What is the Projects module for?
A project is a label for a specific job, such as a renovation or catering event. It allows you to see if that one job made money. Your Profit and Loss shows the whole business, but projects show the cost allocation for individual jobs. This is a management report and does not affect your statutory accounts.
How do I create a new project?
- Press New project.
- Type the Name and set the Customer, or leave it as No customer (internal).
- Set the Status: Draft, Active, On hold or Completed.
- Set Start and End dates to define the default reporting window.
- Enter a Budget for planned costs and Initial investment if you spent money before creating the project.
- Set the Default charge rate per hour if you will bill time.
- Choose the Billing type: Time and materials, Fixed price, or Internal / not billed.
- Press Save.
How do I attach costs and money to a project?
- Record cash payments in Cash In and Out and choose the project in the Project field.
- Tick Capital outlay (counts as investment) for one-off setup costs like fit-outs.
- Set the project on supplier bills in Purchases.
- Set the project on invoices. Payments against those invoices are picked up automatically.
- Tag cash-in rows directly to the project for money received without an invoice.
- Pick the project on the Timesheet screen for logged hours.
How do I read the profitability of a job?
- Click the project row to open the Profitability tab.
- Check Billed (as invoiced), which is invoices minus credit notes.
- Check Received, split into against invoices and direct receipts.
- Review Costs: Direct paid, Direct supplier bills, and Labour.
- Read Margin on billed and Budget variance to see if you overspent.
How do I bill unbilled time?
- Open the project and look for the Unbilled time (WIP) line.
- Press Bill unbilled time.
- Confirm the list of entries with dates, descriptions, hours and values.
- The project must have a customer set and invoicing must be switched on, or the app refuses.
- The app raises one invoice with one line per time entry.
- The hours become locked with a Billed tag and cannot be edited or deleted.
How do I close or remove a project?
- Press the edit action and set Status to Completed when the job is finished.
- Use the delete action only for projects created by mistake.
- The app refuses to delete a project if any time entry, cash row, invoice or bill points to it.
What this does to your books
Creating a project posts nothing, and tagging a record with a project changes nothing about how it posts. A cash-out row still posts debit the expense account behind its category, credit Cash and Bank. Ticking Capital outlay only affects the Payback panel. The one exception is Bill unbilled time: it raises an ordinary invoice, which in a real company with automatic invoice sales on posts debit Trade Debtors, credit Sales. Practice companies default to a manual debtor entry.