All the latest updates and improvements from the Factory team

Track the time worked on each job

Team avatar
Shared by Team • May 09, 2024

Hi there,

This is a big one! We are very excited to announce that we have released the first major piece of our new Time Tracking functionality, allowing your team to clock on / off from jobs.

Gain visibility and insight into the amount of labour that goes into each job, providing greater clarity on your margins and driving more accurate quoting.

You can leverage Time Tracking in the following ways, via each Sales Order's Tracking tab:

  • Clock on / off from entire jobs, or specific line items.
  • View a live feed of the Hours estimated vs Hours worked for each job
  • See a breakdown of all work logged for a specific job

In addition, you can configure Time Tracking in the following ways via the Settings > Time Tracking page:

  • Automatically create entries on Planner when users clock on / off from jobs.
  • Automatically update the Actual qty of Labour line items on a job as users clock on / off from labour tasks, providing you with an accurate, live, margin.
  • Configure Work hours for your team and automatically clock off team members when the end of a day is reached.
  • Configure PIN codes for users, requiring them to enter their PIN when clocking on / off.
  • And more...

You can view a detailed walkthrough of the functionality here.

Later this month we will be releasing our Timesheets functionality, giving you even greater capabilities around managing your team and the time they work!

As this exciting set of functionality continues to evolve, we encourage you to provide any feedback and thoughts about how we can continue to improve our ability to help your team track the time they work on jobs.

New feature
Improvement

Add custom content to emails!

Team avatar
Shared by Team • May 06, 2024

Hi there,

You can now add custom text to the emails that you send from Factory.

  • Default custom text can be configured per email type (I.e. Quote, Invoice, Purchase Order etc.) via the Settings page(s) within Factory. This content will display by default on every new email sent.
  • Text can also be added or overwritten when sending individual emails.
  • Any text added will be displayed in the body of the email that your customer or supplier receives.
  • The styling of emails has also been updated to make them easier for your customers and suppliers to read and interact with.

We hope this new feature will make sending emails via Factory even more flexible and functional for you!

Please feel free to reply to this message with any thoughts or questions! We'd love to hear them.

Improvement

Sales Orders Export + Various tweaks

Team avatar
Shared by Team • April 15, 2024

Hi there,

We have made a few slight tweaks and improvements to some key areas of Factory:

  • When exporting the Sales Orders list to Excel or CSV, the export will now include contact email addresses, as well as all labels present on each order at the time of the export.
  • Inventory icons will now display on all Sales and Purchase orders that are in a 'Submitted' status.
  • Various bug fixes

As always, please feel free to reach out to our team with any questions or feedback :)

New feature

Labour Line Items

Paul avatar
Shared by Paul • March 19, 2024

Hi there,

In another step towards our upcoming Time Tracking functionality, we've released our new Labour Line Items feature.

  • You can now assign Hourly rates (cost/charged) to Team Members via the Settings > Team page. This applies to both Standard and Assignee users.
  • Team members can then be added to orders (or Product Kits) as a labour line item, pulling through their cost and hourly rate onto the order.
  • A new labour section has also been added to the bottom of each order's page, detailing the total labour value on the order.
  • Under the Settings > PDFs page, you can configure whether or not labour line items display on your internal and customer-facing PDFs.
  • As part of the upcoming Time Tracking functionality we'll be releasing shortly, you'll soon be able to track the number of hours estimated (labour) vs hours worked on each order, given you greater insight into your margins and the accuracy of your quoting.
New feature

Credit Limits / Credit Holds and Tablet experience

Paul avatar
Shared by Paul • March 19, 2024

Hi there,

We're very excited to inform you that you can now set credit limits for customers, as well as place customers on credit hold.

Credit limits

  • You can now assign a credit limit to customers via the Settings tab of a customer's profile.
  • Credit limits are calculated based on the total value of unarchived Sales Orders which are not in a draft status.
  • When a credit limit is exceeded, or when submitting a Sales Order that would cause a customer to exceed their credit limit, a warning will be displayed.
  • For MYOB customers, an additional option is available under the Settings > Integrations page to leverage MYOB's built-in credit limit values and credit hold status instead of Factory's.

