Projects allow you to monitor income and expenses, and therefore profitability, of individual contracts, customer relationships, or bodies of work. A project groups related tasks and economic activity together for reporting.
By their nature, projects are usually shorter-lived than divisions, for which instructions are available in another Guide. It is generally not good practice to modify your chart of accounts for a project because of its (usually) temporary nature. But projects can be inactivated when they are completed.
Create projects
To use projects in your business, first enable the Projects tab. Click on Customize below the navigation pane, check the box, and click Update:
Now go the Projects tab and click New Project:
Enter a project Name. This can be any combination of text or numbers:
Click Create.
Note
Manager will not prevent or alert you to duplicate project names. You will not be able to distinguish between duplicates. So review existing projects before naming a new one. Good practice is to follow a standard naming scheme.
Use projects
Use projects to track profitability by project or job. The Projects tab summarizes all projects you have created:
After you create a project, you will be able to assign the project name on line items within transactions (payments, receipts, expense claims, invoices, etc.). This allows categorization of project-related transactions by income or direct costs, leading to calculation of project gross profit.
Notes
The Project field does not appear unless you select an account for which project assignments make sense. For example, to prevent double posting, Accounts receivable, Accounts payable, and Inventory on hand line items cannot be assigned to a project.
Sales invoices, credit notes and receipts assigned to a project will show under the Income column. This means you can use projects even if you do not use the Sales Invoices tab. Everything that is not income will show under the Direct costs column.
To see a profitability summary for a project, click its View button in the Projects tab list:
Note
The date range for the project summary is not selectable. The reporting period is determined automatically based on transactions assigned to the project.
Inactivate projects
When a project is complete, Edit the project in the Projects tab. Click the Inactive box, then Update:
The project will be greyed out in the tab listing and no longer appear in the Project field dropdown menu for transaction line items.
To reactivate the project, revisit the Edit screen and uncheck the box.