Productive Monthly Updates: November

Stjepan Šandor

December 13, 2023

This November was full of big releases – from improvements to project management and time tracking to significant budgeting improvements.

Not in the mood for reading? We’ve prepared a short video summarising the most essential releases:

Video Recap

Tentative Bookings

When scheduling your teammates, it’s important to remember that plans can often change – a project can be dropped, the workload can increase or reduce, and you might book someone transitioning to a different project.

That’s why we’ve developed Tentative Bookings in Scheduling, allowing you to schedule people without confirming their allocation – you can use it to plan the work first and then confirm the booking if the project goes through.

Tentative bookings don’t impact a person’s capacity, i.e., their capacity calculation will only consider confirmed bookings.


You can, however, use tentative bookings to project certain situations. When looking at Capacity & Availability or Financials reports in Insights, you’ll see the option to include Tentative fields and filters. For more information, be sure to check this article.

Improved Day View in Time Tracking

Most users choose the Day View for tracking time, so we’ve made some changes to make time tracking easier and faster.

To begin with, you can use time-tracking suggestions and select the service you want to track time against with just a click.

Choose from three suggested groups:

  • Recently tracked: Here, you’ll find all of the services you’ve tracked time against recently
  • Scheduled: If you were scheduled to work on a project, it will appear here – perfect for new recruits needing help determining where to track time
  • Pinned: Use this group to pin your favorites manually

When you click on a time entry, it will appear on the right side of the screen. There, you can add the total duration of the entry (say, two hours), or you can add the time range and the duration will be calculated automatically. Alternatively, you can always start the timer if you prefer.

If the service you want to track time against is not on the list, you can use the redesigned picker to find it. Search for the name of the service, project, or budget, or combine all three search terms, and you don’t even have to write full names.

New in Budgets

Now you can add a currency when creating a budget – previously, you’d have to create a budget first and then select the currency. If you’re working with multiple currencies, this will make your life much easier.

Next, the time tab now behaves as a table, meaning that you can add fields and tailor them to what you want to see:

New in Docs

Docs are perfect for writing project specifications, company handbooks, and more. You can embed videos to your Doc; all popular video hosting services are supported.

And here’s a sneak peek: We’re currently working on AI capabilities in Docs, which will allow you to improve texts, create summaries, or get action items in a flash. The full release is expected soon, so let us know if you’d like to try it in beta.

Live Webinar – Time Tracking Best Practices

In this webinar, we’ll be joined by Marcel Petitpas, CEO & Co-Founder of Parakeeto, who will help us cover the top 3 reasons agencies struggle with time tracking and how to fix them, including:

  • How to get your team bought-in to time tracking
  • How to identify the right method for time tracking in your firm
  • How to set up your time tracking tools and process to be easy and useful

To save your spot, click here.

Snowstorm ❄️

Life isn’t all about working, so follow these steps and enjoy a well-earned break, or use this feature as an excuse (e.g., “I couldn’t track time as I was stuck in a blizzard.)

  • Pour yourself a hot drink ☕️
  • Press CMD + E on a Mac or CTRL + E on a Windows PC
  • Enjoy! 😊

Wait, There’s More!

  • Organization owners can reset 2FA codes for users
  • You can now integrate your Productive account with Justworks
  • Turn on or off time or booking tracking options right in the Rate Cards menu
  • Now you can edit expense reimbursements in bulk

Still To Come:

In the next few weeks, you can expect:

  • Workload view on Tasks
  • Templates for Docs
  • Bill report for Purchase orders
  • Organization champions will allow you to define key people in your Productive organization (e.g. invoicing champion).

We’re always looking to make your experience of using Productive better.

We’ll keep you updated as we ship more improvements. The following Monthly Updates will arrive at the beginning of January 2024.

For any questions, as always, reach out to our Customer Support.

Stjepan Šandor

Product Marketing Specialist

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