foreknown for Service Provider

Manage Offers

Professional offers can be created based on individually designed templates for both time-and-materials and fixed-price projects with payment schedules, and later converted into orders.

• Design custom offer templates
  • using the company profile (text, images, font)
  • using the HTML / CSS based template
• Support of different billing types according to
  • fixed prices with payment plans
  • spend time efforts per service type
  • packages and products
• Central management of service types
  
• Order generation at the push of a button
• Export of the offer as a PDF document
• Reuse of offers through copy function
• Determination of payment plans for fixed price items
• Manage notes in a chronicle

Learn more about managing offers in the foreknown documentation.

Transfer work logs from Jira

Projects, tasks, users, and work log entries sync directly with foreknown to provide all the data needed for performance generation and up-to-date team and project metrics.

• Direct transfer of Jira and/or Tempo work log entries (via webhooks)
• Automatic transfer of Jira projects, tasks and users
• Transfer of properties from
  • Jira Issues like sprints, epics, labels, ...
  • Tempo like account, customer, category
    
• Automatic generation of billable services based on rules
• Direct update of all KPIs on order, project, task and team level

You just need to install the foreknown Jira plugin and connect it to your foreknown account to get all these benefits!

Read more under System Administration / Apps in the foreknown documentation.

Control your Change Management

It is usual for requirements to change during the implementation of orders. It is only important that such change and functional requests are handled in an orderly and transparent manner so that their impact on budget and runtime can be identified and communicated directly.

• Changes are reflected by new versions of the underlying orders
• Influences on order volume, budget and duration are made visible
• All changes are made transparent via a version list
• Create a legal basis: New order versions can be confirmed by the customer

Learn more about change management of orders in the foreknown Documentation.

Project Controlling

In foreknown customer orders have our special attention and therefore order items are assigned to projects for implementation to keep track of their progress.

• Project controlling on order level:All important KPIs are displayed per order item on the project.
  • Effort in hours with target, actual and remaining values
  • Progress measured by completed order items
  • Billable, non-billable and open hours
  • Billing rate
  • Average hourly rate

NOTE: Further controlling functions regarding milestone planning, degree of completion, etc. are currently in conception and will extend the project controlling significantly in the near future.

Team Controlling

Team managers can use Team Controlling to easily query all important key figures for selected observation periods at team and employee level.

• Time recording (degree of completeness of working time recording)
• Absences (vacation, illness, overtime reduction, other)
• Utilization (overtime and undertime)
• Billing rate (plan-actual comparison, degree of target achievement)
• Order rate (plan-actual comparison regarding booked services for sales orders)
• Turnover and ø hourly rate from all billable services

All key figures can also be queried for all team members with one click.

Order Controlling

In foreknown, orders not only represent the commercial basis between the contractor and the client, but also serve to constantly monitor success during the implementation of the requirements defined in the order. 

• Controlling view with important key performance indicators (KPIs) at order, order position and service position level.
  • Turnover in corresponding currency with target, actual and residual values
  • Effort in hours with target, actual and residual values
  • Progress measured by completed order positions
  • Billing measured by invoiced service entries / payment plan entries
  • Plan deviation measured by all over- and underbookings on order position
• Other key figures at order and service item level
  • Billable, non-billable and open hours
  • Billing rate
  • Average hourly rate

You can find detailed descriptions of the KPIs in the documentation under "Features / Orders & Orders / Controlling".

Controlling for Tasks

Tasks represent the smallest unit for controlling, but are an important source for analyzing the success or failure of a sprint, project, or milestone. 

• General Key Indicators
  • Sum of Story Points entered
  • ø Effort per Story Point
  • Sum of Target, Actual and Open Efforts
• Service Entry related Key Indicators
  • Currency dependent KPI Boxes
  • Actual Efforts with billable and non-billable portions
  • Billing Rate
  • ø Hourly Rate
• Key figures for working times not yet transferred to service entries
  • Actual efforts with billable and non-billable portions
  • Billing Rate

In the documentation you can find detailed descriptions of the KPIs under "Features / Project Management / Tasks / Controlling".

Bill all services due

With foreknown you can ensure that your hours worked,  partial payments due and other additional services such as travel expenses, software licenses are always billed promptly, accurately and completely.

• Working Hours
  • Definition of rules for automatic assignment of working times (also from Jira) to orders, order items and activity types.
  • Manual or automatic generation of billable services
  • Correction option with regard to actual billable hours
  • Administration and evaluation of generated services
• Partial Payments from Fixed Price Orders
  • Management of payment plans on fixed price orders
  • Generation of billable additional services based on a list of due partial payments
• Additional Services
  • Creation/administration of additional services with reference to corresponding order items

Learn more about service transfer, management of services and additional services in the foreknown documentation.

Export Activity Reports

Use foreknown to automatically create individual activity reports for invoices.

• Design individual activity reports via
  • via the company profile (texts, images, fonts)
  • or via HTML & CSS templates
• Export services as an Excel spreadsheet
  • Using the "Services" dialogue, services can be filtered by invoice and exported to Excel based on an individual template.
  • Excel templates can be customised.

Find out more about the creation of activity reports / service entry exports and the customisability of the underlying HTML/CSS and Excel templates.