Using Projects in BigTime

Most of the information you enter into BigTime rolls up into a project. Even firms that think in terms of clients instead of projects will find that project-centric focus helpful. As you work through the details in this chapter, keep a couple of general points in mind:

Adding Projects is Simple. There are 2 steps to adding a project: pick a client, and enter the project's name/id. That's all you are required to do.
The detailed sections in this chapter will go through a lot more information, but only because there are a number of options available help you setup new projects. You don't have to use any of them (but, we still want to tell you about all of them).
Most Firms Create a Project, a Budget and a Team. The project dashboard has over 40 screens, and we'll look at most of those screens at some point in this chapter. That doesn't mean you have to understand (or "fill in") every nook and cranny in the project dashboard! A lot of the data in the dashboard gets filled in by BigTime as you start to use the system, so you don't need to understand every screen right out of the gate. In addition, your firm can use what it finds valuable and discard the rest.
For most firms, creating a simple budget, and a project team are good starting points for filling in your project's details. The rest will come as you start to use the system.
The Project Display Name is used throughout the system. In BigTime, the name you see on screen for a project is not actually the value in the project's name field. It's the project's "display name." There's a short review of what a display name is (and how to edit it) within the Project Dashboard section. We talk about display names, though, right away. So, understanding what they are is helpful early on.

Getting Around This Chapter

The details in this chapter are organized into 5 sections:

Navigating BigTime's Project List screen. Most of the time, you'll get to a project's information from the Management... Project List screen. So, we start out the chapter by taking a look at that screen and how it's organized.
Adding new projects to BigTime. We'll cover how to add a brand new project to BigTime, and we'll also cover how to import new projects from QuickBooks.
Not every project has to be a "blank slate." When you create projects in BigTime, you can copy tasks, budgets, billing rates and more from other project(s) in the system. We'll show you how this feature works in the Project Templates section.
Creating non-billable "house account" projects in BigTime. BigTime can be used to track vacation, sick and other PTO time (as well as just about any combination of non-billable time your firm can think of). We'll talk about how to setup a non-billing account to track that type of time and the special settings built into the project dashboard to accommodate that type of project.
Getting around the Project Dashboard. This section will show you how to edit a project's information, create budgets, add teams, review time entries, examine invoices and more. It contains a lot of detail, so keep in mind that your firm can choose to use or non use any of the data that the dashboard contains.
Deleting/Deactivating projects. Finally, we'll spend a couple of pages talking about how to delete projects from the system. And, we'll talk about why (most of the time), deleting projects--instead of simply marking them as inactive, is a bad idea!

Just the Basics

You probably won't read this chapter from start to finish. Instead, you'll probably skim through the headings and zero in on the type of information that's most useful to your firm. Then, as you start to use the system, you'll come back for more details on new areas you'd like to learn more about.

If you're brand new to BigTime, take a look at these specific topics:

That set of topics will give you a good overview of how project data in BigTime is organized, entered, and displayed throughout the system. Then, try adding a project or two to the system to see how the whole thing works. Once you've done that, you can come back to this chapter and take a look at specific topics of interest.