Projects

Projects are objects that can be associated with time and asset entries recorded by your employees. As projects are full system objects they can be extended by adding custom fields: see the Custom Fields help topic for more information.

Note: You can change the terminology for the Project object to suit your organization's needs. For instance you may prefer "Job" instead of "Project". The Terminology topic has more information.

Projects have the following properties:

Property	Description
Name	The project name, up to 80 characters. A value is required and must be unique for all projects.
Description	A description for the project, up to 255 characters.
ID	The project ID, up to 80 characters. This value is not required, but if a value is entered it must be unique for all projects. This is commonly used for synchronizing with external systems, such as billing or accounting.
Status	The project status, either Active or Inactive. You cannot delete projects that have been used on timesheets, but setting the status to inactive will prevent any further use of the project.
Planned Start Date	The planned project start date.
Planned Finish Date	The planned project finish or end date.
Planned Work	The planned total number of days or hours to complete this project. Administrators can configure the units (days or hours) from the Projects > Project Options page: see the Project Options help topic for more information.
Actual Start Date	The actual project start date. Note that if a value is specified here it will be used by the Time Entry Rule "Don't allow submitting time for inactive Projects, Tasks etc.". If this rule is enabled then employees will be prevented from recording any time entries with dates prior to the Actual Start Date. See the Time Entry Rules help topic for more information.
Actual Finish Date	The actual project finish or end date. Note that if a value is specified here it will be used by the Time Entry Rule "Don't allow submitting time for inactive Projects, Tasks etc." If this rule is enabled then employees will be prevented from recording any time entries with dates after the Actual Finish Date. See the Time Entry Rules help topic for more information. If you specify the Actual Finish Date you can also have the project be inactivated automatically a specified number of days afterwards. See the Project Options help topic for more information.
Actual Work	The actual total number of days or hours spent on this project. This value is computed by totalling ALL hours recorded against this project on employee timesheets, from the very earliest date. This value is updated every 15 minutes, but you can click the "Refresh" button to update the value immediately. Note that this value can be potentially time consuming to compute, so it is only computed if a non-blank Planned Work value is specified. You can, however, enter a zero for Planned Work if you don't know the actual value, in order to get the Actual Work to be computed. Administrators can configure the units (days or hours) from the System > General > Project Options page: see the Project Options help topic for more information.
Notes	Notes about this project, up to 2000 characters.

Project Permissions

Permissions allow you to restrict which projects employees can access on their timesheets. Employees with a Permission Level that gives them only limited viewing permission, for instance, will only be able to access projects for which they have been added to the permission list.

Project Dashboard

The Project Dashboard allows you to track the breakdown of Project hours by Task and Task Group (e.g. "Phase"). In addition to reviewing hours spent on various project tasks, you can compare planned vs actual start and finish dates, as well as planned vs actual hours or days worked. See the Project Dashboard help topic for more information.