Quick Tour

Modified on Tue, 10 Sep at 9:54 AM

Magnetic is capable of supporting your business from initial client contact through to client billing and on top provide you with a complete business overview allowing you to take important decisions based on data rather than guesses.

See Magnetic in action in this quick walkthrough video.

Project life-cycle

As seen below, you can use Magnetic throughout the complete project life-cycle and we will show you how in this article.

	New Lead	New leads should always be added to Magnetic so it is possible to track the progress and evaluate potential opportunities. It also provides visibility with your team and creates an opportunity for knowledge sharing. Who knows? - the lead you are working on might be a lead that someone else from your team have been working on/with in the past and is able to provide you with some pointers.
	Qualify Lead	Lead qualification is the process of evaluating and scoring leads based on their fit, interest, and readiness to buy your product or service. Lead qualification helps you segment your leads into different categories, such as cold, warm, hot, or qualified, and tailor your marketing and sales efforts accordingly. This guide provides some good pointers to qualification.
	Sales Estimate	Understanding the scope of work and the full extent of a potential project is key to getting the estimate right. And getting the estimate right before the get-go is important to avoid scope creep later. Make sure to spend good time in getting all the details from the client and to liaise internally with the stakeholders to understand how much it will take to get the job done. Although past experience in doing similar projects can be good it is important to treat each project individually. Secondly, it is crucial to align what resource impact this project will have if it goes through. If the required team capacity to deliver on this project is not met, then the project will suffer from the beginning.
	Opportunity Won	Once an opportunity is won it is important that there is a well-documented and proven handover process from sales to delivery which must include all the necessary details for delivery to do a good job.
	Set Baseline	As a first step to bring the project live you will need to understand what was sold. The Sales Estimate functions as your baseline for the next step. If there are any external suppliers to be working on the project, it is important that these suppliers are briefed in detail.
	Assign Tasks	By reviewing the baseline, ie. the sales estimate, you can now start to map out who will do what and when. This is where you will create a time plan and assign the resources to work on the project through tasks. Make sure that the resources you assign understand their role in the project, the work they need to do, and time they have to do the work.
	Execute Tasks	When assigned to work on a task you must make sure that you understand what you need to do as well as the time you have at your disposal is sufficient. If not, you need to raise your hand. If you for some reason while doing the work you encounter a problem, again make sure to raise your hand. That way, stakeholders can plan accordingly.
	Monitor Progress	Follow-up on tasks daily. Make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. Consider having daily stand-ups and check-ins with your team. If something gets delayed make sure to communicate to the stakeholders.
	Invoice Client	Hopefully at this point you can invoice the client according to what was agreed from the beginning. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. While the project is running, more often than not, there are unforeseen challenges or the scope changes. Be aware of this and make sure that unforeseen work is captured, communicated and billed accordingly.
	Measure & Report	Measure & Report is not something that only belongs in the end of a project. Magnetic has built-in powerful tools that will predict if a project is not going to go as planned, before it does. Besides that, Magnetic has some powerful functionality to give you a holistic view of your entire business and client profitability and potential over-servicing.
	Close	When everything has been billed and accounted for, the project must close. Before doing so, make sure that everyone is informed about it so no last-minute changes are needed. If a client returns with an amendment to a closed project it should be considered a new project.

New Lead

A new lead is created by adding a prospective client and a contact (unless is it an existing client). In this example we will just be focusing on creating an opportunity and the most important things to track. If you would like to create a job and skip creating an opportunity, you can do so instead. See below.

New Opportunity

Opportunity Name	Add a name that will uniquely identify this opportunity.
Contact & Company	It is important to track who you are speaking to (and in the next step "Qualify Lead") to make sure that the contact has the right authority to speak to you and to eventually sign the deal.
Description	Provide a detailed and accurate description of the opportunity and the potential scope of the project.
Owner	Set who is responsible for the opportunity.
Opportunity Status	Set the status to the current status of the Opportunity. A good idea is to have internal guidelines to when a specific status is used.
Probability Rate	The probability rate is your judgement to how close the opportunity is to get signed.
Closing Date & Duration	Set the expected closing date to when this opportunity is likely to get signed and the project can start. Set the Duration to how long the project will take. Setting these two properties will help understand when the business need the resources to work on the project - and for how long.
Once-off & Monthly Amount	Provide a guesstimate to how much the opportunity is worth as a once off fee, or/and if the opportunity has a monthly fee value. Update these values as you get to understand more about the scope of work. The values should be zero-set once you have created a Cost Estimate as that likely will be more accurate than the values here.
Colour	Colour can be used to indicate the importance (as an example) of winning the opportunity, but you can decide within your organisation what the different colours mean.

New Job

Job name	Add a name that will uniquely identify this job.
Contact & Company	It is important to track who the client contact is on this job. Selecting the contact will automatically populate the client field.
Rate Card	If a rate card has been associated to the client you can now select this.
Description	Provide a detailed and accurate description of the job and the potential scope of the project. Many Magnetic clients use the Description to add the briefing/Scope of Work here.
Owner	Set who is responsible for the job.
Won by (A.E.)	Set who won the job. (A.E.: Account Executive).
Percentage Complete	Update the Percentage Complete to how complete the job is at its current stage.
Job Status	Set the current Job Status for the job. A good idea is to have internal guidelines to when a specific status is used.
Colour	Colour can be used to indicate the importance (as an example) of this job but you can decide within your organisation what the different colours mean.
Start/End Date	Input the start and end date for this job and update them as you move along. This provides an understanding from other stakeholders to when this job is likely to start and finish. In addition, some Magnetic dashboards rely on an updated start/end date.

