Getting Started for Account Managers

Support Team is happy to introduce you this simple "Getting Started" guide which would help you to make first steps in successful projects and resources management with aheadOffice. It covers the following topics:

• User accounts and groups
• Roles and Rates
• Projects
• Tasks
• Discussions
• Reports
• Invoices

User accounts and groups

Let's start the work from creating your team groups. Good groups hints are: Designers, Programmers, Accountancy, Customers, Remote department, Contractors. Later you can use groups for creating group-targeted announcements, events, set access permissions, assign to projects.

Project groups are created and updated automatically, and include all accounts participating in a project.

Create accounts for all people whom you want to be working under domain. There should be programmers, designers, writers and other staff of your company, as well as customers, partners and contractors. For this purpose navigate to http://.aheadoffice.com/users_management.html and click "Create a user" button. Fill in the form and submit. Now the table below should update and display the newly created account. Read more about user creation options by clicking here.

Roles and Rates

By default you have only "Default role" which can be kept, deleted or updated. Create as many roles as you have in your company. Roles can be Designer, Project manager, Programmer, Support and others. Set according rate per hour for each role (in US dollars). Later this information will be used in:

• Tasks, when keeping track how much hours a task has consumed and calculating efforts value
• Reports, where you can see any kind of statistical information about projects, tasks, number of hours dedicated to a task(s)/project(s) and financial expression of these efforts
• Auto-calculated invoices, which automatically calculate and create invoices basing on the number of hours and their roles' rates

Please read more about roles and rates here.

Projects

The next step is creating projects. Go to http://.aheadoffice.com/projects.html. The projects list is still empty so let's create a project by clicking according button. Enter all project information. Do not forget to assign user accounts and/or user groups to the project - only these people and account managers will have access to the project, all others will not even see it. Create or update project roles if needed. Project roles can be used for tasks belonging to the project only. Global roles are accessible as well. Read more about projects here.

Tasks

When we have at least one project defined we can start creating tasks. The tasks list can be seen at http://.aheadoffice.com/tasks.html. After you have created some tasks you can filter the list by using the drop downs above. During the task lifecycle you can update hours, so everyone including project managers and clients could see how much efforts have been dedicated to this or that task. Besides, at any time you can create a report or send an invoice for a task or project, where the hours will be taken into consideration. All accounts set in "Notify by email" field of a task will receive all updates regarding the task, such as status or description change, new posts in discussion. Read more about tasks here.

Discussions

Projects, tasks and some other objects in aheadOffice have a discussion attached. Discussion allows you to communicate with other people involved in a process. Say, if you post a message in a project discussion, all people assigned to the project will receive email notification and will be able to review and reply.

Reports

To see the reports list go to http://.aheadoffice.com/reports.html At any time you can create reports and have actual information about projects and tasks statuses, dedicated efforts (in hours) and monetary value of the efforts. You can request a report using any parameters - by projects or tasks, by a timeframe or financial frame, by task creator and others. Read more about reports and creation options here.

Invoices

Now, when we have roles and rates defined, projects and tasks, it's time to send invoices to clients. There are 2 options: a manual or auto-calculated invoice. Using the first option you compile an invoice yourself, calculate the amount and send it. Using the former one you have aheadOffice to calculate it for you - basing on selected timeframe or projects or tasks our automatic invoice calculation tool does all the job. All you have is to send the invoice to a client. Client can be an account under your domain as well as any external email address. In any case the receipient will be able to review all details of the invoice. Read more about invoices and creation options here.