Creating and managing a project

A project keeps track of everything around a job for a customer: tasks, planning, materials and the project updates (formerly: Bouwjournaal).

How a project comes to be

• Automatically — as soon as a customer accepts a quote, or you record an acceptance with Acceptance received, a project is created from it straight away, with the quote lines carried over as materials. See Creating and sending a quote.
• Manually — go to Projects and click New. Fill in a title, customer, description, start date and deadline. Want Planny to help? Use With Planny: describe the job in plain language and Planny suggests a title, planning and a number of tasks.

If the quote belongs to a request, the project also takes over the request's subject as its title (followed by the customer name), the message as its description and the address as its location. The photos from the request and the notes from the site visit appear as the first, internal update Situation at the start in the project updates — see Keeping your customer up to date with project updates. Without a request, the project is called "From quote" with the quote number and the customer name.

Project number

Every project automatically gets a number when it is created, for example P-2026-0001: the prefix, the year and a sequence number that starts again at 1 each year. You see it at the top of the project and under the name in the project list, and you can search on it. It's also in the completion email to the customer.

You set the prefix on Projects, in the Project numbers block: letters and digits, up to 10. A new prefix only applies to new projects; existing numbers stay as they are, because a customer may already have referred to them.

Statuses

Status	Meaning
Scheduled	Starting status, not yet begun.
In progress	Work has started.
Awaiting materials	Temporarily paused, waiting on materials.
Completed	Done.
Cancelled	Didn't go ahead.

Letting the customer know it's done

When you set the status to Completed, the checkbox Email the customer that the project is completed appears below it. It's off by default: not every completion is a moment to email the customer, for example when you tidy up old projects.

1. Set the status to Completed.
2. Tick Email the customer that the project is completed.
3. Under To you can see who gets the email. By default that's the customer's own email address. If the customer has contacts with an email address, you can tick them as well (or untick the customer).
4. Click Save.

The customer gets a short email saying the work is done. If the project updates are switched on for the customer, the email includes a button to the project updates. The question mark next to the checkbox shows a preview of the email beforehand.

If the project was already completed, you no longer see the checkbox: saving again emails nobody. Instead, the project shows Customer emailed that the project is completed, with for each recipient when the email was sent and whether it was delivered. If you didn't email the customer when completing it, you see The customer does not know yet that the project is done. Pick the recipients there and click Send completion email to do it afterwards.

A draft invoice in Rompslomp

If you've connected Rompslomp (the Accounting button on Projects), administrators also see the checkbox Create a draft invoice in Rompslomp when completing a project. Tick it and 4planning prepares a draft invoice with the project's materials, the hours from the job sheets and any deposit received as a deduction. You check and send it yourself in Rompslomp. See Connecting Rompslomp and creating a draft invoice.

Tabs within a project

• Details — title, status, location, dates, description and (if Products is enabled) linked equipment.
• Tasks & planning — a checklist of tasks and a calendar of scheduled work sessions. Progress follows automatically from the ticked-off tasks. See Tasks and work sessions in a project.
• Materials — lines with description, quantity, unit and price, with a running total. Here too you can ask Planny for suggestions. See Materials in a project.
• Project updates — the project updates for this project, see Keeping your customer up to date with project updates.
• Documents — drawings, photos and files for this project (admins only). They're also kept with the customer, in a folder named after the project; that folder appears there as soon as something is in it.
• Job sheets & hours — only visible if Job sheets is enabled.

Frequently asked questions

• Can I set a project's progress myself? Not in the screen; it follows from the ticked-off tasks. If you ask Planny to put a percentage there, that overwrites the calculation.
• I turned off Products and now the linked products are gone. That's correct: if Products is off, the link between a project and its equipment is also removed on save. Turn Products back on to see the link again.
• Can I pick a different customer when starting a project from a customer's page? No, if you start a new project from a customer record, the customer is already fixed.
• Where can I see that a project came from a quote? A badge "From quote #..." appears at the top of the project, linking back to that quote. In the side column you also see From quote with the quote number (and the deposit, if there was one) and, if a request came before it, From request.