What's new in hidma

🚀 New Features Recurring Bills You can now automate your invoicing workflow with Recurring Bills. This feature allows you to define a billing template and set a frequency for automatic generation. Getting Started: Navigate to the Billing page, click Add New, and select Recurring Bill. Smart Placeholders: Use placeholders in bill rows that automatically populate with specific data upon generation. Automation & Integration: Set a target status (Draft or Outstanding) for generated bills. If you use Xero, bills can be pushed automatically to your accounting software. Time Allocation: Hidma can now automatically allocate project hours to bills generated via a recurring schedule. Watch the detailed walkthrough by Alex here. Copying Bills We’ve introduced two streamlined ways to duplicate existing bills. Once copied, you can modify the content and easily associate new time or charges with the rows. Watch the quick demo clip. 🛠️ Improvements 💹 Billing & Revenue Redesigned Billing Page: We’ve overhauled the interface for better performance and organization. Instead of a single long page, we’ve introduced four dedicated tabs: Ready for Billing, Bills, Receipts, and Credit Notes. This results in faster load times and a more structured view. Advanced Filtering: You can now filter bills by Organization, Team, Bill Type, Status, and Date Range. Enhanced Bill Search: Finding an "elusive" bill is now easier than ever. You can search by text within bill rows, recurring bill titles, allocated jobs, or project names. Revenue by Project Report: The "Bill Rows by Project" report has been renamed to Revenue by Project to better reflect its intent. It now includes data from both bills and credit note rows. Project Revenue Flag: A new Affects Project Revenue toggle is available for all Charge types. This helps Hidma determine if a charge contributes to revenue (e.g., standard fees) or is a simple recharge (e.g., Disbursements). To modify these, head over to Settings -> Configuration -> Billing Settings and scroll down to Charges & Discounts. 📁 Files Bulk File Uploads: Managing documents is now much faster. You can now upload multiple files simultaneously by simply dragging and dropping a group of files directly onto the file widget. 🛡️ Compliance & Accuracy Xero Workflow Protection: To ensure accounting integrity, you can now prevent the deletion or cancellation of bills in Hidma that are "Authorized" but still unpaid in Xero. This is a tenant-wide setting; please contact our support team if you would like us to enable this for you. Unapproved Work Warnings: When creating a bill, Hidma will now warn you if the project has unapproved work. You can view a quick summary of all pending entries directly from the warning. Enhanced Audit Trails for Bill Deletion / Cancelling: Before deleting or canceling bills, you are now required to provide a reason. Choose from a list of common reasons or enter a custom one for your audit logs. Smart Credit Note De-allocation: For those not using RFPs, creating a credit note now allows you to automatically de-allocate associated time or charges. For partial credit notes, de-allocation applies to rows that are fully credited. ⌨️ User Experience Timesheet Hotkeys: Navigate your timesheet faster without touching your mouse with a now enhanced set of hotkeys: Arrows: Move up, down, left, or right between cells. A: Open the "Add New Row" popup. E: Edit the first row. 🐞 Bug Fixes Jobs: Fixed an issue where the status filter on the Jobs Summary page was not filtering results correctly.

