Software for the Business of Being Creative® Since 1986

Production

Since Clients & Profits was designed especially for the advertising industry, you'll probably feel familiar with it after only a few days. It's made to move you smoothly through the steps that every job goes through: estimating, trafficking, costing, and billing -- the same steps you go through now. But instead of using a manual system of job jackets and forms, everything will be in Clients & Profits.

Proposals Proposals can be added when pitching an idea to a client. Once your bid is accepted, then can be easily converted into job tickets.

Job Tickets A job ticket is opened for every project the shop gets, including internal work, client presentations, and pro-bono jobs. Each job ticket is given tasks that describe what's being produced, such as artwork, copywriting, design, and printing. Job tasks are completely customizable for flexibility.

Purchase Orders Anyone can add their own purchase orders, up to a user-defined dollar limit. POs have at least one job and task, but can contain several for better cost accounting. Amounts from the purchase order update job tickets automatically.

Production Planner The Production Planner window lists your unfinished job tasks for the current week. It provides a sophisticated dialog box to find unfinished job tasks by due date, start date, resource, client, or AE/team for any period of time. Unfinished tasks can be found by either start date or due date.

Daily Job Status Report The Daily Job Status Report window gives you an overview of where every job in the shop is, whether it’s on hold, at the printer, or awaiting client approval. It's designed to be printed every morning to summarize the shop’s work in production.

Weekly Traffic Report The Weekly Traffic Report window shows all traffic assignments in the shop, sorted by type of job. The job’s traffic assignments, milestone headings, and traffic milestones appear in a spreadsheet that can be edited then printed.

Work To Do The Work to do window is a great way to see your unfinished tasks. The window provides a sophisticated dialog box to find unfinished job tasks by due date, start date, resource, client, or AE/team for any period of time. Unfinished tasks can be found by either start date or due date.

Inside the creative process The creative brief documents for the client the creative process your agency follows to produce the work. The steps in the creative brief are completely customizable, from job to job.

Approved change orders When a client signs off on a change order, it can be marked as "approved" in Clients & Profits. Approved change orders can't be changed, keeping your job costs accurate.

Estimate-only tasks keep off traffic reports
A job task can be used for esti-mating and billing only, scheduling only, or for both functions. Estimate-only tasks don't appear on job schedules.

Tutorials

Opening a new job ticket
The job ticket is the foundation for work done in Clients & Profits -- an electronic job jacket that replaces your paper job folders. Here you'll see how to open a new job ticket.

Adding tasks to a job ticket
Job tasks are the individual steps needed to complete a job. Job tasks have four important functions: estimating, scheduling, cost accounting, and billing. This lesson will show you how to add them to your job ticket.

Tips

Want more consistency in your life?
Enforce the use of job types.
Job types help make the process of adding new jobs more consistent and quicker, so you'd think everyone would use them! But sometimes people forget. Help them remember by requiring the use of job types when adding new jobs. (Choose Setup > Preferences. From the Preferences menu, choose Jobs. Click on the option to require "Job types on new job tickets.")

Master List of Scheduled Jobs.
Looking for each job's scheduling information in an easy-to-read format that includes estimated hours vs. hours remaining, scheduled staffer, and an area to indicate whether or not the task is finished? This report is used by traffic managers to track and then update a task's schedule if the staffers aren't marking their own tasks as finished. (Choose Snapshots > Production. From the Print reports menu, select Schedules/Work To Do. "Task Status" remains 'blank' through 999. In the "From" pop-up menu, select either due date or start date, then type a date range. From the "Select Tasks By" pop-up menu, select Job. {Type one job number or ALL.} From "Print Schedule Reports", select Job Schedules.

Production

Contents