In this article we will show you how to use Teamleader Focus in the best possible way as a manager. We'll go through some handy tools and tips that will help you stay on top of your team's accomplishments.


The modules you will mainly need are:

  • Calendar and Timesheets

  • Deals

  • Projects

  • Invoices

  • Shared inbox

  • Insights

Note: We do assume that you are an administrator of your Teamleader Focus account, as this is required for some functionalities we are going to talk about.


Calendar and Timesheets:


Calendar


When navigating to your agenda, you will have access to the calendars of your entire team. Just select a name in the dropdown list at the right-hand side.


Team view


If you click 'Team', you'll see a week view of your team members' calendars. By clicking on the bin next to their name you can delete colleagues from the view, and via the plus sign you can add them. Now, you have the calendars below each other to see who is available when. Handy if you need to schedule tasks or meetings in their calendars!


By the way, this view stays for your entire Teamleader Focus session, so you do not need to choose the same colleagues over and over again. The default settings are restored only when you log out and log in again.




Timesheets


All the tasks, meetings and calls any of you have tracked time on, will reappear in the Timesheets module. You can check your own, or your colleagues’ by switching the names on the dropdown at the right hand side. 


The goal of having a look at these Timesheets is to be able to know what each of your employees and yourself have been working on day after day.


You can also export this info to Excel for other calculations. For example, if you want to find out how much time was spent working on a specific work type. In the export file, you can just sort the rows by the column 'Type'.


Deals:


A deal should be created as soon as an opportunity comes up to sell your products or services to a customer.


Segments


Whether your deals are refused, accepted or ongoing, you will find all of them in the deals module. You can filter the results by deal pipeline, or you can work with segments to narrow the information you want to obtain. By default, you will already have a filter by deal phase, but in your deal list view you can also create your own segments based on a specific user, time frame or any other field on deal level.


Once a segment is selected, you will see the number of deals within that segment and its monetary value at the bottom. Great for checking your numbers every morning or just before going home in the evening. So much more time for other things! Have you ever thought of joining a knitting club?



Columns


In the deal overview, you can also select which columns you would like to see, so that relevant information catches the eye at a glance. To do that, click on the cogwheel on the lower right-hand side. You can select up to 10 columns.



Projects:


Making a project in Teamleader Focus helps you set a structure of phases, tasks and meetings that need to be completed.


As with Deals you are able to create segments and you can select your favourite columns for the projects overview page.


Work breakdown

The work breakdown on projects makes it possible to make clear estimates of the required work per project phase and allows you to keep your projects perfectly under control. Read everything there is to know about it here!


Reports

You also have the option to download a project report. Among other stats, it shows you how much work has been done for this project, who has tracked time and what the amount of billable hours are.

To export the report:

 

  1. Click on your project 
  2. Click on the three dots next to your project details > Download report.
  3. You have the option to select whether you want to export to Excel (only time tracking) or PDF.



Budget spent

In a project Budget spent displays your customer's budget and how much billable hours are spent. Budget management on projects is a way to keep track of the predetermined budget you and your customer have agreed upon. By allocating resources and estimating time on billable tasks & meetings, you'll know if you are going over budget. You can find this functionality under the 'Project info' tab in the header of your project.


Profit

Keep track of your costs and potential revenue via the Profit feature in every project. Take a look at the Details in order to see where most of your costs come from, so you can tweak where needed. You can find this functionality under the 'Project info' tab in the header of your project.


Cross-projects timeline

From your project list overview, you can easily switch to the cross-projects timeline. The cross-projects timeline provides you with a visual timeline overview of all your projects. It lets you continuously evaluate how occupied your business is and shows you which projects need your attention. 


Project planning

Within the project module you will also find a project planning tool, that shows for each project, what tasks have been scheduled and for whom. When opening this section, you'll see a red or a green button for every project. The green button means that the project is on schedule, the red button means that at least one phase is overdue and needs special attention.



Invoices:


Let’s see how to keep track of your cashflow. 


As you have probably already guessed, segments and columns setup are also available in this module. Moreover, if you go to the overview of invoices, you will see a little widget called “Mini stats” at the right-hand bottom corner. It gives you some quick insights and if you click on that pdf sign there, you can even download an invoice report.

Back to the overview of invoices, you can also export your invoices into an excel sheet. This gives you various options for reporting.


Another way to keep track of your cashflow is the financial forecast. The financial forecast allows you to see for the current month and the upcoming 2 months how much money will be coming in. Read everything about it here


Pro-tip: Calculate your sold goods

If you need an overview of how much products were sold, you can export your invoices (or just a segment, if you want to calculate for a certain period of time) and choose to 'Create a new template'. You'll get the option to add columns related to the content of your invoices. The most important ones here are 'Item name' and 'Amount of items'. Sort your rows in Excel by the column 'Item name' and then calculate the total number based on the 'Amount of items'. This will let you know how much was sold of a product.



Shared inbox:

(This feature is available in our Boost package)


The shared inbox works similarly to the other modules. You can create segments on tickets to quickly see what tickets came in today, for example, and find out how fast your support team helps out your customers. 


You can also add the columns “Date created” and “Last message” to the overview so that you can see when the tickets were created and how long the customer has been waiting on a response, respectively. 


As last recommendation, you can also add extra statuses to the default ones like new, open, closed, so that you can attune this module to your own workflow.


Insights:


The insights module gives you a lot of information about the numbers in all your modules. We will show you the most important stats you should keep an eye on:


Pipeline


Going to Insights > Pipeline gives you an overall view of your cashflow for the coming weeks. This shows the total worth of invoices expected to be paid in the coming weeks based on your accepted quotations, unpaid invoices and projects to be invoiced.


Deal stats


If you go to Insights > Deals, you can find a lot of info about all deals: Funnel report, stage distribution, Stage duration etc. You can apply segments to each of these stats, and filter the deals per pipeline.


 Click the link for a more detailed explanation.


Invoices insights


Under Insights > Invoices, you find more detailed numbers about your invoicing. You can see the amount of invoices paid, not yet paid and overdue. You can also filter per date and customer. 


Time tracking insights


This part of the insights module gives you information about how much time is being tracked by the users, related to the different customers, projects, teams and work types. Also, you get a view of the calls that were made by any of you. You can check the call outcomes and get a list of all the calls made in a specific time frame.


If you would like to get a more extensive report on this matter, you can always combine it with the export of time tracking as mentioned earlier in this article.


Shared inbox insights


The shared inbox insights will let you know how many tickets are opened and closed in a specific time frame, the average response time, when the busiest times are or which of your employees performs best.


Targets


Under insights, you also have the option to add targets. These can be created for different modules (deals, invoices, time tracking etc…).


Targets are a very handy tool to define goals for your employees and to follow up on them easily. Those targets can form a base for feedback talks and also function as an incentive for their own performance. As an admin user, you can choose if non-administrator users are allowed to see their own targets or not.


Do you have any tips you'd like to share with us? Feel free to contact our support team.