🚀 New Features Flexible Time & Charge Management Managing billable entries just got a lot more flexible. You can now adjust time or charges allocated to a bill row at any stage of the billing life cycle, from draft to fully settled - without needing to delete and recreate rows. How it works: Click the Time Icon on any bill row to manage all allocations instantly. Pro Tip: For bills that are already generated, you can still utilize the existing "Allocate Hours" functionality for precision adjustments. Watch: Alex walks through the new allocation workflow (Video) Customizable Bill Due Dates You can now automate and track due dates for all your bills within Hidma. Set your defaults: Head to Settings → Configuration → Billing Settings to define your default payment terms (number of days). Template Control: Due dates are enabled by default on all templates. To toggle them on or off, visit Settings → Customisations → Document Templates. Bill due dates get automatically included when copying bills to XERO 🛠️ Enhancements & Improvements Billing Workspace Optimized Preview Pane: To give you more screen real estate, the bill header (client details, dates, etc.) is now collapsed by default. Need to see the specifics? Just click the new Show Bill Details button. Enriched 'Ready to bill' export: When exporting your "Ready for Billing" list, you can now include full Project Details, including any custom fields you’ve defined. Xero Integration Write-off Mapping: You can now map Hidma write-offs to a specific Xero account code. If you have payment sync enabled, write-offs will now sync correctly across both systems. Setup: Go to Settings → Integrations → Xero and select your default Write-off account for each connection. Smarter Validation: No more guessing why a bill can't be pushed to XERO. If you attempt to create a bill with unmapped items, Hidma will now provide clear, actionable feedback. You'll be prompted exactly if either the Client, Tax Rate, or Template need to be connected to Xero. Watch: See how Smarter Validation helps you fix sync errors (Video) Coordinated Client Closing: When closing a client in Hidma, you now have the option to automatically archive the corresponding contacts in Xero, keeping both systems in sync effortlessly. Enhanced Audit Trails: We’ve added the ability to include detailed audit history notes when syncing contacts or bills. This identifies exactly which Hidma user originated the update in Xero. Note: The enhanced audit trails are currently a back-end toggle. Please contact our support team if you’d like to enable this for your account. 🐞 Bug Fixes Automatic Primary Selection: To save you a click, if a client has only one contact detail or address, Hidma will now automatically select it as the primary option. 💡 Summary (The TL;DR) Edit Bills Faster: Adjust time/charges on any row without deleting them. Write-off Sync: Map write-offs to specific Xero account codes for cleaner books. Error Handling: New validation prompts (and a video guide!) for Xero sync issues. Due Dates: Automated payment terms are now available on all templates. Cleaner UI: Bill headers are now collapsed by default for a better view.

Improvement (Integrations): Xero notification emails are now delivered as a daily digest. This update ensures you receive no more than one notification email per day. To manage your Xero integration notification preferences, go to Settings → Integrations → Xero → Xero Settings. Fix (Timesheets): Navigating back to the My Timesheet page after viewing someone else's timesheet now works as it should Fix (Projects): Closing off individual projects now works as expected. Fix (Reporting): The project filter on the reporting page now updates correctly when changes are made to the client filter.

Feature (Reports): The Reporting page in Hidma now supports Standard Reports. Unlike the existing All Data reports, these reports are pre-configured with a specific purpose in mind. Each report still supports filtering by multiple parameters and can be exported as needed. We’re launching with the following four reports: Annual Hours by Project and Month Bill Rows by Project Hours by Team Work in Progress Report Permissions Standard Reports introduce three new permissions: View All Standard Reports View Standard Reports Manage All Standard Reports Users with View All or Manage All permissions can access all standard reports. Users with only View Standard Reports will see only the reports that have been explicitly shared with them or their team. Watch as Alex walks through this new functionality. Feature: We’ve added a new Feedback widget that brings together our release log, feedback tools, and links to the knowledge base in one place. The widget also introduces Max, our beta chat assistant. Max will do his best to answer your questions using information available in the knowledge base. Click the Feedback widget to explore the new functionality. Improvement (Billing): Bill row text templates now apply to both the title and description of bill rows. This makes templates more flexible and helps ensure consistency across bills. Have a look at this short instructional clip covering this functionality. Additional billing-related templates will be introduced in upcoming releases. Improvement (Clients): You can now associate files directly with Clients. This works in the same way as project file uploads and can be accessed via the dashboard. Improvement (Timesheets): Timesheet approval in Hidma now follow a hierarchical permission structure based on user roles. Here’s a breakdown of who can approve timesheets based on what permissions they have. Team-Level Rights View Team Member Timesheets: Can view timesheets of team members who do not have timesheet management rights. Manage Team Member Timesheets: Can approve or reject timesheets of team members who do not have timesheet management rights. View All Team Timesheets: Can view timesheets of all team members, including other users with this permission (except Directors). Manage All Team Timesheets: Can approve or reject timesheets of all team members, including other users with this permission (except Directors). Organization-Level Rights View All Timesheets: Can view timesheets of all users across all teams, including Directors. Manage All Timesheets: Can approve or reject timesheets of all users across all teams, including Directors. Director Timesheets Users with the Director role have special protections: Their timesheets can only be seen by users with View All Timesheets or Manage All Timesheets rights. Only users with Manage All Timesheets can approve their timesheets. If you can't see a team member's timesheet, you may need elevated rights as standard "Manage Team Member Timesheets" rights do not allow viewing other users with management rights. Improvement (Timesheets): When editing a business timesheet row of type business, you can now press Alt to quickly toggle between billable and non-billable hours. Improvement (Timesheets): It is now possible to notify team managers via email whenever a team member submits a timesheet. This setting is not yet available in the settings page - please contact us if you would like it enabled for your tenant. Fix (Projects): Project-related file uploads now work as expected. Fix (Billing): Specific charge-out rates are now correctly applied at billing time, even if the users involved do not have default charge-out rates configured. Fix: All custom fields get displayed properly when generating a csv export for both projects and clients.

