Projects Module
Managing Projects
How to create a project, track its milestones and real spend, and understand how tasks and files actually connect to it.
Set up a project
1Create a project
Click + New Project. It’s one form — no separate wizard steps.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Project Name | The only required field. |
| Project Code | Your own reference ID. Optional. |
| Client | Picks a real customer from Contacts. If the customer you want isn’t there yet, + Create New Client… in the same dropdown gets you there without leaving the form. |
| Owner | Picks a real employee from HR — but only employees with a linked login account show up here. No match? It defaults to “Unassigned / external.” |
| Status | Planning, Active, On Hold, Completed, or Cancelled. Freely settable at any time — nothing enforces a forward order. |
| Priority | Low, Medium, High, or Critical. |
| Stage | A fixed pick-list — Scoping through Closed — see Reference. A separate label from Status; not validated against it. |
| Budget / Spent | Both plain numbers you maintain by hand — see Tracking real vs. planned spend for how this differs from the automatic Actual Spend figure. |
| Progress % | A plain manual number. It is not computed from milestones — see limitations. |
| Currency, Start Date, Due Date, Description, Tags | Reference/filtering fields. |
Click Create Project. A project that goes over its manually-tracked Spent figure relative to Budget is automatically flagged Over budget on its card.
Duplicate on any project row clones its setup — client, owner, budget, stage — so you’re not re-typing a near-identical project from scratch.
2Add milestones
Milestones belong to a specific project, so open one first — click its name (or Preview) to open the Project Detail panel. In the Milestones section, type a title, optionally a due date, and click Add.
Each milestone has a checkbox — ticking it marks it Done immediately, no separate save step. The project’s card and row show a running done/total milestone badge once at least one exists.
Common tasks
Linking tasks & files to a project
A project’s detail panel has Linked Tasks and Attached Files sections — but the link itself is set up from the other module, not from here.
In Files, the Linked Module dropdown includes Project as a real option with a picker of your actual projects by name — attach a file there and it shows up correctly on this project’s Attached Files list. In Tasks, the equivalent Linked Module/Linked Reference fields are free text with autocomplete suggestions only — there’s currently no way in that form to pick the real project the task belongs to, so a task typed with “projects” as its Linked Module won’t reliably appear in this project’s Linked Tasks list. Use the free-text fields as a label for now if you need one.
Tracking real vs. planned spend
A project shows two different spend figures side by side, and they are not the same thing:
- Spent — the plain number you type in yourself on the project form. This is what drives the Over Budget badge and the Portfolio Spend KPI.
- Actual Spend — automatically rolled up from real Purchases order lines (at Received or Billed status) and real Expenses claim lines (Approved or Reimbursed) that were tagged with this project when they were created. It’s shown for comparison in the project card and detail panel, but it doesn’t feed the Over Budget flag or the KPI.
If you’re relying on Purchases/Expenses to track real cost, keep an eye on Actual Spend directly rather than expecting the manual Spent field or the budget-health badge to update itself from it.
Moving a project through its stage
Status (Planning/Active/On Hold/Completed/Cancelled) and Stage (Scoping through Closed) are two independent fields — change either one at any time from the edit form, in any order. Neither is validated against the other, so nothing stops a project marked Active from sitting in a Scoping stage, or a Completed project from being left at Development.
Reference
Status & stage reference
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Planning | Default for a new project. |
| Active | Counted in the “Active” and “On Budget”/”At Risk” KPIs. |
| On Hold | Paused, informational only. |
| Completed | Excluded from budget totals and at-risk checks; appears in Recent Completions. |
| Cancelled | Excluded from budget totals and at-risk checks. |
Stage is a separate fixed pick-list, purely descriptive:
This list is fixed (not editable) but not enforced in order — you can set a project to any stage at any time.
What this module doesn’t do
Even though the module tracks a done/total milestone count for display, Progress % stays a plain number you set by hand — finishing every milestone doesn’t move it to 100% on its own.
The automatic rollup only includes Purchases lines at Received/Billed and Expenses lines at Approved/Reimbursed — draft purchase orders and pending expense claims tagged to this project aren’t counted until they reach one of those statuses.
See Linking tasks & files — Files links correctly today; Tasks’ Linked Module/Linked Reference fields are free text only, with no picker for the real project.