We've been busy shipping improvements to make Operating.app work even better for you. Here's what's new:

New sidebar navigation – still in beta, going to be the default soon

Pin Any Page

You can now pin any page to your sidebar—whether it's a person page, project detail page, or client page. Customize your shortcuts to match the way you work.

Saved Views & Pinning

Pinning a page with filters enabled now automatically creates a new saved view and adds it to your sidebar navigation. Creating and accessing your custom views has never been easier.

We heard your comments about the new navigation not making sense at first, but once people understand how powerful the pinned items are, they see why it is so powerful.

Invoicing

Custom Invoice Schedules

You can now create custom invoice schedules for fixed-price projects. Set any number of invoices with custom amounts and dates—perfect for projects with upfront payments or non-standard billing arrangements.

Credit Note Management

Credit notes now clearly show which invoice they're related to, making the whole invoicing experience much more transparent and easier to navigate.

HubSpot integration, version… 3? 4? (It keeps getting better)

Three important additions to the automatic import.

1 – Client (the client company in Operating) from any Company field in HubSpot

This is a long-awaited improvement to our HubSpot integration: you can now bring the company Record ID or any other field to Operating.

2 – Company (one of the companies you run) from any field in HubSpot

If you happen to have multiple companies, i.e. your business in the Netherlands and Denmark separated in Operating, you can now bring that piece of information with the Deal to Operating.

3 – Project’s unique ID from any field in HubSpot

Last but not least – you may now import the unique identifier you use across systems from the CRM into Operating.

Other quality-of-life improvements

Employee ID Field

Every person in your workspace now has an Employee ID field. You can edit it on the Person detail page, access it via the API, and it's automatically included in all people-related CSV exports. Operating is not a full-blown HRIS, but for smaller companies, it’s not that bad:

Gross Margin Visibility

Current gross margin is now visible for each position on the project detail page, making it easy to see profitability at a glance. Hover over the gm% number to see how it’s calculated.

Enhanced CSV Exports

Both position and project exports now include more columns. Position exports include work start/end dates, project groups, and allocation details. Project exports now include unique identifiers, project numbers, deal IDs, and budgets. Time entry exports contain employee, project, and client IDs as well as the external IDs you likely use to match things in payroll, etc.

Project Burnup: how old is this data?

The project burnup graph now displays the last refresh timestamp when you're using time tracking data from Harvest or other third-party services.

Pagination (infinite scroll) for very long lists

We’re embarrassed to admit that until today, some long lists got capped at 400 items. That’s no longer the case and if you have a pile of people, projects, or positions, you can see the numbers for the entirety and as you scroll down, we dynamically load more items.

Mark time entries invoiced – even if you don’t invoice in Operating

With the Time Entries directory, you’re able to edit multiple time entries in bulk, including the option to set them as “invoiced”. Super useful if you just track time in Operating but handle the invoice creation in another system. Note: there’s no undo. Once they’re invoiced, they’re set in stone.

Approval Flow Controls

Approval flows now include an option to disable self-approvals, ensuring proper oversight when project managers need their time tracking entries approved by someone else.

That’s it for today! You’re a legend for reading until the end.

Utilization is a hot topic. What to include, what’s a realistic target, and so on.

If you’re used to looking at the utz% numbers in the past and they look different starting today, make sure to read until the end.

Operating has been very opinionated in the past about how the utz should be calculated, but as we’ve grown our customer base, we’ve learned that there are very different calculations that make sense in different companies.

Especially, if the utz% is somehow tied to manager or consultant compensation, you really want to see the correct numbers in the app you use every day.

Starting today, you can see what the exact formula in use is:

If you prefer, you can watch a short video on the topic →

https://www.loom.com/share/f84096b757d947f191fd0c0953dc5c64

Editing the formula in Settings changes the equation for everyone in your company. This should reduce the amount of miscommunication and confusion, when everyone is looking at the same percentages.

Try out the formula builder here. Configure it to show the figures that make most sense for your company. Let us know what you think!

PS – remember to try out the new navigation – we’re actively listening to feedback. Find the CTA right next to the Operating logo in the top bar.

This is the first time we give Operating users a chance to opt-in to a beta feature. We’ve experimented with private beta features before, but this one is kind of massive. Instructions for activation at the end.

Jump to anything in Operating with ctrl+K (or cmd+K on a Mac)

With this global search, you can very easily jump to anything you use (frequently). Try it out.

Sidebar navigation with new structure

More room for more things on the left – we outgrew our top bar. You can pin your favorite views, and even organize them in folders.

