Project management

The module for work that cannot be closed with a single document. Selling goods fits the chain "order → shipment → invoice" and lives for a week. A project — a refit, an implementation, a development job — runs for months, gathering people's hours, purchased materials and progress invoices, and there is one question about it: did we make money on this or not.

So a project is not a document but a second coordinate for documents from other modules. It calculates nothing by itself; its strength is that documents from other modules know which project they belong to. Profitability comes together in one report — the project information report: it takes income from posted invoices and costs from the rows of posted work sheets. Time sheets and material receipts that refer to the project do not enter that margin on their own.

Video walkthrough: Projects in ERPJS step by step — budget, work sheet, invoice and what the job earned.

The route: from quotation to margin

Quotation (the customer is still thinking)
        ↓
Project ── class · phase · classification
        ↓
Project's budget (the plan: hours, materials, prices)
        ↓
The work: work sheets · time sheets · documents from other modules referring to the project
        ↓
Project information report: income (invoices) · costs (work sheets) · margin

Quotation — the only document for the "still thinking" stage: it commits nobody to anything, yet shows the profit in advance, before you name a price. Its "Quot. type" (commercial types) records how the money was agreed.
Project — the card for the job. The class (the "Type" field) says what kind of project this is in essence, the phase says where it stands now, and the classification is a free-form label.
Project's budget — the plan in lines and money: how many hours and materials, at what prices. It is also the basis for the customer's invoice. The system does not yet stop or warn about costs above the budget — compare plan and actuals yourself.
Time sheets — who worked, when and how long. A time sheet itself carries no prices: the report turns hours into money at the rates of the pairs "work + time class".
Reports draw the line: the Project Information Report is one page per project with its margin, the Time Sheet Report shows how many hours went where.

What is worth understanding

Class, phase and classification are three different dimensions, and confusing them is expensive. A project has one class, and it sets its nature (customer work, internal initiative, warranty). It has one phase, but that changes along the way — it shows what has been done. It also has one classification (the field takes a single code), but that is a free label for reporting cuts: urgent, pilot, warranty. Trying to keep all of it in a single reference ends in reports that answer nothing.

The quotation type is the money agreement written down. A fixed price means the customer pays for a result and an overrun of hours is your loss. Time and materials means the invoice grows out of the timesheets. But it is a label: neither calculations nor invoicing depend on it — you follow the rule yourself when you issue invoices.

An hour costs differently depending on when it was worked. A time class is a span of hours plus the days of the week it covers: office hours, evening, weekend, holiday. The rate for the pair "work + time class" is set in the Customer Discount setting: the time sheet takes the row discount from it, and the Time Sheet Report takes the hourly price; without a rate timesheets stay just hours.

A project does not replace ledger analysis. In the books, dimensions are set by objects, and trial balances are built on those. The project is a management dimension: it gathers documents around a job, not postings around an account.

Where to start in a new database

Project Classes and Project Phases — short lists you will not want to redo later.
Commercial Type — fixed price, time and materials.
Time Classes and the Customer Discount setting — the rates that turn hours into money.
Items — the work you do, as lines with an hourly price.
The first project and its budget — after that documents simply refer to the project.

Common tasks

You need	Where to go
price a job for a customer who is still thinking	Quotations
open a new job	Projects
draw up a plan of work and money	Project Budget
record the hours worked	Time Sheets
see how a project is doing	Project Information Report
understand how loaded the team is	Time Sheet Report
split projects by the kind of work	Project Classes · Project Classifications · Classification Types
load timesheets or budgets in bulk	XLSX import

Everything in the module

Registers — documents: Quotations · Projects · Project Budget · Time Sheets

Registers — references: Project Classes · Project Phases · Project Classifications · Classification Types · Commercial Type · Time Classes · Items · Contacts