Job States

Each Job holds a State, such as "In Progress", "Planned", "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.

This article contains the following sections:

• Syncing Job States
• Managing Job States in FYI
• Adding a New Job State in Xero Practice Manager
• Adding a New Job State in FYI - Beta
• Archiving Job States
• Syncing Stopped for Jobs in Xero Practice Manager with a State "On Hold", "Completed" or "Cancelled"
• Renaming a Job State in Xero Practice Manager
• Deleting a Job State in Xero Practice Manager
• Error Accessing a Renamed or Deleted Job State before the change has Synced

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

Job States Changed in FYI
If the Job State for any Jobs is changed in FYI for an individual Job (from the Job Summary tab or from the Job drawer) these are synchronised with Xero Practice Manager immediately.

If the Job State for any Jobs is changed in FYI using Bulk Update these are synchronised with Xero Practice Manager within 15 minutes.

Note: The job will be marked 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).

Job States Changed in Xero Practice Manager
If the Job State is changed for any Jobs in Xero Practice Manager, these are synced with FYI during the next automatic synchronisation, or if Jobs are manually synced.

Refer to Synchronising Clients, Staff, Jobs, Time, Tax Returns with Xero Practice Manager and Running a Manual Sync with Xero Practice Manager and Additional Notes on Syncing.

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 in Xero Practice Manager

When adding a new Job State in Xero Practice Manager, it must be allocated to a current Job in Xero Practice Manager in order for it to 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.

Adding a New Job State in FYI - Beta

Adding Job States in FYI is a Beta release. This would be used if you connect to a practice management system other than Xero Practice Manager or Xero Tax.

If you are part of the Beta release for this, you can add Job States in FYI. These are only available in FYI and are not synced to your practice management software. Refer to Adding a New Job State in FYI in Managing Job States.

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.

Syncing Stopped for Jobs in Xero Practice Manager with a State "On Hold", "Completed" or "Cancelled"

If the "State Type" of a Job is changed in Xero Practice Manager to "On Hold", "Completed" or "Cancelled", the Job stops being synced to FYI.

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. 

Renaming a Job State in Xero Practice Manager

If you rename a Job State in Xero Practice Manager, this will sync back to FYI and update the old Job State name. This includes case-sensitive changes such as changing a Job State from 'In progress' to 'In Progress'.

The old Job State name will no longer appear as long as no Jobs have that state.

If the old Job State is still displaying in FYI, you will need to bulk update to the renamed Job State and archive the old Job State: 

1. As an FYI Admin, navigate to Settings - Practice Settings - Documents - Job States.
2. Select the old Job State and make the Type "Archived"
3. Reload your browser window.

Deleting a Job State in Xero Practice Manager

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 - Documents - Job 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".