Authorising a job on Magnetic will help you track scope creep and keep you on track with your budget and estimated time.  


Why do you need this new feature?
This might sound familiar... After tasks are assigned to the job and the time estimate was determined according to the approved cost estimate, more tasks are added and estimated times on tasks are adjusted because the tasks are bigger than expected. Consequently, the tracked time on the job might still be within the total estimated time, but you are way over the initial estimated time and budget that was approved by the client!

To help you manage this, Magnetic now allows you to authorise the time on a job. You will then be able to compare the current estimated and tracked time and budget with the authorised time and budget on your job.


How do you authorise a job?
Only Admins and Owners of the Job will be able to authorise the job. Simply select the "Authorise" icon from the more drop-down. You can also remove the authorisation if necessary, just select the "Remove authorisation" icon again.  




What happens when you authorise a job?
When the job is authorised, the following fields are saved on all associated tasks:

  • Authorised Estimated Time 
  • Authorised Billing Rate
  • Authorised Task Owner

Don't worry, you will still be able to make changes to the associated tasks as well as add tasks to the job. 

The authorised amounts are summarised in the job dashboard with a new Budget Spent dial.



You probably want to know how some of these amounts are calculated and how the authorised amount effect them? Below you'll see the calculation for some of the fields:

  • Budget amount (from Cost Estimates) = Total Cost on Cost Estimates (excluding Tax and Discount)
  • Budget amount (from Job) = Once-off amount + (Monthly Amount x Duration)
  • Budget Allocated = External Costs in Cost Estimates + (Authorised) Estimated Billable Amount on associated tasks
  • Estimated Billable Amount = Estimated Time on billable tasks x Billing Rate on associated tasks
  • Budget Spent = Approximate Marked-Up External Costs + Expenses + Tracked Billable Amount on associated tasks
  • Over/Under Budget = (Authorised) Budget Amount - Actual Budget Spent


You can view the authorised amounts in all the relevant reports. Below is an example of the Task Detail Report with columns added for the authorised amounts.