Qualify Lead

There is no particular system action to do to qualify a lead. We recommend to have a defined process/method to qualify a lead.

Sales Estimate

Once the Opportunity/Job is created you will automatically end up on the Opportunity/Job Dashboard. The Dashboard provides a birds-eye view of the job.

We will return to this later. Let's first add a Cost Estimate to the job.

In the bottom section click on Finance -> CEs and click on New Cost Estimate.

The most important thing to understand is how to add line items to the Cost Estimate and the difference between Internal Item Types and External Item Types.

Internal: this Item Type is typically for hours.

External: this Item Type is typically for purchases.

You can add Line Items by clicking the + button in the upper right corner.

Read more about Cost Estimates in this article.

Opportunity Won & Set Baseline

There is only a couple of system related things to do once you get approval from the client to start the job.

On an Opportunity

Locate your Opportunity and mark it as Signed. Doing so Magnetic will convert the Opportunity to a Job.

On a Job / Cost Estimate

Set the Cost Estimate status as Client Approved.

Creating a Purchase Order

If you have any supplier who will be working on the job you should create a Purchase Order that outlines the details of the agreed delivery.

To add a Purchase Order, go to Finance -> POs and click New Purchase Order.

Read more about Purchase Orders in this article.

Assign Tasks

Now, let's start to plan out the project. There is a couple of ways to add tasks and assign resources.

Generate Tasks from Cost Estimate

On the Cost Estimate, you've already mapped out the type of roles (Item Types) that must work on the job.

Magnetic can now convert the Item Types from the Cost Estimate to Tasks.

Click on Tasks -> New Task ^ -> Generate from CE -> In the window that opens, input the Cost Estimate you would like to copy from.

Adding tasks manually

Alternatively, you can add tasks manually.

Click on New Task, and fill out the information.

Task Name	Add a name that will uniquely identify this task and that will make sense for the resources you assign to work on the task.
Description	Provide a detailed and accurate description of the task and the work that needs to be done.
Link task to	The opportunity or job that this task is linked to.
Billing Rate & Billable	Select the Billing Rate that users that track time on this task, are billed out at. If you do not set a Billing Rate, Magnetic will pick the users default billing rate instead. You can also select if the task is billable or not.
Status & Colour	Set the current Status for the task. A good idea is to have internal guidelines to when a specific status is used. Colour can be used to indicate the importance (as an example) of this task but you can decide within your organisation what the different colours mean.
Timeframe	Set the Start and End date for the task. If you not not set a start and End date
Task Time & Tracked	Fill in the time that the resource(s) you allocate to this task are to use on it. Pay attention to what was budgeted for in the Cost Estimate. As resources track time on the task, the Tracked field will show the hours tracked.
Assign task to	Select the resource(s) to be assigned to this task.

Read more about Tasks in this article.

As you create tasks and assign resources, notice how the bottom section of the Task overview updates. This section will inform you if you are still in line with the budgeted amounts from your Cost Estimate.

Team Scheduler

The Team Scheduler allows you to see the entire teams' tasks and available capacity. You can quickly move around tasks if something needs to be changed or if you need to add a new task.

From the Menu, select Tasks and select Team Scheduler from the Change View dropdown.

Execute Tasks

When a resource gets assigned to a task, the task is added to their to-do list. From here it is easy to see all the task information as well as track time on the task.

Timesheet

Task assigned and tracked time is automatically added to the users timesheet. In the right hand side, the user can see how much time was allocated and how much time is left before running over time. A user can also add expenses from the timesheet.

Monitor Progress

As the project is running, overall progress can now be measured. First and foremost, the Jobs Dashboards provides a great overview of how the project is going.

Budget	Gives you all of the budget (Cost Estimate) related information of the job.
Scheduling	Gives you the breakdown of hours, estimates vs actuals, tasks and if you're over-servicing on the job (spending more time/hours than planned for).
Financials	Gives you billing information including your Net/Gross Margins.

In Finance -> Summary you will find the details and you will be able to compare Estimated (Cost Estimate and Scheduled Tasks), against Actuals and Billed.

Additional reports are available in the Reports tab.

Reconciling a Purchase Order against a Supplier Invoice

If you have suppliers working on the project they will send you invoices. It's important that you keep track of what was agreed upon (based on the Purchase Order) and what was invoiced and you are able to reconcile the Supplier Invoice against the Purchase Order.

Read more about Supplier Invoices in this article.

Invoice Client

It is now time to invoice the client (of course you are able to invoice ahead of time depending on the agreed billing plan).

Go to Finance -> TI's -> New Tax Invoice.

You can now decide if you want to start out with a blank invoice, generate an invoice based on the Cost Estimate or generate the invoice based on the time tracked on the project.

Read more about Tax Invoices in this article.

Measure & Report

Getting a complete overview of your entire business, and not only project by project, is key to informed decision making.

Magnetic includes the most important dashboards that will allow you to Measure & Report.

Click on the images below to get more information on each individual dashboard.

Close

Finally, we've come to the point of closing the project.

Make sure that everyone is informed about the project close so no last-minute changes are needed. If a client returns with an amendment to a closed project it should be considered a new project.

From the Actions menu, select Archive.

Archiving a job will not delete anything, but the job will no longer show in the live views of open jobs.

This completes the Quick Tour. Feel free to reach out to us for any questions.