We hope that the main menu items of Projects, People and Positions the learning curve of taking Operating into use is less steep. As a consequence of bringing these high-level concepts to the forefront, we’re reducing some complexity:

• Horizon is no more – re-create the “tentative projects”, “available people”, and “open positions” lists as new views, and pin them to the sidebar if you prefer to use the old terminology. We may re-introduce those to everyone after the feedback we get from this public beta testing period. Let us know!

• Directory is also going away – it’s still there now, but we hope to replace all catalog lists soon:

  • In our upcoming design, managing people, projects, clients, views or time entries, happens simply on that area in the sidebar. We’ll add lists with filters, CSV exports, adjustable columns, multi-edit, showing archived items and so on.

One really neat thing that comes from this redesign is that you can now use the same filter set in Projects (or People), and simply toggle between the List and Timeline. The information architecture changes we’re introducing enable us to do really cool things with the display options.

Try it out and tell us if we’ve misplaced something you absolutely want to keep during this rethinking of where everything should be.

Let’s get it on!

To activate the beta feature for yourself (it only affects you, and can always be turned back off), go to Settings → Beta Features. Toggle on the new navigation and save changes to experience it for yourself!

We’re listening

Don’t hesitate to reach us at support@operating.app if anything feels odd. A new feedback button is also available at the bottom left corner of the app.

You’re now able to set invoicing schedules freely. This is exceptionally useful when selling fixed-price projects you want to invoice partially even before the work begins.

From Project detail page → scroll down to the Invoicing section, set the invoice schedule, and choose Custom.

You can then admire the upcoming and sent invoices:

Read all about Invoicing in Operating at our support site. Invoicing is part of the Full Suite plan.

How many plus hours do I have?

It’s common to track under/overtime with a Time Balance. For an employee, it typically allows for working at higher intensity for some time and then take well-earned time off afterwards, spending the flex balance plus hours. Operating now offers you the option to switch Time Balance on. After enabled from the Time Tracking Settings, you can:

• see your own balance ± on top of the Hours UI

• track time to a “flex leave” time off category to deduct from your balance

• see everyone’s balance on the People Horizon

• reset the balance from the same place, in case the plus hours were paid as salary

Read more on this support page.

Split budgets to follow how many % of project value has been delivered

For fixed price work, progress is rarely directly tied to the number of hours spent. Sometimes you find yourself at 30% done at the halfway point, other times it’s been smooth sailing and you could be already at 70%. In these situations, it makes sense to pause to adjust the budgets to match reality:

Split on yesterday and set the first budget to match your progress. Make changes to the rest of the budget accordingly – and allocate fewer or more hours to the remainder.

This is groundwork for the FP revenue recognition features we’re shipping next. Can’t wait to tell you more about them! As a teaser, I’m just going to mention that you can finally attribute the value of the work done to people and to past weeks and months. Your finance team will thank you.

Quick! Let’s add the team setup!

It’s now easier than before to add multiple people at once – typically, you the whole team setup early on, even before the exact allocation schedule is known.

Hit the “+ Add multiple” button to open a dialogue that remembers the Roles you frequently use. Doing this early in the staffing process lets everyone see what size the team will be and whether or not their role is going to be needed.

By the way, in the above picture, you can also see the Discovery phase being planned. Have you tried Phases yet? As a sidenote to a bytheway, try out the Find person… the next time you’re here. The suggestions are likely useful!

All of this work is part of our bigger initiative of making enterprise grade staffing more powerful. Builders of big teams, rejoice!

Export open positions, available people, etc

It’s quite common for heavy Operating users to have colleagues who don’t access the app. For them, it might be best practice to share the situation in a spreadsheet and summarise things so that they don’t get that “too much information, sir” sensation.

CSV exports also give you the opportunity to take a snapshot of your situation today – which might be useful for a deeper analysis of today vs. a month from now, for example.

And many more updates

• Support for more HiBob time off types (they support a huge number of different policies!)

• Paint new budgets directly on the Timeline

• Approval flows: new permission for “approve any time entry”, useful for admins

• More detailed financial visibility permissions

• To be invoiced -list became clearer: this time we reduced the amount of info (!)

• Invoice REST API → here

• A handful of Time entry list & timesheet bugfixes. Also supported: manual sorting of rows on the timesheet:
  

  

This time we have a lot to share, hence the exclamation points. You’re getting this email because you’re an admin in Operating.app.

Timeline improvements

The Timeline – both for Projects and People – now has new display options: you can easily set the zoom level, adjust the length up to 3 years and set the start date to your liking.

We also added the week numbers to the top bar.

Here’s a really nice new way to look at the People Timeline: show projects already in the collapsed view. Test it with your own data:

Project phases

This is what projects looked like until today.

After you hit the + Phase button and click around a little bit, you can create this:

We’re still adding more functionality around this basic Phase implementation, so the screenshots will soon be outdated, but it’s already quite handy!

