Sage Coretime Blog

This is from Brendan McCarthy, one of our development team

Running a 1,000 miles in 50 days to raise money for breast cancer research

In 2007, my sister Tricia at 27 years of age, was diagnosed with breast cancer. For three years, she fought a courageous battle against the cancer. Many a time, she was close to death’s door but she always managed to pull through. Despite all the hardships she went through, including long chemo treatments and a mastectomy, she always managed to remain upbeat. Sadly on the 8th of February, 2010, she passed away.

Although it is too late for Tricia, I felt that I had to do something to prevent this happening to other families. So, from the 13th of August to the 1st of October, I’m running a thousand miles in fifty days (twenty miles a day) for charity. The money raised from this will be donated to the National Breast Cancer Research Institute where it will be used in the fight against breast cancer.

You can find out how the run is progressing by visiting -http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=145659082124810
To see how many miles I’ve run, please visit – http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeos/p/nikeplus/en_US/plus/#//challenges/detail/274836489/

To donate, please go to http://www.mycharity.ie/event/tricia_mccarthy

I have recently been in the Middle East training on Coretime which was a learning experience for me possibly even more so than for the people we were training.
It is always exciting to visit a new part of the world and doing it in a training environment allows for a very pleasant mix of the comfort of a hotel with a familiar training routine contrasted with the people with a different cultural outlook and a place that is quite different from the familiar home surroundings.
One of the great things about this is the friendliness of the people – not only this but their willingness to accept you and any differences you have and any mistakes you make with what could be perceived as cultural gaffes.
Altogether a great experience for me and a recommendation for others.
So, is there any difference between Coretime for the Middle East and Coretime for the other regions. Very little, English is the business language of the Middle East and so in that way there was no changes, functionality was added to allow for alternative names that could accept the Arabic script. As with many clients, they had their own reporting requirements which were integrated into the system. Other items would be of benefit to many users and was implemented into the main system and will filter through for all users everywhere.

Well the new version (2.4.0.120) is finally available. It was (for us) a long time coming due to calls from other departments for developer expertise which (according to those departments) would be so limited as to have no affect on your timelines.

So, what was the aim of this release – as with most major releases this covers a number of areas

1.  Bug and Issue fixes – while not detailed here the full list is available on www.coretime.com – this being those issues found by us or our clients.
2. Enhancement requests – generally these come from our clients and address specific issues they have and our analysis team review with them and similar client to find the best way to address the issue
3. Feature requests – these are generally driven by either clients in new sectors for us or by research into new sectors to allow a better fit into those sectors. In this instance work has been done to expand the international scope of the product amongst others.

However, back to the key features of this release as summarised below:-

General

1. Option to select your start day of the week.
2.  Currency – allow for those currencies where two decimal points is not the norm.

Time Entry

1. Scroll on piano time bar will fill in the gaps on the piano bar as separate time entries. This makes it easy to fill in the gaps when entering time for a day
2.  Can now set the system to not permit time entry after the current year end date.

Project Management

1. Default Budget Type – All new Projects created have the specified budget type set a the default budget type.
2. Ability to flag a Project so as expenses cannot be raised against it.
3. Default Projects – a facility to add a new project against all clients (or a subset of clients) at once.

Invoicing / Statements

1. New Tag All button to enable quick Invoicing.
2. Bill Texts – New Unit Price Formula to allow for use of formula (i.e. * 12 ) when raising Invoices with Bill Texts
3. New Copy Invoice Functionality – Setup using system Option Use Copy invoice in WIP Screen – When enabled have option to save an Invoice including Bill Text details as a Favourite Invoice – Then you can re-use this Invoice template when raising new Invoices.
4. Auto Fee Outlay – The System Option Use Auto Fee Outlay must be enabled – Under Client Utilities the Outlay for Fees screen now has By Percentage option – So if an Invoice is raised this will add an outlay invoice line with a value calculated as a percentage of the total amount – So if the Percentage is 10% and the total invoice amount is 100, then the added Outlay fee line with be for 10.
5. When running the statements, multi project payments should appear as one line when the ‘Show Client Only’ option is ticked.
6. With Statement MS Word Template – documented details on option to copy main table details onto extra page / remittance slip – Setup of this is documented in Statement Word Template Detail.doc

Reports

1. Day Book Reports – New Show Client Vat No option allows Client Vat No to show on Day Books Reports.
2. Aged WIP report – New Include WIP values above option – This allows reports to be run for a Wip balance greater than a certain value (i.e. > 500).
3. Project Overview Report – allows for high level review of key data.
4. Overtime Report – Reporting specifically on the overtime worked by employees.
5. Client period Report – Time spent on a client for a selected period.
6. Portfolio Report – another high level project report highlighting key data

Staff Planner

1. Staff Planner now shows ‘+’ if dealing with multiple entries on the same day of a display line.
2. New option to add a Planner Task to All Employees, or All in a Department, or all in a Position.
3. Filtering of views by analysis group.
4. Enhanced checks on new entries.

