What's new at Fanurio

Fanurio 4.0 Beta3 Released

December 12, 2017

Version 4.0-beta3 is now available for download.

This release updates version 4.0-beta2 with the improvements implemented for version 3.2 and it adds several new features. Some of the new features are server-specific while the others are available for all versions (standalone and server).

Version 3.2 improvements

Last month we released version 3.2 but users of version 4.0-beta2 couldn't test its features because Fanurio can't be downgraded. Version 4.0-beta3 fixes this issue, it updates version 4.0-beta2 with the improvements implemented for version 3.2. It also includes fixes made for version version 3.2.1 released today.

Make sure you read the initial announcement to learn about all these improvements. This post presents only features specific to version 4.0-beta3.

We know some of you wanted to use this version sooner so thank you for your patience.

Server-specific features and improvements

Since version 4.0 will focus mainly on server features, this release implements several new server-specific features and improvements. These features are available only in the server version because they don't make sense in the standalone version. Here's what's new:

1. Invitations: In previous versions, server administrators had to create user accounts manually for each user. Now they can also send invitations from Business > Manage People so that people can create their own accounts. If you need to invite many people, you can import them from a CSV file.

2. Roles: Permissions are now organized in four different roles: Admin, Project Manager, Co-worker, and Individual. Users who didn't have admin rights in previous versions will be assigned the Co-worker role when the database is migrated.

   See the user guide for more details about the new roles and their permissions.

3. Project Memberships: Project memberships can now be managed from Business > Manage Project Memberships instead of Business > Manage People.

4. Default timeout: The default client timeout has been changed from 100 ms to 5000 ms (5 seconds). This will eliminate connection problems to servers located outside the local network.

5. Save email notifications: Added a new setting to Server > Server Settings > Email Notification that makes it possible to save notification emails on the email server in a specified folder.

6. Custom server address: Added a new setting to Server > Server Settings > Connection that can specify a custom server address instead of the default IP-based one generated by the server. The server address is used in email notifications.

   Setting a custom address can be useful if the server is running behind a proxy.

And a few bug fixes:

• Failed to edit account settings in client mode.

• Users failed to sync their data if another user was removed from a project unknown to them.

• Person-related columns are hidden in standalone mode because in this mode there is only one user and displaying these columns doesn't make sense.

New features and improvements

This version also has several new features that are available for both the standalone and the server version.

Two of these features allow you to have more control over how time entries are billed. You can mark each time entry as billable or non-billable and you can specify the amount of billable time for each time entry.

• Non-billable time: In previous versions, all time entries recorded on a task were either billable or non-billable, depending on whether the task was billable or not. Now, you can set the billing status for each time entry explicitly. Billable tasks can have both billable and non-billable time entries.

  This feature can be useful if you don't want to bill specific time entries. Instead of setting their time to 0 or discounting the task with an amount equal to the recorded time, you can now just mark them as non-billable and Fanurio will not bill them.

• User-specified amount of billable time: In Fanurio, the billable time of a time entry may be different from the actual recorded time. If you record 12 minutes on a task that rounds time up to 15 minutes, the actual recorded time is 12 minutes while the billable time is 15 minutes. If the task doesn't round time then the billable time is the same as the recorded time (12 minutes).

  Up until now, it wasn't possible to specify the actual billable time for a time entry because it was calculated automatically but now you can do it. For instance, if you spend 3 hours on something but you decide the customer should pay only for 1 hour, you can easily specify this at time entry level.

Other features implemented in this release are:

• Quantifiable time entries: Added a new optional field to time entries to track quantities. For instance, translators can track how much time it took them to translate a text but now they can also track how many words they translated during that time. Please see the user guide for more details.

• Invoice tax total rounding: Added a new setting that specifies how invoice tax totals are rounded (half even, half up or half down). Please see the user guide for more details.

• Product date: Added a new date field to products. You can use it to track the date when the product was added to the project.

In case you're wondering what's next, this is the last beta for version 4.0. We will publish a release candidate and the final 4.0 version at the beginning of the next year.

Please let us know what you think about this update. We'd love to hear your thoughts.