Clients/Projects

Most of the information you enter into BigTime rolls up into a project, and managers have lots of tools and reports at their disposal to help them keep track of projects, clients, teams and budgets. The system creates a project for every customer in your system, even if your firm doesn't use projects. So, some firms will have exactly one project per customer (just a general "consulting" project). We do that so that we can have a consistent interface across all of your client work.

What if I Don't Use Projects?

For many professional firms, projects aren't needed. Every customer is, in effect, its own project. That's typically the case in retainer-heavy industries (like PR or accounting), and BigTime can be used by those firms as well.

If your firm doesn't use projects, then just create a generic "consulting" or "general" project for each customer to which your staff can bill time and expenses. If your QuickBooks file is already setup with a list of customers and no jobs, BigTime spots that pattern automatically and assumes that you want to setup your BigTime project list with just one project per client.

What's a Project Called?

Different industries use their own unique language when they talk about the entity that we refer to as a "project." Law firms call projects "matters," and many consulting firms call them "engagements." In a PR firm, a project is the same thing as an "account team," and graphic design firms just call them "jobs."

While your industry skin comes with pre-defined vocabulary, you can change your system's vocabulary to fit your firm's standards. So, you can call a project whatever you'd like!

In fact, updating your system's vocabulary has a big visual impact on the system. The menus will change (e.g. - the "Project List" menu will change to "Job List" or "Engagement List" depending on your system's vocabulary). The help files will change, too. Even on-screen references to "project" will change to use your new vocabulary. Keep in mind, however, that the System Guide will always refer to a project as a "project," so your menus may be a little different than the screen shots in this guide!

When Should Your Create a New Project?

Some firms have a hard time determining when to create a new project in the system. In other words, when should you create a new project vs. just a new line item in your existing budget? Here are a few general guidelines for creating a new project that you can use to decide what will work best for your firm.

• Projects typically bill separately.
• Projects typically have their own unique budgets, teams or billing terms.
• If you'd like to track it separately in your reports, you typically create a new project for it.
• Retainer-based firms usually create a new project whenever a contract renews (e.g. - annually, quarterly, etc.).

Keep in mind that BigTime can also be used to track detailed budgets as well as projects. You can have a project, for example, called "BigTime Implementation" in the system with its own budget. That budget can contain lots of individual line items (for tasks like "installation," "configuration," "training," "report writing," etc.). So, you don't need to create separate projects for each line item in the budget.

Where is Project Data Stored?

Every project in the system has a "dashboard." It's a mini-website that is dedicated to the project, and it contains all of the information that BigTime has collected on the project in question:

• Time/Expense Data. You'll be able to see all of the time that has been entered against a project.
• Invoices/Payment History. All of the invoices that you've either created or imported from your accounting system can be seen and reviewed from the dashboard.
• Budgets and Budget Status. The budgets you've created (and where you stand on those budgets) are visible and editable.
• Task Lists. Each project can have a task list, and you create/edit and review that task list in the dashboard.
• Documents. You can attach documents to each project if you need to.
• Descriptions. Each project can have an overall description (used on invoices, estimates and other documents).
• Team Information. We'll track both the manager(s) in charge of a given project and (if you'd like), all of the staff members who are allowed to bill time to it.
• Billing Rates and Invoicing Information. If you're using BigTime to generate invoices, then all of the data you'll need to build invoices is tracked in the dashboard.
• More! The dashboard contains nearly 40 screens (depending on the options you have turned on within the system). Every piece of information BigTime has on a specific project can be found in its dashboard.

Since the dashboard contains so much information, it actually pops up in its own window (a new "browser window"), and has its own menu. It even has its own set of project-centric reports.

The screen shot shown above shows a typical Project Dashboard menu. The project's name shows up beneath the menu items, and there's a you-are-here link at the far right-hand side of them menu to let you know which screen you are currently looking at. The menu items on this page will take you to different areas of the dashboard (just point at each menu to popup a list of the available screens). If you'd like to close a project's dashboard and return to the main program screen, just choose the Exit link.

Clicking on a Project will Popup Its Dashboard

Most of the time, you'll get to the project dashboard by navigating to the Project List page and clicking on a specific project, but that's not the only way to get there. Often, BigTime will put a link to a specific project dashboard "page" within our lists or reports. Clicking on a project's "total input hours," for example, may popup that project's timesheet summary screen in the dashboard. These links appear throughout the system, and they let you drill down into project-specific information that can only be found inside the dashboard.

We spend some time going through most of the screens on the project dashboard in the Projects chapter. Here, we just wanted to let you know that the dashboard is a mini website, so you won't get confused when you pop it up to take a look!