Overview
The Project Coordinator screen takes coordination to a whole new level through management by exception. This screen allows coordinators to key in critical dates based on PO acknowledgements and monitor the project against those dates. The screen has three major views to draw attention to areas that need follow up; each view containing more detailed information on the vendor and the items that you ordered from them.
Manufacturers View
Purchase Order View
PO Detail View
There is a color-coded system based on critical dates to draw your attention to items that need to be looked at. Those colors are based on the dates that the PO was received and the actual shipping and receipt dates.
Important Note: The screen was developed for Project Coordinators to enter information based on follow-up calls to manufacturers and job sites. The color-coding is based off fields that need to be manually entered for this reason. To smaller organization this may seem a little counter intuitive and for that reason we have added an option for some automation in the Projects Setup screen (a checkbox to use the PO receipt date as the "Actual Receive Date"). This screen is intended to be an actively managed screen and not just a reference.
Black Status – There have not been any PO's cut for this manufacturer.
Green Status – There are no pending issues that need to be resolved for this manufacturer.
Yellow Status - Possible problems such as no estimated shipping date entered or the shipping date is within 5 days and needs to be followed up on.
Red Status – PO has been created but the estimated shipping day is today or has passed.
Management by Exception:
Some projects can be exceedingly large having multiple locations, hundreds of manufacturers, and thousands of items. Scrolling through that much information at once can be daunting. One of the overall philosophies of TRX Enterprise is management by exception. We strive to present data in a way that points you to the most urgent tasks. In the Project Coordinator screen we do this by color-coding the status. The colors are based on predefined logic rules that will show you red when urgent, yellow when attention is needed and green when all is good. Once you understand this functionality you are able to go directly to the urgent matters first allowing you to effectively prioritize your time.
Manufacturers View
Upon entering the project coordinator screen you can type the project number in the "Project" field or press F9 to pull up the find project screen. This will populate the Manufacturers View which contains all manufacturers that are tied to items in the project material plan. We list the vendor representative, service agent and status. The status of the PO is defined by color.
Project - The number of the project that you are managing.
Project Title - The title that is associated with the project.
View – You choose how you wish to filter the manufacturers displayed, your options are:
All – Displays all manufacturers. This is the default setting.
Problems – This will show all manufacturers with red and yellow status.
Urgent - All manufacturers with red status.
Send Price Letter – This view will show all manufacturers that have not been sent a Price Protection Letter.
Price Letter Sent – This view will show all manufacturers that have been sent the price protection letter.
Manufacturer – All manufacturers that that are tied to items in the project material plan will be displayed here. There is an important distinction between Manufacturer and Vendor. The Manufacturer is the company who makes the item and the Vendor is from whom the item is purchased from.
P – This stands for "Price Protection Letter." Pressing this button will generate a report to the manufacturer declaring your interest in the equipment and requesting to lock down your quoted price.
Status – This is a color-coded field that displays the status for the manufacturer. The colors are explained above.
Rep – This field will allow you to designate a vendor contact as the contact for items assigned to the selected manufacturer. You can press F9 to get a list of all vendor contacts for vendors associated with items in the project material plan. This is an optional field.
Service Agent – The service agent is assigned in a separate screen (P/A > Projects > Operating Manual Index). This is an optional field.
All PO's – Pressing this button will take you to a screen that lists all PO's tied to the project in one view. This is ideal for smaller projects; for larger projects you will want to double click on a manufacturer to view their specific Purchase Orders.
Purchase Order View
The second level of the coordinator screen is the Purchase Order View. In this screen we display all POs for a specific manufacturer or if you arrived through the "All PO's" icon, you will see all PO's tied to the project. The PO field is a drill down field that will take you to the PO Detail View. All fields here are automatically populated by TRX.
Manufacturer Name – Here we show the name of the manufacturer that is associated with the vendor that the PO is assigned too. This will change as you cycle through PO numbers.
Phone – The vendor contacts phone number is displayed here so you do not have to leave the screen to look it up.
Back – Navigation button that will take you back up to the Manufacturers View.
PO – Drill down field that take you to the PO Detail View.
