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3.2 Projects / Jobs |
  
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3.2 Projects / Jobs |
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3.2.1 Projects and Jobs
In Latitude the terms Projects and Jobs are considered to be identical, a project simply being a group of related jobs.
Jobs within Latitude are identified by a Number and a Name, and each Job must be assigned to a Client. Within a job you are able to record data relating to what the job is such as location, billing information, and staff assignments. Each Job can be broken down into its component parts or Tasks. Each task may have an estimated start and finish date, estimated costs and charge amounts.
The location of a job is recorded using a site address, map co-ordinates, or land/legal descriptions. Latitude provides the ability to send a request to an internet service to determine Latitude and Longitude based on a site address. If the Latitude and Longitude of the site are present, the job can also be plotted on a map using that information. You can also specify how many surrounding jobs in proximity to the current job to display on the map.
Land/Legal Descriptions are primarily used in North America. A Land/Legal description is a composite of up to 15 data elements arranged in a specific order. Latitude allows you to define the different elements, and to create as many Land/Legal Description Types as you need. A Land/Legal Description can be linked to any number of jobs, and a job can have any number of Land/Legal descriptions.
The default charge calculation in Latitude is the combination of Employee rate and work type. This default charge can be over-ridden for a job. You can either set rates for the work types directly, allocate a pre-defined schedule of work rates (Business Edition only), assign a schedule to each task type (Business Edition only), or use the rates assigned to the employee classes.
On the Team tab, you are able to specify all the people related to the job as well as their role (e.g. Project Manager, Attorney, Site Supervisor, Client Liason). To assign a person to a job they must be created as a contact first.
You can designate one employee as a project manager for the job, and another as the supervisor. You can also specify which employee is responsible for each task. It is also possible to flag the job so that any timesheets entered against it must include the task code the work was done for.
On the User Field tab Latitude provides twenty text and five date customizable user fields. Latitude also allows you to change the labels for these fields, so that the data can be uniformly entered in all Jobs. Each User text field has a drop-down, to hold values in lookup tables or if not needed, allows free text entry.
Latitude allows you to define the job number as a being comprised of one, two, three or more part values. You can define validity rules for each part. Latitude provides some pre-defined structures, such as; fiscal year or Branch or Primary Job with a next number generated Counter.
Linking jobs in latitude is done logically based on the Job Number, using either a procedural sequence such as; "J1000A J1000B ... " or using the multi-part primary job key structure; "J1000, J1000-1, J1000-2 ...".
Job Status controls whether timesheets can be entered for a job and if invoices can be created for a Job. You are able to create as many different statuses as needed and flag what actions are allowed for a job. Job status is also used to determine if a job is included when running a number of financial reports.