Streamline the process of your complex or multi-faceted campaigns by bringing together your various projects managed by different parts of your business. Allocate your project and/or issue work to track all tasks, log hours & report work within your retainer periods.
Using this guide, you can:
Allocate Work
Track and report on the tasks underway and hours logged within your retainer period. If your retainer work is spread between multiple Tickets and/or projects, easily allocate this time to any of your ongoing contracts.
The retainers module allows you to track Tickets and projects against a retainer, or create tasks directly against a retainer period and log work directly against a period by creating an activity.
In most cases, Accelo will just let you choose the retainer and will then automatically allocate blocks of work from a ticket/project into the most relevant periods for that retainer.
Allocating Tickets
There are three main ways to associate work from a Ticket to a retainer.
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When creating a Ticket, if there are any retainers available for that client, you will be able to choose the retainer. This means that as work is logged against the Ticket, it will be automatically allocated to the most current retainer period.
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When Approving a Ticket, you'll see a Retainers drop-down field above the listed activities.
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From the View Retainer screen, select Allocate Tickets. Then simply drag the Ticket to the left of the screen into the required retainer.
Note - you'll need to review other Tickets on this screen before hitting Process button at the bottom.
Allocating Projects
Allocating Projects is a little different than allocating Tickets. There are two main ways to associate work from a project to a retainer.
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When creating the project, if there are any retainers available for that client, you will be able to choose one. As work is logged against the project, it will automatically be allocated to the current retainer period.
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When approving the project, you'll see a Retainer Available for Project dropbox.
Creating Activities
You can also simply log work directly into a retainer period. If you end up logging time directly against the Retainer, it will automatically attribute into the current open period.
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View the period and then click Add Activity.
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Since you're logging work directly, the Fallback Rate for the period will be used to calculate the budget/allowance usage.
Creating Tasks
You can create tasks directly against a retainer period and log work directly against a period by creating an activity. You can only create tasks against a certain period, not against the retainer itself.
To create a task on a Retainer Period:
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From the Tasks tab. within a period, click the +Add Task button.
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This will open the Create a Task screen where you can fill out all task details.
Un-linking time from a period
Use the Manage and Approve Time feature to easily shuffle time logged from one period to another. If you've accidentally allocated time from a Ticket or project to the wrong period, then you don't need to unlink it from the retainer - you can easily and quickly move it on by clicking the Manage & Approve Time button.
However, if you've allocated it to the wrong retainer, or need to invoice for it directly, then you'll need to fully unlink the time from the period and retainer.
To unlink work logged against a Retainer period:
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Open the period where the time is allocated and click the Usage tab.
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Find the Ticket or project or activity, and click the Unlink option.