Projects

What is it and what is it for?

Each Project is a central record with its customer, manager, estimated dates, currency, division/department/location and business line. From there you can:

• Record how much you expect to bill and how much you expect to spend (income and expense budget), by ledger account.
• Define the bill of materials (items) you plan to consume, to compare what's committed against what was actually delivered.
• Build a task plan with dates, hours and assigned resources, viewable as a list or as a Gantt chart.
• See, without capturing them again, every invoice, sales order, purchase order, dispatch and payroll transaction already linked to the project.
• Organize large projects into sub-projects, using the parent-project / child-project hierarchy.

A project can be created from scratch or generated directly from a Sales Order: in that case it automatically inherits the customer, currency, the order's items (as a materials budget) and an income budget line for the order's amount.

Screens in this area

How to use it step by step

1. Create the project from the Project Catalog, or generate it directly from an existing Sales Order to automatically inherit its customer, currency, items and budgeted amount.
2. Fill in the general data: name (required), code, customer, manager, estimated dates, purchase order, project type, subsidiary and any other dimensions you use (division, department, location, business line).
3. If project budgeting is enabled for you, record your expected income and expense lines by ledger account and, if you manage inventory, the bill of materials you plan to consume.
4. If you need to track tasks, open the project's Work Plan and add each task with its date, estimated hours and the responsible resource (user); you can also review it as a Gantt chart.
5. Link the project to your regular transactions (invoices, sales orders, dispatches, purchase orders, payroll) by selecting it in each document's Project field; there's nothing to re-enter on the project itself.
6. Follow up on progress from the project's Details or from its reports: Results Summary (budget vs. executed), Transaction Detail, Pending Materials Status and Hour Analysis.
7. Change the project's status (Estimate, Open, On Hold, Completed, Closed or Canceled) to reflect its real situation so it shows up under the right catalog tab.

Main capabilities

• Parent-project / child-project hierarchy, useful for splitting a large project into phases or sub-projects (they must share the same subsidiary).
• Automatic generation from a Sales Order, inheriting the customer, currency, items and income budget.
• Income and expense budget by ledger account, with an optional breakdown by division, business line, location or department when those dimensions act as a profit center.
• Materials budget (BOM) by item, compared against what was actually delivered in the Pending Materials Status report.
• Task-based work plan (dates, hours, resources and status), with a list view and a Gantt view, plus a task-status chart on the Details screen.
• Automatic linking to documents from sales, purchasing, accounting and payroll, visible from Details without having to search for them separately.
• Quick actions from Details to dispatch inventory or log service-order hours directly against the project.
• Multiple sales reps per project, when your company has that feature enabled.
• Custom fields, tags, attached files and customizable list columns.
• AI "Smart Paste": paste free-form text (from an email or quote, for example) and AdmCloud suggests the project's name and code.

Key fields

Validations when saving

• The name is required.
• The subsidiary is required if your company has subsidiaries enabled, and it can't differ from your session's fixed subsidiary when that applies.
• The currency is required as soon as the project has any budget line with a non-zero amount, and it must be a valid, active currency.
• The parent project can't be the project itself, must exist and be active, and must belong to the same subsidiary as the project.
• The end date can't be earlier than the start date.
• The code can't be duplicated with another project's code; if automatic numbering is enabled and you're not an administrator, you can't change the code of an already-created project.
• Each tag allows up to 20 characters.
• Attached files can't exceed the maximum allowed by your plan.
• A project can't be deleted if it has child projects, budget lines, sales, purchase or accounting transactions referencing it (in their header, in their accounts, or in their item or employee lines), payroll transactions, or accounting distribution rules linked to it.

Availability and permissions

• On the Enterprise plan, it also requires the "Projects" module to be enabled.
• Project budgeting (income, expenses and bill of materials) requires, from the Premium plan on, the "Project Budgeting" feature enabled for your company, or the Enterprise "Advanced Projects" module; plus the "Consult Project Budget" permission.
• The Work Plan and the Gantt view require the Enterprise "Advanced Projects" module and the "Project Tasks" permission.
• The inventory dispatch button on Details requires the Inventory module; logging service hours and the Hour Analysis report require the Customer Service module.
• The multiple sales reps tab only shows up if your company has that feature enabled.
• The user group's base "Projects" permission controls browse, create, edit and delete access across every screen in this area.

Tips and common mistakes