Projects: long jobs with a budget, the team's hours, costs and invoices — in one place

An example: one flat, three months

An example, to make it concrete. A small fit-out company takes a flat: demolition, plumbing and electrics, plaster and paint, then the finishing. Three months, a contract, two foremen and six workers, tiles and paint from its own store, a carpenter as a subcontractor, an advance at the start and an invoice at the end of each phase.

Usually the hours are on paper, the materials leave the store with no name on them, the carpenter's bill is in a drawer, and the question “did we make money on this flat?” is answered a month after the end — if ever. In a project, every one of these lands in the same place the day it happens.

A project and its phases

Projects → New project: the customer, a name, the site, the manager, the start and due dates, the contract value and the budget. It gets a number, PRJ-000123, and starts as a quote or active. Then the phases, each with a budget, dates and a milestone amount — in the example: demolition, plumbing and electrics, plaster and paint, finishing. The project's budget is the sum of its phases unless you type it.

States: quote, active, on hold, done, cancelled. Pictures and PDFs (the contract, the drawings) attach to the project. A customer's projects open from the Customers list.

Tasks on a board

Each task has an assignee, a due date, an estimate, a checklist and comments. The board has four columns — to do, doing, review, done — and a task moves with a button. A foreman sees his tasks on the phone, ticks the checklist (“sockets fixed”, “tested”) and writes a comment instead of a phone call.

The team's hours

• From the phone: the time page takes a project or a task, a day and the hours (1.5, 1:30 or 90m), billable or not — or Clock in when the work starts and Clock out when it ends. One running clock per person.
• What an hour costs: HR's pay when HR is on and the person has a file; else the salary on their staff record, turned into an hour; else a rate you set per person in Settings → Projects. It is kept on each entry, so a raise next month does not rewrite this month's cost.
• The weekly timesheet: the manager sees each person's week, the billable hours and what waits, and presses Approve the week or Send back with a note. Approved time is locked.

Costs from where they happen

• An expense on the Expenses page can name its project: transport to the site, a rented tool. The expenses list shows the tag.
• Materials from stock: 40 boxes of tiles for the flat lower the stock at once, at the product's cost, with the project's number on the movement. Short in stock? It is refused, not guessed.
• Typed on the project: the carpenter's bill as a subcontractor, a supplier's bill, anything else — or a procurement supplier invoice by its number. Each cost can be billable to the customer, with a markup %.

Invoices

A project bills by milestone (a phase's amount), by progress (a % of the contract) or by time and materials (approved hours at the rate, plus billable costs with the markup), with advances, a retention held on each work invoice, and its release at the end. A Preview shows the figures before you issue. With Books it is a Books tax invoice; without Books, a charge on the customer's account. All of it, with the arithmetic, is in Billing a project: retention, advances and the margin.

Budget against actual

Every project and every phase shows its budget, its costs by kind, labour (the hours at their cost), what was invoiced and paid, the margin and its %. When the plaster phase has used 90 % of its budget halfway through, you see it while there is still time to act. The Projects list shows the totals and how many projects are late or over budget; the report downloads as CSV or Excel.

• Owner alerts: a project past its due date, over budget, approved billable time not invoiced for 30 days, retention due after a project is done.
• Ask your shop: “how are my projects” — the active ones with the budget used and the margin, the late and over-budget counts, the retention held.

Projects or job orders?

A shop may use both: a maintenance company takes phones to repair as job orders, and a building's maintenance contract as a project.

What it does not do

Which plans include it

Available now: Settings → Projects (or Settings → Modules), off until a manager switches it on. The steps are in the manual; everything the suite does is on the suite page.

Quick answers

Can the workers record their hours without seeing the contract?
Yes. Give them no right to see projects' money: they see their own tasks, projects and time only.

Does a material taken for a project leave my stock?
Yes, at once and at the product's cost, with the project's number on the stock movement. If the stock is short it is refused.

Do I need Books?
No. With Books the invoices are Books tax invoices; without it they are charges on the customer's account and the payments are recorded on the project.

Is it AI?
No. The budget, the costs, the invoices and the margin are fixed arithmetic on your own numbers.

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