Credit hold

  • Customers can now be placed on Credit Hold, preventing new Sales Orders from being created for them.
  • Credit Holds can be toggled on/off via the Settings tab on a customer's profile.
  • When enabled, a warning will display when attempting to create a new order for the customer.

Other

  • In addition, we have also made several improvements to the user interface of Factory when accessed via a tablet device. This will ensure a smoother experience when accessing the platform remotely or via the workshop floor.
Feature update
Improvement

Introducing Sub-Kits

Paul avatar
Shared by Paul • March 03, 2024

Hi there,

We're excited to announce the rollout of our latest update, Sub-Kits.

You can now add 'kits within kits' to create more complex and detailed Product Kits that contain multiple layers or 'sub-assemblies'.

When creating or editing a Product Kit, simply click the new Add Sub-Kit button, enter a name for the Sub-Kit and then add your products to it.

From within the Product Kit's page, you can also customise where the Sub-Kit's details will display throughout Factory, similar to showing/hiding where a Product Kit's individual line items appear.

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback on this new functionality, so please don't hesitate to reach out with any thoughts or questions!

Improvement

Configure Bill Date and more

Paul avatar
Shared by Paul • February 29, 2024

Hi there,

We've made various improvements and fixes to Factory this week that we'd love to share with you.

  • You can now configure the Bill date when converting a Purchase Order to a Bill. The date chosen will be reflected on the Bill in your accounting package.
  • The email address of contacts added to a Sales or Purchase Order will now display on the order's page, along with their name and phone number.
  • We've sped up the time it takes for certain product pages and pricing tables to load when adding these products to an order.
  • Fixed a bug that was causing issues when copying/pasting data into pricing table cells or product line items on orders.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing material colours from displaying on certain PDFs.
  • Various other bug fixes.

As always, we hope you find these changes and fixes useful!

Feature update

Delivery Scheduling, SMS and email updates.

Paul avatar
Shared by Paul • February 13, 2024

Hi there,

We've made a few updates and enhancements that we'd like to share with you:

  • You can now filter your Delivery Scheduling page by each order's 'required date'. You'll find all your filters behind the new 'filter' icon next to the search field in the Delivery Scheduling tool.
  • Automated SMS updates sent via Workflow now include the order's PO #.
  • We've added the ability to include multiple email addresses in the 'Reply to' and 'Send a copy' fields for Invoices, Quotes, Purchases etc.

We hope you enjoy these changes!

New feature

Partial invoicing is here

Cathy avatar
Shared by Cathy • February 06, 2024

Hi there,

You now have the functionality to apply a partial payment to an Invoice in three easy ways.

From within a Submitted Sales Order you can generate an invoice based on:

  1. Specific line items
  2. A specific dollar amount
  3. A percentage of total order value

By opening a Submitted Order, selecting Options > Partial Invoice > you can select how you want to generate a partial invoice, and then select Options to Print or Email the invoice. When Print or Email is selected the invoiced amount will generate the required invoice in your accounting package if enabled.

The Invoice status now also includes Partially invoiced when a partial invoice has been generated, and by running your cursor over the Invoiced status a popup will display the Invoiced amount and the Remaining amount on the order to be invoiced.

You can find more information about how partial invoicing works here.

We'd love to hear your thoughts after using this new functionality, so please don't hesitate to submit your feedback below or email support@factory.app.

Improvement

Updates to PDF settings, Delivery Scheduling and more.

Paul avatar
Shared by Paul • January 16, 2024

Hi there,

We've made a few improvements to various parts of the platform that should improve the flexibility and useability of certain features:

  • You can now filter the Delivery Scheduling page by assignees and labels.
  • Each order's Timeline tab will now capture when an order is scheduled via the Delivery Scheduling page.
  • Adjusted the product search experience when creating new orders so that product 'variant' results are sorted in the same order that they appear on each product's pricing table.
  • You can now choose to Show/Hide certain product pricing table columns on Delivery Docket PDFs and Purchase Orders.
  • Added an option to Settings > PDFs that allows you to show/hide Internal Notes on Work Order PDFs.

As always, please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!