Feature (Projects): When closing a project, you are now given the option to automatically allocate any unbilled hours and charges to existing bills created for that project, and close them off against it. This option will: Allocate and close all unbilled time and charges across all bills associated with the project Normalise recoverability across all bills, proportionally adjusting charge-out rates for all individuals involved in the project Important note: Charges that do not affect a project’s cost or recoverability will not be allocated or closed using this option. Only charges that do affect cost and recoverability (such as Project Opening Cost) will be included. Feature (Projects): If you choose to write off any remaining hours or charges on a project and later change your mind, you can now easily reverse this action. When reopening a project, you will be prompted to confirm whether you want to reverse any written-off hours. Reversed hours will be reinstated as unbilled. Feature (Timesheets): You can now configure automated email notifications to remind users to submit their timesheets. These notifications are sent daily once the relevant week has elapsed. To enable this feature: Go to Settings → Configuration → Team Settings Click the three-dot icon at the end of the Working Hours settings row and select Manage Settings Ensure the following options are enabled: Set working hours for each team member Send notification if number of hours have not been reached Click Save Feature (Projects): It is now possible to notify all users working on a project when 80% of the project budget has been reached. This feature is currently in beta and must be enabled by the Hidma team. Please contact us if you would like this feature activated for your users. More advanced configuration options related to this feature will be introduced in future releases. Improvement (Project Templates): For multi-organisation setups, you can now assign a default organisation to each project template. This streamlines billing by automatically selecting the default organisation whenever a new bill is created for a project linked to that template. To configure this: Go to Projects → Project Templates Update the Default Organisation field for the relevant templates Improvement (Billing): You can now assign Account Code Exceptions for XERO integrations at the project template level. When bill rows are created from projects associated with these templates, the appropriate account code will be automatically applied. Improvement (Billing): Additional permissions have been introduced for submitting and authorising bills in XERO. These allow for greater control over which users can finalise bills in XERO from within Hidma. Improvement (Billing): You can now enable automatic copying of bills from XERO to Hidma, both during the initial mapping process and on an ongoing basis. To enable this for an existing integration: Go to Settings → Integrations → XERO Select the integration you wish to configure Under Ongoing Sync from XERO to Hidma, enable Automatically sync new Bills Click Save Important note: Bills copied from XERO to Hidma will be created against the mapped client but will not be allocated to any projects. Project allocation to any of these bills must be performed manually. Fix (Clients): When integrated with XERO, creating a new client in Hidma will now immediately copy both the client and its contact details.

Improvement (Timesheets): It is now possible to adjust or remove the daily hour limit for time entries. By default, the system restricts submissions to a maximum of 24 hours per day. You can now change this limit or disable it entirely if needed. This setting is not yet available on the application's settings page, so please contact us if you would like us to apply these changes for your tenant. Improvement (Billing): If a bill has been generated in both Hidma and Xero without being authorised, you can now authorise it directly from Hidma without first converting the invoice to a draft. Fix (Payments): Credit note syncing between Hidma and Xero now functions correctly and supports all scenarios, including creation, deletion, allocation, and more. Fix (Projects): The project templates field in the edit project form now supports full scrolling through your entire list of templates, as well as filtering and search functionality.

