Job Manager Workspace Overview and Guide

The Job Manager Workspace serves as a one-stop-shop for a job manager to get an overview of the current status of their projects, and alerted to any areas that might need attention. It is recommended Job Managers check the workspace at least once a week, if not more often.

If you are a Backup Job Manager for any projects, they will also appear in all areas on this Workspace.

How to access the Workspace

Login to Apex Business
Click on the 'Job Manager Workspace' tab in the top navigation bar

Workspace Overview

The workspace is broken up into a few key sections:

Quick links to Job Manager tools
Alerts for key areas to be aware of. Generally, if these are reports are not blank, something requires your attention.
A list of your projects
Approvals

1. Quick Links

The Project Planner gives you an overview of all of your projects, and all the staff working on them. It can easily allow you to see how your different projects interact with each other, and understand what other work staff may be involved in.
Mass Timecard Approval is a separate interface for Job Managers who approve a lot of timecards, as an alternative to the 'Timecards to Approve' component in Area 4. It offers filtering functionality and the ability to see more information at a glance.
Create Resource Request allows you to submit a request for new staff members to be added to your projects

2. Alerts

These are key alerts you need to be aware of on your jobs:

High Schedule Variance which shows any assignment where the timecard submitted are a lot lower or higher than expected according to the schedule.
- This will show if a staff member has not entered any time against your job when they were expected to.
- This will also show if a staff member has done a lot more work than expected on your job, which could cause budget overruns if not monitored
- For this report to work, it is vital that you keep the schedules for your jobs up to date. These can be adjusted on the Project Planner
Actual vs Budget shows any projects running at or above 85% of their budget, and allows you to easily keep an eye on them to ensure they don't go over
Late Projects shows any overdue milestones that need to be marked ready for billing. Proximity and the Finance team base revenue forecasts on milestones and so milestone not being billed as expected can cause significant impacts on cashflow, so it's vital that you keep milestone target dates up to date and bill them on time.
Unsubmitted Timecards shows any WIP time against your projects that haven't been submitted for approval or billing yet. This allows you to easily find time that staff members forgot to submit, especially at end of month before the invoicing process is run which will alleviate the chance for errors
Assignments Ending Soon gives you advanced warning of staff members finishing up on your projects that might need to be extended, or prompt you to engage in a discussion with the client around future work
Timecards Missing Milestone shows timecards submitted against Fixed Price jobs that didn't have a milestone selected, which may result in you going over a milestone's desired spend as the billings for those timecards won't be properly allocated and therefore won't trigger notifications and alerts

3. List of Projects

This shows your a list of projects for which you are the Job Manager, or Backup Job Manager, and shows you the Budget (Bookings), Remaining Amount, and End Date at a glance.

4. Approvals

The bottom of the workspace is where you can easily approve Timecards, Expenses, and Payable Invoices (if you are required to do this). To easily keep on top of approvals, and make reporting and end of month accurate, it is highly recommended to approve or reject all your items each week. For more information on approving and rejecting items, please see how to approve time and expenses.

Useful Link:

Lunchbox Learning - Tips for using the Job Manager Workspace in Apex (by Samuel Kildea)