently, Infocus is used by clients that have over one million records in their TIMESHEETITEMS table alone. As far as the surrogate key technique making it hard to look at the data Infocus has an answer that not only alleviates the issue but makes it easier than most real world technique systems. This is accomplished through the use of what is known as SQL views. SQL views are often referred to as meta-tables in that they appear as tables to the end users but in reality do not exist as a true table. Basically a view appears as a table to the user but is actually a query stored on the SQL Server. For every table that exists in Infocus there is a corresponding view with a name prefixed with SV_. For instance, the view for timesheets is named sv_timesheets. Below is an example of what TIMESHEETS and TIMESHEETITEMS would look like in their counterpart views.

SV_TIMESHEETS

SV_TIMESHEETITEMS

Now that we have covered the basic background info we will be able to move on to lesson two. In that lesson we will learn how to retrieve data.