Unanet has unveiled its second release this year for its Government contractors (GovCons) and Architecture and Engineering (A/E) ERP solutions. The 2021.3 release builds on the release it unveiled in January with both new features and functional improvements across both solutions.
Assad Jarrahian, chief product officer, Unanet, commented: “Unanet is the alternative to stagnant ERP that requires customers to adapt their processes to meet their modules instead of the other way around. We understand our customers needed more intuitive and user-friendly dashboards and reports, especially as they move from outdated systems to more dynamic solutions.”
For Government Contractors
The 2021.3 release for GovCons saw three main focus areas; there were also some minor updates to the analytics functionality. All improvements are only available for cloud customers.
Fixed Asset tracking
This is a new solution that allows finance teams to add, edit and update fixed assets. It goes beyond a simple addition to the financial module as it also enables them to manage their assets better. Organisations can record information such as:
- Name and description
- In-service date and useful life
- Locations, class
- Status
- Depreciation start date, cumulative amount, and method
- Purchase date and value
- Serial number
- Disposal information, including value, method, and date
- Record the disposal of the asset
- Up to twenty user-defined fields
Currently, Unanet only supports straight-line depreciation (or none). Will it add a declining balance depreciation type and others in a later release? Once added, users can view and interact with assets using a new dashboard, allowing users to create lists of assets by status and class, such as “Vehicles.” There is also a search feature though it only supports an asset number search and not a free text search. An import feature enables rapid ingestion of fixed assets from Excel spreadsheets or a CSV file. Unanet offers users an Excel template to help correctly format the data.
Mobile Time & Expense capabilities,
Available for iOS and Android mobile, the app enables timesheet and expense users to input data using their mobile device. There is additional functionality for managers to approve timesheets, vacations, and expenses. This release includes the manager approvals feature and enhances the expenses functionality. Users can add expenses, attach receipts then view and submit expenses.
Enabling consultants to add expense reports quickly from mobile devices also ensures that clients are invoiced faster and that the time to pay for both employee and organisation is shortened. Unanet is looking to add OCR capabilities to future updates so that captured receipts automatically populate fields with appropriate data to make the process even faster. Currently, it believes users can create an expenses item in under 30 seconds.
Service Contract support.
Unanet has improved its support for The Service Contract Act (SCA). The act requires organisations to pay contractors and subcontractors a minimum wage depending upon the contract’s value in broad terms. Unanet now supports the ability to calculate the correct pay levels for export to payroll systems. This includes support pay in lieu benefits. Additionally, complete wage determinations history for each contract is available to support Department of Labor audits. Administrators can apply a wage determination to each contract to ensure correct payments are made.
Analytics
Unanet has added two new reports for analytics users:
- Accrual to Cash Conversion
- Contract and Project Gross Margin (P&L).
There are also some other minor updates to the analytics functionality.
For architecture and engineering
Most of the new features with this release have been as a result of customer feedback. Unanet has improved that feedback cycle with the launch of a new customer suggestions portal. The portal enables customers to enter feedback and ideas, and they can then see the responses and progress on those ideas. This includes updates from the development, and other customers can vote on the suggestions posed. This keeps customers informed and will also help Unanet determine the priority of customer suggestions. Unanet has introduced updated areas with this release. Release notes were not available to Enterprise Times for deeper analysis.
Unanet Pay
Customers can now configure the allocation of merchant fees more flexibly. The setup screen enables administrators to change field labels and apply fees to payers in several ways. For example, they can apply fees after a set number of days or based on a percentage. The settings can apply to each customer, project, or invoice.
Project Central
New features include an interactive project list view, flags based on personalized project performance criteria, customized aggregation, dynamic project search, and tailored row coloring for easier grid views.
UI improvements
Unanet continues to modernise and bring consistency to the user interface for Unanet A/E. This release sees an updated look and feel, a redesigned login screen, and updated grids for better visibility and usability.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Unanet continues to improve its solution. The improvements to the GovCon ERP are welcome. There is room for further improvements to the fixed asset capability. The SCA support could also add some intelligence to propose the correct wage determination based on the contract value. This would further improve the efficiency of the solution. For the A/E updates, it is difficult to analyse the improvements the company has made without deeper access to what the release includes. The updates to Project Central sound interesting and could be significant or cosmetic.
What is impressive is the number of improvements the development team has made in a few short months since the last update. Can they keep this cadence going? What will the next update include?