Feature (Xero Integration) You can now connect your Hidma account to Xero! Easily integrate your client base, bills, and payments across both platforms. If you manage multiple organisations in Hidma, you can set up a separate Xero connection for each one. This powerful integration keeps both systems in sync, giving you a unified, real-time view of all your Xero tenants right within Hidma. Check out this video, where Alex provides a comprehensive walkthrough of the integration and how to get started. Feature (Teams): If you operate in a multi-organisation setup, you can now assign a default organisation to each team. This streamlines the billing process - your chosen default organisation will be automatically selected whenever you create a new bill (based on your team). You can easily set this up by going to Settings → Teams and updating the Default Organisation field for your selected team. (Note: This feature will only be visible if you have more than one organisation created in Hidma.) Feature (Users): In addition to team-level defaults, you can now assign a default organisation to individual users. This user-level setting will override the team’s default organisation (if enabled), giving you more flexibility in managing billing preferences. To enable this feature, go to Settings → Configuration → Team Settings, enable Default Organisation, and save your changes. You can then open any user’s profile to set or update their default organisation. (Note: This feature is available if you have more than one organisation created in Hidma.) Feature (Billing): You can now create bills for projects even if they don’t yet have any unbilled time or charges. This feature is especially useful when issuing bills at the start of a project or when no unbilled work is currently available. You can later allocate time or charges to these bills as the project progresses. Check out this quick explainer video covering this feature and the two related updates below. Feature (Billing): You can now create bill rows without linking them to any unbilled jobs or charges. Simply click Add Row and select Bill Row - then enter your preferred title, description, and amounts directly. This gives you more flexibility when preparing bills that include fixed fees, retainers, or other custom line items. Feature (Billing): You can now create bill rows without linking them to any unbilled jobs or charges. Simply click Add Row and select Bill Row - then enter your preferred title, description, and amounts directly. Feature (Billing): You can now combine items from different projects into one consolidated bill row. This makes it easier to present related work or charges together, streamlining your billing and improving readability. Watch this quick instructional clip to see how it works. Fix(Billing): When creating bills, new items are now sorted sequentially by default - meaning rows appear in the order they’re created rather than chronologically. You can still manually reorder rows at any time, or choose a different sort option using the Sort button for full flexibility. Improvement (Timesheets): The search functionality in the Manage Timesheets page (and View All Timesheets page) will now also filter out timesheets based on the contents of any comments or row comments within the timesheet. Improvement (Timesheets): A new search bar has been added to the View All tab in the Timesheets page. You can now search by client name, project name, job name, or even within comment contents - making it easier than ever to locate specific timesheet entries quickly and accurately. Improvement (Timesheets): If you do not require the timesheet approval process—including submission, approval, and revocation processes - we can globally disable this feature for your hidma tenant. This setting is not currently exposed in the user interface, but it can be enabled by our team upon request. Improvement (Payments): You can now apply Credit Notes directly to Bills. Upon creation, the Credit Note will replicate the items from the Bill and automatically allocate the credit amount to the Bill in question. Note that if you have activated the RFP Mode under billing configuration, this functionality is restricted, and you will only be able to issue Credit Notes against Invoices.

Fix (Reporting): Downloading of the reports from the 'Personal' tab in the Reporting section works as expected Fix (Billing): An issue which was occasionally affecting the closing off of time entries against bills has been fixed. Fix (Credit Notes): Expanding the Credit Notes table in the Billing page now works well.

Fix (Projects): Changing a project status now works correctly all the time and in all dashboards and summary pages.

New Feature (Charges): We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature: Recurring Charges and Discounts. This new feature makes it simple to define charges or discounts that repeat on a regular basis, with flexible options to customise the frequency and schedule to suit your needs. Additionally, Hidma now allows you to define charges and discounts at the Client level, rather than tying them directly to individual projects. These can then be easily applied to specific projects at the time of billing - offering greater flexibility, especially for long-term arrangements. Want to see it in action? Check out our detailed instructional video for a step-by-step walkthrough. Improvement (Billing): We've updated all bill tables to use pagination instead of the previous "View More" button. This enhancement gives you greater control over how many records are displayed per page and makes it much easier to navigate through your billing data. Fix (Timesheets): The "Add New Charge" button no longer obstructs the top portion of the Timesheets page when viewed on mobile devices. Fix (Reporting): We've resolved an issue where generating reports for users with the Team Member role was not functioning correctly. This feature now works as expected. Fix (Reporting): We've fixed an issue affecting CSV exports of the "Billed" and "All" report types. Amounts paid, written off, and credited are now calculated and displayed correctly in the downloaded files. Fix (Document Configurations): We've fixed an issue that was preventing logos from being uploaded to your Document Templates. You can now upload and update logos without any interruptions.