Requested Date – This is the "Expected Date" which is populated directly from the PO. This date is not considered when determining the status color.
Estimated Ship Date – This date is manually entered by the user in the PO Detail View.
Important Note: The estimated ship date is very important in determining the status color. The color-coding will only be yellow or black when an estimated ship date has not been entered. This date must be manually entered. This is an actively managed screen and the idea behind it is that the project coordinators are making calls to identify status problems pro-actively and then updating the dates manually in TRX.
Actual Receive Date – This is the date that the coordinator confirms the item has been received on site. This can be set to be automatically populated based on the date of the PO receipt in TRX; this option is available in the Project Setup screen. Or the date can be manually entered in the PO Detail View.
Note: The Actual Receive Date and the Estimated Ship Date control the color-coded logic.
Status – This field contains the color-coded status of the Purchase Order. A purchase order can have many items and each of those items has an individual status color in the PO Detail View. The Purchase order view is a culmination of those items and shows the overall status of the PO based on the worst-case scenario.
Example: The PO Detail View shows a PO that has 10 items; 9 have been delivered and have green status yet one has not yet been delivered and is red. The Purchase Order View will show a status of red alerting you to the fact that one item has yet to be delivered.
Ship To: - There are four "Ship To" options and this section will show you which one has been chosen for this PO. PO's can be shipped to the Job Site, the Job Warehouse, a Fabricator, or Other.
Warranty date – Here you can print a form letter alerting the vendor of the start date of their warranty. You can type the warranty start date that will be used in the letter. If you leave this field blank it will be automatically populated with the current date when you print the letter.
P – This is the button that will print the warranty letter.
PO Detail View
The third and most detailed view of the coordinators screen is the PO Detail View. Here you can see the individual items that make up the purchase order and their status. It is also in this view that the estimated ship date and actual receive date are entered.
PO Number – The number of the PO that you are viewing.
Vendor – The name of the Vendor that the Purchase order was created for.
Phone – The vendor contacts phone number.
AQ-Item – The AQ line number of the item.
Model # - The manufacturer model number of the item.
Est. Ship Date – This is a manually entered date that is used in determining the status of the item. You need to know when an item is due to know if it is late. Since this screen is intended to be an actively managed screen it is assumed the user will be contacting vendors for updates.
Actual Receive Date – This is the date the coordinator confirms the item was received on site. This may seem the same as the actual ship date but it is not intended to be. The date that a PO is received in TRX can be different then the date that an item is received on site. Therefore this field is designed to be manually entered for when the coordinator calls the job site to verify the item has arrived. This can be set to be automatically populated based on the date of the PO receipt in TRX; this option is available in the Project Setup screen.
Actual Ship date – This is the date that the PO is received into TRX, this field is automatically populated during the receiving process.
Customer invoice date – This is the date that the item was last billed (partially or completely) in an AIA billing.
Status – This is the color-coded status, in this screen it is the status of the individual items.
PO Notes External – Here you can enter notes that will print on the Contract Status report.
PO Notes Internal – Here you can enter internal notes (double click to open an editor with more space for text entry). These notes are specific to the coordinators screen and cannot be accessed from within the project itself.
Coordinator Screen Reports - Billing Sheet
The Billing Sheet provides a view of all items and their associated prices and costs. We consolidate accessories with the base items in this report. We also display a calculated margin amount and percent.
Item # - The AQ Line number of the item.
Model # - The model number of the item.
Vendor – The vendor that the item is ordered from.
Total – The total sell price of the item.
Equipment – The equipment portion of the total price.
Freight - The freight portion of the total price.
Install – The install portion of the total price.
Other – This field is not populated at this time.
Tax – The tax that will be charged on this item.
PO Cost – This is the planned cost of the item including any freight or install cost.
Margin – The total sell minus the total cost, taxes do not figure in margin calculations.
Margin % - The margin percentage is derived by diving the margin by the total sell.
PO Num – If the item is on a PO the number will show here for reference.
Coordinators Screen Reports - Contract Status Report
The Contract Status Report provides a view of all items and their shipping status. This report can be ordered by item number or by manufacturer, you are presented the option when you press the button to print the report.
