Job States

Job States are used to manage the progress of jobs within FYI. Each Job holds a State, such as "In Progress", "Planned", or "On Hold".

You can change the State of a Job in FYI in any of the following:

• In the Job Drawer. Refer to Using the Job Drawer.
• In the Job Workspace from the Job - Summary tab. Refer to Job Summary.
• Using Bulk Update. Refer to Jobs Bulk Update.
• Using Drag and Drop in the Jobs Board. Refer to Using the Jobs Board.
• From an Automation Process using the Update Job step. Refer to Automation Process Steps.

This article relates to practices integrated with Xero Practice Manager.

Default Job States

When you set up your trial account with FYI, the following Job States are automatically added.

• Planned
• On Hold
• In Progress
• Completed
• Cancelled

These can be changed as required (refer to Managing Job States).

Syncing Job States

For practices integrated with Xero Practice Manager, the synchronisation time frames are as follows.

A Job will be tagged in FYI with a  'Pending Sync' tag while waiting for the updates to be synced with Xero Practice Manager. This tag is located beside the Job Name in the Job Summary and prevents updates from being overwritten by a user selecting the Sync from PM button. Once the updates have synced to Xero Practice Manager, the tag will be cleared.

When Job States are synced to Xero Practice Manager, if the State cannot be changed in Xero Practice Manager for any reason, this is reported in Practice Activity (refer to Practice Activity).

Managing Job States in FYI

As you can add your own customised States for Jobs in Xero Practice Manager, FYI includes a function so that an FYI Admin can map these to how the States display and are used in FYI. This allows you to select the colour coding of how they show in FYI, and also nominate which of the Xero Practice Manager States you use in your practice to indicate an "inactive" job.

For details, refer to Managing Job States and Best Practice for Updating Job States.

Adding a New Job State

For practices integrated with Xero Practice Manager, new Job States are added in XPM and synchronised to FYI. For practices using FYI or other integrated practice management solutions, Job States can be created in FYI.

Refer to Managing Job States.

When adding a new Job State in Xero Practice Manager:

• You can nominate which of the Xero Practice Manager States is used to indicate an "inactive" job.
• The new state must be allocated to a current Job in Xero Practice Manager before it will sync to FYI.
• When a new Job State is synced from Xero Practice Manager to FYI, it will be automatically assigned a colour in FYI. This is selected randomly from the current list of available colours.

Note: Perform a manual Job Sync to add Job States to FYI quickly. Refer to Running a Manual Sync with Xero Practice Manager and Additional Notes on Syncing.

Locking Job States for Time and Disbursements

Job States can be locked to prevent users from adding any more time or disbursements against Jobs once it reaches that state. By default, this option is enabled for the Completed Job State, and can be enabled or disabled for each Job State as required.

The Lock Time and Disbursements option is only displayed for practices on the Elite plan with FYI set as the Practice Manager source. Refer to Managing Job States and Practice Management Sync.

Hiding Job States from the Job Board 

The Jobs List can be changed to a Board view, a Kanban style of board with a column for each Job State.

If the Job State has the Hide from board option enabled, a column will not be created for that Job State on the Job Board.

Refer to Using the Jobs Board.

Archiving Job States

To archive a Job State in FYI, select the Type for the State as "Archived" (refer to Managing Job States). If any jobs still have that State selected, the jobs will still appear in the Jobs list. But the archived Job State is hidden from filters so users will not be able to select it when filtering the Jobs list with the State column.

Note: If you set a Job to an "Archived" State, you can currently only change the State using Jobs Bulk Update (refer to Jobs Bulk Update) and you cannot change the State from the Job drawer or from the Job - Summary tab. Alternatively, you can change the Type of the State to something other than "Archived" which will then allow you to change the State of the Job in the drawer or Job - Summary.

Xero Practice Manager Integrations

Syncing Stopped for Jobs marked as On Hold, Completed or Cancelled

Once the "State Type" of a Job is changed in Xero Practice Manager to "On Hold", "Completed" or "Cancelled", the Job is not synchronised with FYI.

For practices with Workflow Jobs enabled, this means that workflow jobs will not sync to FYI where the Xero Practice Manager Job is changed to one of these states.

If you make any changes in Xero Practice Manager, such as to the Job Name or the due date, and the job is not current in Xero Practice Manager (that is where the "State Type" is not "Standard"), this update will not be changed in FYI. If any such changes are needed to a completed job, change the state in Xero Practice Manager so it is not completed, make the change, sync it to FYI, and then set it back to a completed State Type. 

Custom fields will be synchronised for completed jobs for 48 hours from the last time the Job Details were updated. Refer to Synchronising Clients, Staff, Jobs, Time, Tax Returns with Xero Practice Manager.

Renaming a Job State

If you rename a Job State in Xero Practice Manager, this will sync to FYI and create a new Job State name. 

Note: This excludes case-sensitive changes. Changing a Job State from 'In progress' to 'In Progress' will update the existing Job State.

You will need to bulk update jobs to use the renamed Job State and archive the old Job State. Refer to Jobs Bulk Update and the section above, Archiving Job States.

Deleting a Job State

If you delete a Job State in Xero Practice Manager, FYI cannot detect this. It needs to be manually archived in FYI.

1. Check if there are any jobs with that Job State in FYI and, if so, change these as relevant.
2. As an FYI Admin, navigate to Settings - Practice Settings - Jobs - States.
3. Set the deleted Job State to Type "Archived".
4. Reload your browser window.

The deleted Job State name will no longer appear in any selections of Job States.

Error Accessing a Renamed or Deleted Job State before the change has Synced

If a Job State has been deleted or renamed in Xero Practice Manager, and the change has not yet synced to FYI, when the Job State is changed in the Update Job drawer FYI this may display "Error exporting job state ... Invalid state code"

In this event, run a manual sync of Jobs to update the change to FYI, then change the Job State of the job in FYI. Refer also to the FAQ "Error exporting job state ... Invalid state code".