Overview
With our 6/8 Release, we're unlocking some exciting new opportunities! With our new Locations feature, you can segment People by their Location, providing you with a powerful new segment to apply to filtering and sorting options. With our new Holidays Enhancement you can create and apply separate Holiday Calendars based on the Location segments you create. Lastly, you can use our new Currency feature to enter worker Costs in their home currency or to apply alternate currencies to Projects by Pipeline. There's a lot ot unpack here, so check out below for more info!
| Locations | Here we'll explain the basics of the new Locations feature and how you can use it to segment People! |
| We'll talk about the enhancements we've made to the Holidays page, and how they combine with Locations to assign Holidays by segment. | |
| Currency | We'll talk about our new Currency feature, what it can do and where you can get more in-depth info! |
New Feature: Locations
While we have quietly been field testing Locations and Currency (so you might have gotten a preview), this week marks the full debut of these new features!
The new Locations page (found under Settings) allows you to create geographic segments that can be attributed to each Person within your organization. These Location segments allow you to assign workers' Costs in their home currency and as well as managing applicable Holidays separately by Location.
What has changed?
Everything - this is a brand new feature!
How does it work?
Locations are a little bit like Roles or Departments, they're there to help you segment People using an attribute they share - their Location!
To use Locations, you'll visit the Settings > Locations page in order to create these Locations and assign them a Currency (see New Feature: Currency below) and a Holiday Calendar (see: Holiday Calendars below). Then when you add new People to your Settings > People page, you'll attribute them to the Locations you created. This will automatically allow you to enter Costs using the associated Currency and apply the associated Holiday Calendar.
You can be as specific or as general as you need to with Locations and you can filter by Location within Insights, so make sure to check out more here.
Enhancement: Holiday Calendars
Part of last year's Time-Off release was the Holiday Calendar - a feature that allows you to create company-wide holidays (non-working days) within Parallax. We've found this to be an extremely useful tool - but what about when not everyone celebrates the same Holidays?
While you've always been able to exclude specific individuals from Holidays (through Settings > People), what if you have Employees in different locations that observe an entirely different set of Holidays? With release of our enhanced Holiday Calendars, we've got you covered!
Important - Be sure to Assign Locations and set Holiday Calendars!
In order to make sure our Insights reports are calculated as intended, as soon as you have a Location set-up, it's important to make sure you've assigned the correct Employees to that Location - and that a Holiday Calendar is up-to-date and assigned to each unique Location.
What has changed?
On the Settings > Time Off page, you can now create multiple Holiday Calendars which can be attributed a different set of Holidays! While you can still omit individual Employees from Holidays altogether in their People profile, this allows you to segment your workers and apply the correct Holidays without needing to use the Time Off feature.
How does it work?
It's easy! Simply click visit Settings > Time Off and click the new "Add Holiday Calendar" to create an additional Calendar and add the desired Holidays - then pop over to Settings > Locations and add them to a Location.
If a Holiday Calendar no longer applies or was created in error, you can Archive it and create a new one. You can even import Holidays from year to year within the same calendar! Check out this article for a more detailed breakdown of what you can do under Settings > Time Off!
New Feature: Currency
Parallax now supports the ability to set different Currencies depending on how you do business. For a single location simply establishing a default currency will suffice (you do work in € and are tired of looking at $). For companies with different locations (United States and Europe as an example) you can establish a Currency for each location and enter values in that Currency. Parallax will handle the conversion for you when viewing reports.
We call this feature Currency (so original), and it's designed to make doing business in one or more currencies simple and smooth.
What has changed?
In addition to Locations mentioned above, you'll see that a new Exchange Rate Table has been added to Settings > Customization. This table allows you to create separate Currencies within Parallax to set Conversion Rates for Cost Rates and Bill Rates from your default Currency*.
*Parallax Tip - Using a Default Currency Other Than USD
If your home currency is USD($) you won't need to do a thing as USD($) will be the default. If you want to change this home Currency to display something other than USD($) just reach out to your CSM and they'll make that change for you.
How does it work?
The Currencies you add to this Exchange Rate Table is used in the following ways:
- Cost Rates - Since each Employee will now be assigned a Location, they will inherit the Currency you add to that Location.
- Billing Rates - For each Currency, you'll get a new Primary Rate card (automatically converted from your default Currency's Primary Rate Card).
Different Currencies can be assigned to the different pipelines synced via the integration with your CRM, in order for incoming Projects to inherit the correct Currency's Rate Card.
Insights reports where Currency is concerned will display in your Default Currency. However, you will be able to view each of these reports in any Currency you have added to your Exchange Rate Table, which can be associated to any Saved Views you create.
For more information on how Currency works and how to best use it, check out this article!