How to use Schedule Master

Schedule Master is organized around your customers, jobs, tasks and resources.

Let's add a customer:

To add a customer, click the + button in the upper-right corner.

Now let's add a job for this customer:

To add a job, select the customer, then click the + button under the middle jobs grid. You can add as many jobs for a single customer as you like. Schedule Master creates a suggested job name, which you can edit if desired.

Tasks are the key to Schedule Master. Each task is a Gantt arrow under the Visualize tab. Add a task by clicking the + button under the upper right tasks grid.

When you add a task, specify the length of the task in either hours, days, weeks or months. Also enter a hourly rate value which allows Schedule Master to track labor costs. Complete adding a task by editing the description, starting date / time and any note you wish to include. You may assign a status to the task if you like and update it as it progresses. You can define your own task definitions if you like under setup screen. Tasks may be setup as a repeated series of tasks by setting the Repeat period to Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, 6 months or Custom and a Repeat count of 2 or greater.

You can also click the Find a previous task button to locate any previous task and reuse it as a new task:

To locate a task for reuse, click the navigator bar on the screen bottom and scroll the reuse task list, then click Reuse this task.

With Schedule Master you can track your tasks by resource.  A resource is an individual, a crew, a piece of equipment or office space that must be scheduled.  Add an entry in the Resources grid for every resource that would be assigned to a task by clicking the + button under the Resources grid:

Change a resource assignment to a task by selecting the  task, then double-click on the new resource.

Notice the Query options panel.  Using these four options (which is 16 different ways to query tasks) is the key to making Schedule Master work for you.

Example 1:  What tasks are assigned this week?  Click This week.

Example 2:  What are we working on for Acme Construction today?  Click Today and check Restrict to selected customer.

Example 3:  What is the B-Team doing this month?  Click on This month, select the B-Team (left click with the mouse) and check Restrict to selected resource.

Example 4:  What tasks have a status of Pending? Check Restrict to selected status, then choose Pending.

Notice the top of the screen indicates what tasks are selected by the query.

Whatever tasks are selected in the Add / Edit / Query tab are displayed under the Visualize tab:

Under the Visualize tab you can display individual tasks or a simplified job display:

The Overall Jobs display reflects all the tasks in a job. It starts with the earliest task and ends with the latest.

Going back to the Individual tasks display, Schedule Master permits grouping together related tasks:

To identify related tasks, start by arranging each task's schedule, in relation to each other. Then click Set dependencies:

Click on the first task in the series, then click on each subsequent task.

After clicking on the last task in the dependent series, click the small red button:

Setup as many groups of dependent tasks as you like. Once a task is dependent on another, it slips if the parent task above it slips, or moves up if the parent task moves up.

Using the task editor (click on the Edit button) provides additional control:

With the Task editor, you can remove task dependencies, or edit a task. Edit an individual task by double clicking on it.

You can also edit a task directly by double-clicking a task arrow.

Under the Work Calendar tab, you tell Schedule Master about your working hours and days:

Specify your working day, plus up to three "down" times such as lunch hour and break times.  Specify which days you work in  a normal work week and which holidays you observe. If you want to schedule on a 24 / 7 basis, click the Create 24 / 7 calendar button.

The work calendar can apply to all resources or individually to each resource. When setup individually, you can have a different work schedule for each resource.  For example, one employee may work a day shift and another an evening shirt.  Go to the Utilities tab, Setup button, then choose the General tab to enable individual work calendars.

Several useful functions are included under the Utilities tab:

There is a backup and restore feature.  Backup all data compresses the entire database (which includes customers, jobs, tasks, resources and work calendars) into a single zip-type backup file. Smart restore restores a Schedule Master backup without overwriting any existing data in the database. You can use this feature to synchronize two or more databases from different computers running Schedule Master. In other words, Smart Restore feature is additive and will not result in the loss of any data by overwriting when you take a backup from one computer and restore it on another.

Clicking the Setup button shows the Schedule Master configuration screen:

Specify what country your business resides in for the QuickBooks edition.  Specify whether you would like the balloon help tips or not. Specify what hint level you prefer for the tasks shown on the Show tasks and schedule tab in the Display task hints panel: When your mouse passes over a Gantt arrow, you can choose to display the starting / ending dates, the task status and notes in the balloon hint.

Choose whether one work calendar applies to all resources (employees or whatever) or if you would like an individual work calendar for each resource.

Click the QuickBooks tab to setup Schedule Master for use with QuickBooks:

The above screen  with Enable automatic access checked, is the easiest setup. It's not necessary to know where your QuickBooks company is located (Schedule Master uses whatever company file QuickBooks is currently using).

Below is another example of QuickBooks setup. Here, with Enable automatic access not checked, you locate the company file that QuickBooks uses. Use this option when you have set up QuickBooks to allow Schedule Master to access the company file even when QuickBooks is not running.

To setup Schedule Master for use with QuickBooks, first click Install QB access to install the software interface for accessing QuickBooks.

If your QuickBooks has customized job status definitions (see Edit Preferences, Job & Estimate in QuickBooks, change the Schedule Master job status definitions to match, or you can just define the job status the way you want them, even if you don't use QuickBooks.

You can configure each installed copy of Schedule Master for read-only access. In other words, if you want users running  a copy of Schedule Master on your office network to be able to view, but not change the schedules,  select Read-only access with no password.

You can also require all users to log-in with a password on program launch using the third option, Read / Write access with password, or no password access at all and full privileges using the Read / Write access with no password option.

If you intend to send schedules via E-Mail, you need to configure Schedule Master for E-Mail:

E-mail may be sent directly from Schedule Master to your Internet Service Provider or it may be sent from Schedule Master to Microsoft Outlook and then to your ISP. 

If you want to send E-Mail directly to your ISP, fill in the bottom panel. Or if you want to send E-Mail through Outlook, check Use Microsoft Outlook and browse to the Outlook.exe file on your hard drive.

 

The Import Wizard is a utility for importing schedules from other applications and data sources such as Microsoft Excel:

To import data, start with the Step 1 tab.

Step 1.           Locate a dBase source for your import data. Microsoft Excel will save it's data in dBase 4 format.  You may have to get the data you would like to import into Excel first.  Excel will input a variety of file formats. Once in Excel, choose Save As and choose the dBase 4 file type.

Step 2.           Assign fields.  Match each field of the Input table with the Destination fields list. The names don’t have to be spelled the same as long as the input and destination fields are equivalent.  All fields don’t have to be assigned. For each field pair, click the Assign field button.

Step 3.           Enter your average labor rate and click Do Import.