Links

1. Sage 50 link – When bringing in Purchase Invoice detail from Sage 50 if there is a specific Cost Code it will match that against relevant Expense Type in Coretime rather than the default Expense accounts Journal.
2. Export For Vision – New Employee Analysis Grouping report selection option on the report.
3. Accounts production – Outlay items will now include costs.
4. Accounts Production – allow for the bringing over of the customer name on the invoice.

For more details on how to upgrade, please contact our support team.

I am the secretary of one of the local sports clubs for children. The most important task that I have is to ensure that the information on fixtures, courses and events reaches the coaches of all the teams and from there can be sent on to the players.
I though this would be a comparatively easy part of the job until I asked for email addresses so I can send information on.
The blank stares surprised me as I found that less than half of the coaches used email.
The computing sector is so fast moving that it can be difficult to keep up and easy to be sub-merged in the latest technology and the jargon that goes with it – and this can be one of the great dangers of writing software. All of these coaches used computers at work but used them to perform a specific task, just another tool that they used, rather than as a communications device.
So it was back to earth with a bump and a stark reminder to maintain touch with our clients. Yes, use the latest technologies if needed, but always remember that our software is written to make other peoples lives easier, and that they, the users, are an integral part of the journey the application.

Among the current projects that the development team is looking at are improvements to the Microsoft Project (MS Project) link.

We have a number of users who use MS Project for the detailed planning of the work to be done at a much lower level then Coretime itself as they look at tasks, sub tasks and even lower to allocate resources and timelines to a project.

Currently there is the ability to load the resources from the Coretime employee list and import the high level tasks against activities in the Coretime budget, the Staff Planner or the Task Manager.

In partnership with a number of our clients we are looking to improve this link in the coming month.

What this will look like initially is improvements to that link with the Coretime budgeting facility.

So what do our partners think we need to look at:-

• Having employee grades and departments available in MS Project
• Use Sub Projects or Phases as the top level tasks in MS Project
• Update the ‘Actual Work’ and allow for the user definition of the ‘Percentage Complete’
• Allow for an MS Project to create the entire budget within Coretime.

While this is not a complete list it does give a flavour of how users would like to see the product grow in this particular area and how our development team endeavours to partner with specialists to ensure that what we deliver can make a real difference to all users.

Sage Coretime Support pages have been updated to include a Knowledge Base containing useful articles on how to use Sage Coretime.

 To find out more go to support.coretime.com

Henry Ford’s classic quote …

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse.”

Ford’s own innovation we know all about but it is a lesson on how the view of the customer can be different from that of the innovator even though the end result can benefit both.

Does this mean we should ignore the customer when going down the innovation journey? Of course it does not, but it should be looked at that the customer is a fellow passenger on the journey and can be involved at all points.

The beginning of this is in understanding how your clients work. This in itself is not enough; you also must understand their needs not only at present but also moving into the future.

There are times when the client will be immersed in the needs of today without the opportunity to convey to you their thoughts on what could be coming down the line. By understanding their business, and the environment in which they work, an innovator can allow the clients to successfully meet some of the challenges ahead without needing to fire-fight when those challenges arise.

So, for your customers, you need to deliver what they need now, but to be an innovator you need to deliver what they will need in the future even if they do not yet know it.

The Sage Coretime website has been freed from the Sage Ireland site with the re-launch of www.coretime.com.

This will be a ‘One Stop Shop’ for all your information needs on Coretime’s Timesheet and Expense Entry and Project Management web software solutions.

Support and Training links will follow shortly.

Watch this space!!!!.

Sage Coretime is a powerful and easy to use time recording and project management solution which enables you to enter data, including expenses, via a network or the internet anytime, anywhere. It also caters for companies whose staff work off-site or in a multi-office environment. It delivers data to those who need it quickly and easily with no room for error and maximises the return you achieve from each working hour.