Topic

Messages

Status Code Process Inquiry

We are a small 7-person agency. We are reviewing the way we use some different aspects of C&P and are curious to others practices.

Regarding Statuses, we have been toying with the idea of attaching statuses to people. For example a status of in production might be in production-AA and in production-BB, where AA and BB represent personís initials. In what ways do you use Statuses and have you considered or do you attach any statuses to people and find this helpful or is it redundant?

We continually struggle with Job Types. It seems somehow that AEís like to think every job is completely unique and like to add Job types. What do you use and how do you keep it to a minimum?

Finally, how do you set up your Task table? Do you make it very detailed or high level? Do have separate tasks for outsourced jobs or do you capture this variance in statuses? Do you use the Specs area on the Job ticket and if so, how do you deal with the fact that the Estimate disclaimer no longer prints? I recognize there are lots of questions here and appreciate any sort of reply or example you can share.

Iíd love to see some examples of your lists if youíve discovered a way to keep them to a minimum and modularized.

Regards,

Chandler Briggs SMITH BOWEN OPERATIONS MANAGER

We developed the tasks by task groups (creative, production, account service, external costs, house, travel) and the job types are our typical jobs utilizing the tasks that fit for that (like for an ad there is media planning-an account service task- as well as media placement-an external cost task, design-a creative task, etc.). This is especially helpful for management: are we spending too much time in production, how long did the design take, etc. Since you can look at time by person, I think tracking tasks by person may be redundant for you, it's what they did with their time that matters. As to job types, we have a limited number of types, and ae's can add tasks to the job as needed, but job types should streamline the process, are a menu to choose from and tweak for that specific job, not a job ticket. I wouldn't let ae's create job types. Status should be what it is: pending input, creating mechanicals, etc. so that everyone knows where that job stands in the process. Hope this helps.

Christopher Staples

Regarding Job Types, we have about 27 different job types, most of which tend to refer to specific types of jobs for our larger clients.

For smaller clients and miscellaneous jobs that don't fall into a pure category like brochure, identity package, billboards, web design, etc., we have a couple of catch-all job types called "all-purpose taxable" which is for anything taxable with a lot of tasks and "all-purpose no-tax" which is for anything non-taxable with a lot of tasks. These are useful because there really shouldn't be a need to set up a job type for every job that comes along. Really you just want to get the tasks you need posted to the job so you don't always get the message that "this task isn't on this job," and you want to get the tax status right from the start or it's a real pain. If people have to add tasks to a job later, the normal tax status of the task will come along, even if the entire job is marked non-taxable, and you have to change it manually.

Our task table is fairly detailed but we would use the same tasks for freelancers as we do for staff. I'd be happy to fax you our task table if you want. Just let me know.

Catherine Colangelo

Interesting concept blending traffic with status. Because some jobs don't move through the house in a straight line, but multiple departments simultaneously, this might not achieve what you want, but still a creative idea.

We've found updating status codes took too much time, so have limited it to only three ("New Job", "Client Approved", "Ready to bill"). We're too small (25 people) to effectively use the traffic & scheduling, so the milestones of a job are tracked manually by our production manager. We have 3 senior AE's that meet weekly with production manager discussing the jobs that are hot and the resources required for the week.

Man, I've tried to get them to do C&P scheduling, but they have resisted thus far.

I mapped our job types to G/L revenue codes. We track about 10 different products (advertising, media, collateral etc.). Then I monitor the job list weekly to see if anything strange got added. I have training sessions periodically showing how the job types turn to revenue and how we track sales & costs on the financial statement. Knowledge is power. They have more respect for my needs.

>Do have separate tasks for outsourced jobs or do you capture > this variance in statuses? Yes. Because outsourced tasks carry a budget and mark-up and internal costs are tracked and managed by hours only with us.

>Do you use the Specs area on the Job ticket and > if so, how do you deal with the fact that the Estimate disclaimer no longer > prints? I recognize there are lots of questions here and appreciate any sort > of reply or example you can share. Yes we use the Specs area, and cut and paste disclaimers in this area on all proposals. We clone most of our jobs now, so disclaimers come with the clone.

Roxanne Cowan

>do you attach > statuses to people and find this helpful or is it redundant? we track status by personel, which is helpful in traffic to identify the "bottleneck". The only time it is a problem is when you have a team concepting, you can't do both status', so we assign the CD, as they are ultimately responsible for making sure the concepts are completed on time for approval by the client.

I recognize there are lots of questions here and appreciate any sort > of reply or example you can share. I personally don't believe in over thinking tasks. they should be able to be used on any job. they represent an exact process or vendor, etc. for instance, we have production phase (prod) as a task. there are a lot of things that happen during that phase that can be detailed (if necessary) on your schedule by using the subtask tool and changing the name of the subtask. Then you will only use the ones you need. Some print jobs may be very extensive (a 30 page brochure), whereas some production phases won't be (a rate card). This will give you a detailed schedule without cluttering up your job ticket and confusing your staff. We do use the specs area, but really only for collateral jobs. I wish we could have different spec worksheets and assign them to job types. As the specs for a print ad that we are only producing film for and collateral job are very different.

Start with traffic, identify the absolute phases of a job whether it is a rate card or a 30 page brochure, then you can identify your milestones. From there look at how you can detail out a schedule using your milestones as tasks and then making subtasks on your schedule. Do this for several types of jobs and you will get a better idea of what you need. I did this manually for each job type. When I was comfortable we had it down, then we set up job types. If it is too complicated, your staff won't remember what that 4 letter code is and therefore, won't use the program correctly. Good Luck.

Shelly Constantz

> Hi all: > > We are a small 7-person agency. We are reviewing the way we use some > different aspects of C&P and are curious to others practices. > > Regarding Statuses, we have been toying with the idea of attaching statuses > to people. For example a status of in production might be in production-AA > and in production-BB, where AA and BB represent personís initials. In what > ways do you use Statuses and have you considered or do you attach any > statuses to people and find this helpful or is it redundant? > We haven't considered statuses for people. I'm not sure what the benefit would be. We have just started using statuses for production and billing. It is nice, because assigning a status allows you to also select if time/expenses are allowed to be added. When someone tries, they get a customized warning message, and directions as to what to do. That has worked well for us. We have statuses as follows:

1 (an old status for "opened") which I have marked with "no time/expenses may be posted". So now, if any jobs still have that status, and someone tries to access the job, the warning pops up with my message to change the status as appropriate. 2 (another old status, before we added those below, and I've coded it to warn and change) 3 In progress 4 Complete, pending final billing (no time/expenses can be added) 5 Billed, pending payment and close (no time/expenses can be added) 6 Unbillable 999 Closed 1000 In proposal

> We continually struggle with Job Types. It seems somehow that AEís like to > think every job is completely unique and like to add Job types. What do you > use and how do you keep it to a minimum? > We have about 15 job types, and they are pretty straight forward: Brochures/collateral Ads Radio Web Billboards Identity pkgs Consulting Media Planning Media Buying and a few more.

For us, its main benefits are the template of tasks, and the analysis of profitability by type.

> Finally, how do you set up your Task table? Do you make it very detailed or > high level? Do have separate tasks for outsourced jobs or do you capture > this variance in statuses? Do you use the Specs area on the Job ticket and > if so, how do you deal with the fact that the Estimate disclaimer no longer > prints?

I don't know why your disclaimer prints. To ensure this doesn't happen, you should probably go to your Estimate Options for each of your Job type spec sheets and re-enter it. I think creating a spec sheet presumes you are customizing all information, and it doesn't pick up the disclaimer you put under your standard estimate options.

Hope this info helps a little.

Shelley Holloway