Clarizen 2.5 augments our existing project management solution with a turn-key solution for services organizations needing to also track hourly resources and bill the respective customers.

From now on you can use Clarizen from the initial point of planning and budgeting through executing, collaborating, tracking and finally billing customers, paying hourly resources and creating customizable reports.

With a single point solution to manage all these fundamental aspects of projects for professional services organizations, users no longer need to look outside for third party vendors rather it's all in ONE place.

Beyond timesheets and customer billing, Clarizen 2.5 includes additional powerful features such as: Super User providing edit and view permissions to all projects; Financial User giving access to financial data in the Clarizen organization; ‘Shortcuts' where users can have a work item (task, milestone, project) from one project impact a completely separate project without needing to bring them under one project and ‘ALAP' (As Late As Possible) allowing you to plan your project backwards from the Due Date so that you can factor how late you can start working on a project that.

Continue reading for a more detailed description of the new features unveiled with Clarizen 2.5.

1. Time Tracking (Timesheets & Approvals)

Time Tracking is used to keep track of the effort spent on your projects. It enables each resource to report the effort (in hours) invested on a certain work item at a specific date.

Once reported this data can be used for multiple purposes, e.g. calculating the monthly working hours of employees, seeing who's overloaded and who's underutilized, or calculating the total effort invested on certain project. (See Time Tracking related reports for more information).

Clarizen uses the data collected (i.e. hours reported) to perform various useful reports, based on:

- Cost & Billing rates - if you set the rates you use to calculate your own costs or the rates you use to charge for your projects, Clarizen will produce reports such as calculating the amount due by customers.

- Customers associated with the projects- It is possible to associate one or more customers to a project. Doing so will enable you to produce reports showing the amounts due per customer.

2. Job Titles & Rates

The Job Titles page enables the Clarizen administrator to create classification of particular jobs performed in the company. Users with Financial or Super user permissions are also allowed to create new Job Titles. Users with Financial permissions can set rates for Job Titles.

Clarizen calculations incorporate two types of rates:

• Cost rate - defines how much 1 hour of working resource costs the company
• Billing rate - defines the price paid to the company (by the customer) for 1 hour of working resource regular (standard) and, if needed, overtime rates can be defined for each of the two rate types.

Billing rates are used for calculations of the project prices based on the timesheet reports.

It is also possible to set project-specific Job Title rates and even modify rates for a specific work item within a project.

With all the new information available in your Clarizen account, including hours reported, rates paid out or billed and customers assigned to any given project, you will now be able to create extremely informative reports. This includes reports for billing, paying resources and being able to keep track of info as it pertains for any given project, customer, resource or timeframe.

3. Customer Management

Clarizen allows users to associate projects with one or more customers so that customer-centric projects, such as service projects, build-to-order projects, build-to-customer and others are linked to their respective customer(s).
The Customers page is where the Clarizen administrator can manage the list of the organization’s customers.

4. Shortcuts

A shortcut is a method to connect unrelated projects (i.e. projects with no hierarchical relation).

A shortcut enables project managers to add a work items from other projects. Once added, it is possible to create dependencies to these work items. Shortcuts will affect the project’s progress as if they were an integral part of it.

5. ALAP

A new project scheduling option where if a project is set to be scheduled from the Due date, Clarizen schedules all work items added directly under the project to finish on the project Due date.  In the same manner, work items added under another work items will by default finish on the Due date of the parent item. The Start date of the work items will be calculated based on its Due date and Duration. The project Start date will be calculated based on the earliest task's Start date.

 

6. Super User & Financial Permissions

A Super User permission grants the user unlimited permissions in all projects within the organization without needing to assign this user to them.
Money related data such as, user rates, budget calculations and total amounts due by customers can be viewed by users with Financial Permissions.