Branded reports, saved and sent on a schedule
Send clients and funders a report of hours as a PDF or Excel file under your logo, or as a CSV. Save it once, and Quanta can make it and email it on a schedule, with review before sending on by default.
Every month someone asks for the hours. A client wants them for their records, a funder wants them for a grant, and finance wants a number they can check. Usually that means exporting a spreadsheet, moving the columns around, pasting in a logo and sending it off. It takes an hour, and it still looks like a spreadsheet.
Branded reports cut that hour out. The Detailed, Summary, Budget and Uninvoiced reports now export as a PDF, an Excel file or a CSV file, with a title, a note and the period at the top if you want them, and your logo on a PDF or Excel file. Save a report once, and Quanta can make it again on a schedule and email it, after you have checked it.
Branded reports are in every plan.
A report with your name on it
Set the filters on a report, choose Export, and pick PDF, Excel or CSV. Then choose what goes in the file besides the table:
- Report header: your logo, company name and billing address (from Workspace Settings, then Invoicing), the title, the note, the period and the filters you chose, and a line saying when the file was made and by whom. In a CSV the header is a few lines of text at the top, since a CSV can't hold a logo.
- Totals: a total at the end, and on a grouped report a subtotal for each group.
The two are separate from the file type, so you can make any combination: a PDF to hand over, an Excel file with your header but no totals, or a plain CSV to load into another tool. A PDF starts with both on. Excel and CSV start with both off, the plain data they always were. Quanta remembers what you chose last for each report.
The Title defaults to the report's name. The Note is for anything the reader should know, such as who the report is for or a contract number.
On the Detailed report you also choose the columns, and whether to Group by client and project. Off, the entries are one list in date order. On, each client and project gets its own heading.
A PDF with the header has your logo and address at the top and page numbers at the bottom, so a long report can be printed and handed over.
Durations follow your Duration Format under User Settings → Time Formats, so a PDF or Excel file reads the way your screen does. A CSV always has decimal hours, so the numbers add up wherever you open it.
Save it once
When the report looks right, choose Save as a saved report. It keeps the filters, the columns, the file type, the header and totals, and the period.
The period can move on by itself. Last month, This month, Last week, This week, Last quarter and Last year are worked out on the day the report runs. A saved "last month" report shows September when you open it in October, and October when you open it in November. Or pick These dates to repeat the same dates every time. Budget and Uninvoiced reports have no period. They are always as of the day they run.
Open a saved report from the Saved reports menu on any report page, or from Saved Reports under Reports in the sidebar. Anyone who can open a report can open its saved version, and sees only what their own access allows. A saved Detailed report also needs the permission to export the Detailed report. Only the person who saved it, or a workspace admin, can change it.
Send it on a schedule
On the Schedule tab, turn on Run on a schedule and choose weekly, monthly or quarterly. Pick the day and the hour, in your workspace's time zone, and add the recipients under Send to. Each run makes the file type the report was saved with, and that file is what the recipients get.
Recipients can be inside your workspace or outside it. Each one gets their own email, sent from your workspace name with "via Quanta" after it. Replies go to the person who set up the schedule.
Each run is made with that person's access, so it never shows more than they could see. Quanta checks for due schedules every 15 minutes, so a run can start up to 15 minutes after its time.
Review before anything goes out
Review before sending is on by default. Each run waits in Quanta for you. Check the figures and the file, then choose Send. If something looks wrong, choose Regenerate to make the file again, or Skip to leave that period out. Nothing reaches the recipients until you send it.
For a new schedule, review stays on for its first 30 days, and again for 30 days whenever you add a recipient. Someone checks what goes to a new address before Quanta sends it by itself.
After that you can turn review off, and Quanta sends by itself, with one exception. In a workspace that approves timesheets, if some time in the period is not approved yet, the run is held back. Nobody outside the workspace gets an incomplete report. You get an email, and the run page lists who has unapproved time and how many hours.
Files are kept privately in Quanta. Only the person who made the run, or a workspace admin, can open them. Email attachments are capped at 15 MB, and a file over that size is never attached. Send is refused with "This report is too large to email. Download it from Quanta instead." A run that would have gone out by itself is marked failed rather than sent without the file, and its owner is told. Download the file from the run page and send it yourself.
A workspace that has never paid for a subscription, including one in its trial, can have up to three scheduled reports.
Who it is for
Branded reports are for the people who take hours out of Quanta: a client who needs them for their records, a funder who wants a clean statement, or an owner who wants the same report on the first of every month without rebuilding it.
Try it
Open a time report, choose Export, pick PDF, add a title and a note, and export. When you want it again, choose Save as a saved report and turn on the schedule.