We’d love to hear your feedback on the Timeline. We know there are many “paper cut” style glitches, and we plan to fix a huge number of them in the coming weeks. Let us know if you have something in mind – repetitive use of something slightly frustrating is a real pain.

Task-based and project-specific rates

As we now have more and more companies tracking time with Operating Hours, it’s become even more crucial to be able to set the rates for all work effectively and accurately.

We keep writing and revising the rate cards support page as more features are added. Here’s the executive summary for you:

• Set task-based rates – go to project details, tasks for time tracking, click on the task to set the rate

• Create a project-specific rate card directly from the project financials part, if none of the Shared rate cards match your project-specific terms → this way your unique pricing will not clutter the rate card lists for others

Time tracking and invoicing well under way

This is still in beta for Operating Hours users – but very exciting, so sharing here as well!

Don’t hesitate to drop us a line at support@operating.app if you’d like to hear more about the Hours + Invoicing combo. We’re hard at work migrating companies from old school tooling over to our platform.

In many projects and organizations, time entry approval is a huge deal. Without it, a project manager or a team lead might not know when too much or too little time has been tracked.

In Operating, locking timesheet until 22th of August means that from the consultant’s perspective, all the days including 22th are now done – unlikely to change.

• If any time entries in the timesheet are in an approval flow scope, the Approvals tab for the people responsible for approvals see them and should have a look.

• If the time entries don’t require approval, they get auto-approved and are ready for invoicing.

• There’s no explicit “reject”. Instead, we give the approver or the consultant the ability to edit locked hours. Either of them can fix them using the Hours UI or from the Directory > Time entries.

This is a lightweight implementation of something that could grow extremely complex – we feel that we don’t need to go there.

The lock & approve mechanism may irritate some people, but have a look at this – the end-of-month circus of finding who has entered their hours and who’s still pending turns into a breeze:

Read more about it → https://support.operating.app/help/articles/4843224-approval-flows

Coming up next

• Beta release – compact view of all projects in Timeline, here’s a sneak peek:

• Unique id’s for projects and clients – automatic numbering in Operating and bring-your-own-id from an ERP or what have you.

• Flex hours calculations for time tracking – see how much plus/minus you have.

• Even more permission settings – we heard your feedback, and are happy to add more!

Tell your friends

Do you have friends (or enemies) working in consulting companies that struggle with complexity? Send them this link and have them evaluate whether or not their business could be simpler with Operating 😎

→ → → https://www.operating.app/simplify

Thanks! Enjoy the weekend.

When you have different business units and a handful of different user groups, one thing you must get right is the balance between transparency and access control.

We grew up working in companies that take pride in being open and transparent. However, even those consultancies we helped grow faced situations where some things need to be kept secret due to client confidentiality. Also, their headcount and geographical spread has grown so much that showing everything to everyone by default no longer helps them get the job done.

We took our time before implementing all of the critical permission controls – let’s take a tour.

Toggle which parts of Operating are visible

We’ve built a robust ops app, and it means that for a consultant, some parts of it are just too much information. To protect people from the overwhelming feeling of “do I really need to learn all this” (answer: you don’t), we now give the admins an option to hide many areas.

There’s a caveat here: if you hide too much, some of your users might get the impression that Operating isn’t able to much. We encourage you to grant access to the Horizon, because that’s where you can see into the future of what the sales & staffing pipeline holds.

People permissions

Who can you see? Of course, if you’re the COO, you want to see everyone.

We now support granting visibility based on project membership or ownership. If you have people reporting to you, you will always see them and their details.

You may now also invite your subcontractors and freelancers in to one of your teams and give them very limited access – just enough for them to follow the plan and track the hours and be done with it. Effective and secure.

Project & client permissions

We doubled down on the position concept: as before, you become a member of a project team when your name is selected to a position. With a position assignment you now gain access to the project, even if you would not see it otherwise.

There’s a lot of control for you over which projects and clients are visible:

Positions, allocations and time entries

All of the more detailed things related to work can now be controlled as well. As a manager, you want to have access to your team's positions – whether or not they’re a part of a project. As a consultant, you may have access to edit your own allocations within the context where you’re staffed – but should not take too many liberties adding yourself to projects without asking first.

Time entry data is of course full of sensitive information, and you can control what’s visible and what’s not. You can also choose who can edit others’ time entries – and are edits allowed after the approval flow has been processed.

Financials

We know that it’s one thing to see a project and to see the revenue & rates related to it. And even if those would be internally available information, costs (including salaries) are very rarely open to all. The financials access control allows you to adjust these independent of project visibility.

…and the rest

We’re not going to elaborate each and every setting here, so check it out for yourself!

Thanks for reading this far.