Vendor – The vendor that the item is ordered from.
PO # - If the item is on a PO the number will show here for reference.
Item – The AQ Line number of the item.
Description – The description of the item from the material plan.
Ship To – If there is a Ship To location the number of that location will show here.
Expected date – From the coordinator screen.
Est. Ship Date - From the coordinator screen.
Actual Ship Date – From the coordinator screen.
Actual Receipt date – From the coordinator screen.
Customer invoice date – From the coordinator screen.
Coordinators Screen Reports - Project Analysis Regular
The Project Analysis report provides a breakdown of the planned vs. actual prices and costs of the project items. When running the regular version of the report we calculate the "Billed Amount" from the amount that was invoiced in a regular (non-advance) invoice. When you print the report from the coordinator screen you will be asked if you wish to consolidate the results by AQ Base Item.
Line No – The AQ Line number of the item.
Item – The name of the item in TRX.
Purchase order – If the item is on a purchase order the PO number will show here.
Qty – The quantity of the item ordered.
Contract Amount – The scheduled value of the item.
Billed Amount – The total amount invoiced to the customer.
Planned Cost – The planned cost from the material plan.
Actual cost – The actual cost of the item. If an item was ordered on a PO we update the "Actual Cost" with the item amount entered when vouchering that PO.
Planned profit – Contract Amount minus Planned Cost.
Actual profit – Billed Amount – Actual Cost.
The Credit and Debit Memo totals show by default but can be suppressed by unchecking the appropriate checkbox if you print the report through the Project Reports menu.
Project Total – The initial sub-total for the project.
Change in Cost – You will be able to enter a "Change in Cost" amount when creating a regular invoice. This will allow you to write small discrepancies off. It is not always cost effective to search through a ten million dollar project to find a missing $4.50.
Freight Total – If your project includes expenses marked as freight the total of those will show here.
Installation Total - If your project includes expenses marked as install the total of those will show here.
Total before Tax – Totals before Tax.
Project Credit memo Total – Total amount of credit memos applied to the project.
Project Debit Memo Total – Total amount of debit memos applied to the project.
Tax – Tax Totals.
Grand total – Overall totals for the whole project.
Planned Profit % - Profit percent based on contract amount pricing and planned cost.
Actual Profit %- Profit percent based the billed amount and actual cost.
Coordinators Screen Report - Sign off Sheet
A sign-off sheet is a report that can be printed for a warehouse to use to track the items that have physically arrived. This report can be sorted by manufacturer or by AQ Line number.
Item – The AQ Line number of the item.
Qty – The quantity of the item ordered.
Vendor – The vendor that the item is ordered from.
Description – The description of the item from the material plan of the project.
Approved – A signature line for verification of item receipts.
Coordinator Screen Reports - Project Analysis AIA
There is another type of Project Analysis report which is based off AIA billing instead of regular invoices. Rather than waiting until a project is completed and fully invoiced to determine your profitability you can print the AIA version of the project analysis to get a current estimate of your profit (if AIA billings are used in the project.) All fields are the same as the Regular Project Analysis Report.
Coordinator Screen Reports - Index Report
The index report is part of the Operating Manual Index; set up and use is covered more extensively in that section. We provide a shortcut in the coordinator screen to print the report. It includes the base items that have been selected to be printed along with the quantity ordered and the service agent that has been assigned to the manufacturer the item is assigned to. You also have the option of printing this report by categories. If any categories have been defined you will be asked which ones you would like to print.
Description – The manufacturer name, item number, and description of the item.
Item – The AQ Line number of the item.
QTY – The quantity of the item ordered.
Service Agency – The service agent that has been assigned to service the item.
Coordinator Screen Reports - Cost Summary
The cost summary report provides your total cost by manufacturer along with the items that make up the total.
Manufacturer – The manufacturer of the items.
Items – The AQ Line number of the items.
Total Cost – Total item cost.
Coordinators Screen Reports - Warranty Report
The coordinator screen provides a means to print a form letter alerting vendors of the start date of their warranty. The "Warranty Report" button will print these reports all at once for every vendor. You will be asked to enter the warranty start date when you press the button.
