How projects and timesheets work
On this page
Project and Timesheets are two apps over the same records: Project organizes the work in projects and tasks, Timesheets records the time spent on them.
A project
A project is a container with its own rules:
- a name, a Project Manager, a Planned Date range, Tags, and an Allocated Time for the whole project;
- a Customer, shown once Billable is ticked, because the customer is the one invoiced (Quotations);
- the options of its Settings tab: Visibility, Recurring Tasks, Task Dependencies, Milestones, Timesheets, and an e-mail alias that turns incoming e-mails into tasks;
- an analytic account named after it, created when Timesheets is on: every line logged on the project lands there;
- its stages, its milestones, its updates, its followers and its portal collaborators.
The status a project shows, On Track, At Risk, Off Track, On Hold or Complete, comes from its latest update, and can also be set by hand from the coloured dot on the project's card: Milestones and project updates. A project can also be a template: New lists the templates, and a project created from one copies its tasks and stages and asks who takes each Project Role of its tasks. Actions, Convert to Template turns a project into a template.
A task
A task is one piece of work of a project: a title, Assignees, Tags, a Deadline, an Allocated Time, a priority from none to three stars, a Milestone when the project uses them, a Customer when the project is billable, a description and a chatter. It can have Sub-tasks, be Blocked By other tasks, and repeat on a schedule: Sub-tasks, dependencies and recurring tasks.
A task without a project is a private to-do of its owner. It belongs to the To-do app, takes no timesheet and is not described here.
Stage and state
The two are easy to confuse:
| Stage | State | |
|---|---|---|
| What it says | Where the task is in the project's flow | How the work on it is going |
| Values | The columns of the project, named freely | In Progress, Changes Requested, Approved, Waiting, Done, Cancelled |
| Who decides | Each project, a stage can be shared by several | Fixed; Waiting is set by itself while a blocking task is open |
Done and Cancelled close a task, whatever its stage: the board hides it, a recurring task creates its next occurrence, and a task waiting for it is released. A stage can send an e-mail or a rating request to the customer when a task reaches it (Projects automations). On top of the project's stages, each person sorts their own tasks in personal stages in My Tasks, which nobody else sees.
A timesheet line
A timesheet line holds a date, an employee, a project, a task, a description and a time. It is the same kind of record as the lines the accounting keeps on analytic accounts, which is why it lives in the project's analytic account. Three things follow:
- Time. The lines add up into the Time Spent of their task, then of its parent task and of the project. With an Allocated Time, the task shows its Time Remaining and a percentage of progress; past 100 %, the remaining time turns negative.
- Cost. Each line is valued at the Hourly Cost of its employee (Employees), as a cost on the project's analytic account; the profitability of an invoiced project uses it.
- Who. A line needs an active employee of its company, by default the employee of the user who writes it. A user with User: own timesheets only writes and sees their own lines; User: all timesheets sees the lines of the projects they can see; an Administrator sees all.
Some lines are written for people: validated time off and public holidays, when the Time Off option is on (Projects and timesheets settings), and the time logged from legal cases and consultations (Cases).
Who sees what
The project's Visibility decides who reaches it: only its invited employees, every employee, and in two of the four choices the portal users who follow it. Followers of a single task see that task even if the project is closed to them. The access rights come on top: a User of Project works on what is open to them, an Administrator sets projects up. Share a project with a customer gives the details.
What happens on its own
Assignees are notified, stages can e-mail the customer and ask for a rating, and a scheduled job sends the periodic rating requests: Projects automations. WhatsApp messages: WhatsApp in projects. The Project Analysis dashboard of the Analysis app reads the same records: Ready-made dashboards.
What the apps do not do
- Timesheets have no approval step: a line counts once saved, and no reminder asks people to fill theirs.
- There is no timer on a task and no planning of people's hours; plan with Allocated Time and deadlines.
- Invoicing the time is done by the sales side, from the Billable option: Quotations and Customer invoices.
- A task that has timesheet lines cannot be deleted: delete its lines first, or archive the task.
Was this page helpful?
Thank you for your feedback.