We are pleased to announce the release of version 2.8, which brings with it important changes to make Knowify both easier to use and more robust. We would encourage you to watch the following video tutorial as a way to familiarize yourself with the changes:
Here is a list of the most relevant changes.
1. Job costing modes
When you create a job, you’ll now be able to select from among three different job costing modes—simple, advanced, and professional. Simple is the easiest, enabling you to track all labor and materials against a high-level “labor and materials” budget item for the job; advanced will let you track costs against budget items that match you bid line items; and professional will be the traditional Knowify experience, with custom project plans for project budgeting/tracking. You can set a default job costing mode in the Admin panel (Customize section).
2. Service templates + Unit-based budgeting
In the Knowify catalog, you’ll now be able to create service templates with associated materials/labor requirements that can be used for quick estimating. For example, for an interior painting service you can define the unit as 100 square feet, and then specify that per 100 square feet you need .25 gal of topcoat, .5 gal of primer, and 30 minutes of tradesman time. When you bring up that service in Plan & Track, Knowify will ask you how many 100 square feet of wall you’ll be painting, and once you provide an input Knowify will scale the materials and labor budget items automatically.
3. Bill of materials
You will now be able to break down bid and/or change order line items into specific sub-items using our bill of materials feature. Note that this is mostly an aesthetic feature, designed to let you (optionally) give your client more resolution on the service you’re bidding.
4. Job colors
You may now give your job a color, which can be helpful for differentiating between jobs in the corporate calendar.
5. Profit and Loss (P&L) report
We have added a Profit and Loss (P&L) Report in Plan & Track.
6. Work order feature
We have added a workorder feature to Plan & Track that will automatically populate the work order area of the mobile app. Default work orders can be specified for the service template mentioned in (2) above.
7. Revamped “Add New” in invoicing
We have revamped the “Add New” area of invoicing to make it easier to select a job to bill. We have also made invoicing for retainage much more intuitive.
8. Bulk-import items into the Schedule of Values
You can now bulk-import items into the Schedule of Values for a GC (AIA-style billing) job. Click the lightning bolt when editing the Schedule of Values.
9. Invoicing
In order to simplify the invoicing process, now you get to select the job before starting the process. This will send you to the appropriate section of Knowify based on the type of billing for the client.
10. Plan & Track enhancements
Now, from the Plan & Track section, you can order materials, start the PO process or create a new bill. Also, you will be able to sort your phases.
11. Check in/out improvement
We have made a few improvements to our check in/out section so that if your techs forget to check out, Knowify will automatically check them out next time they check in.
12. Quick markup
In Owner Contracts and GC Bids, you can apply the same markup to all the line items by simply clicking the lightning bolt after entering the first markup.
Although we usually don’t comment on upcoming release items, we wanted to quickly mention that we have a major enhancement to Knowify scheduling coming soon, as well as some important changes to the mobile app. Additionally, we will be dramatically expanding the number of reports (and the quality of our reports) in the next release. The next few months should be exciting ones for Knowify. Stay tuned!
As always, please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about the release, or if you’d like to share your thoughts about what you’d like to see in the platform.
Thank you,
– The Knowify Team