Perhaps the biggest update to Harpoon since our initial launch, we’re proud to introduce to you our brand spankin’ new Schedule. Rebuilt from the ground up the new Schedule provides greater insight into your revenue goal progress, including the ability to track expected revenue. Let’s take a quick look.
New Progress Bar
The Schedule now includes a handy revenue goal progress bar above the calendar.
The new progress bar is intended to provide an "at-a-glance” view of your goal progress—something easier to digest than the three metrics numbers the progress bar replaces. This bar tracks your collected revenue as you make progress towards your yearly revenue goal. A dynamic marker shows you how far ahead (or behind) you are from being on track to meeting your yearly revenue goal, and the marker is updated on a daily basis. The progress bar also tracks your expected revenue, which adds an entirely new layer of insight. We’ll talk more about expected revenue in just a minute.
Color Coded Projects
You might already know that a project in Harpoon can have multiple statuses. For example, a project can have a status of Active, or Completed, etc. In the past we’ve indicated the status of a project on the Schedule via a colored square next to the name of each project.
Starting today we’re extending the use of status colors to include the colored blocks that represent the duration of your projects on the Schedule. If a project has the status of Active you’ll see green blocks filled in on the Schedule for that project. If a project is Proposed you’ll see orange blocks. And so on.
This makes it much easier to focus in on a single month of the Schedule and know at a glance the status of each project for that month. There might appear to be a lot going on for a particular month, but if only one block is green (Active) maybe it’s not as busy as you thought.
Expected Revenue
Tracking your expected revenue is a game changer for Harpoon. Your Schedule has always displayed the revenue you’ve actually collected from your clients. This has provided you a retrospective look of your goal progress, and has helped with determining where to schedule new projects based on that progress. But starting today your Schedule also tracks your expected revenue. This means that all outstanding invoices, and even Draft invoices, will be represented on your Schedule. Collected revenue will continue to be represented by solid green circles, and expected revenue will display as striped green circles.
Tracking expected revenue on your Schedule allows you to see into the future. It turns your Draft invoices into powerful forecasting tools. For example, if you know when you’re expected to get paid for your projects go ahead and create Draft invoices now, even before you send them to your clients. These Draft invoices will show up on your Schedule as expected revenue according to the due dates of the invoices. And when those invoices get paid your Schedule will automatically convert and display them as collected revenue.
The effect of your expected revenue is displayed in two places. The first place is in the new progress bar.
In the above example you can see that I’m a bit behind for the year with my collected revenue (solid green bar). But if I include my expected revenue (striped bar) I can see that I’m actually ahead of where I need to be. Now, I might decide that I don’t want to entirely count on that expected revenue as a reality just yet, but at least I have a more complete picture of where I should be when/if I get paid. The other place you can see the effect of your expected revenue is in the Monthly and Accumulated rows at the bottom of your Schedule.
Each of these rows now include a new “Expected” calculation. You’ll now be able to see not only your actual progress towards your monthly and accumulated revenue goals, but also your expected progress. Again, if you have outstanding or Draft invoices for a particular month, and your actual collected revenue shows that you’re behind in your monthly or accumulated goal progress, your expected revenue might tell a different story.
We’re working on some new tutorials and updated support docs that teach you how to get the most out of the new Schedule. And these changes also pave the way for more new features we have planned for the Schedule in the near future. Stay tuned!