Project Management
Manage a project through delivery
Work with project records, milestones, tasks, and approvals.
Before you begin
Before you start, know who the owner is, which department the project sits under, who’s on the team, and roughly the dates and budget. You’ll need project-create access to start a new one, or project-edit access (or be the owner) to change an existing one. Everyone else can only look.
Manage a project through delivery
Open Projects and create a new one, or select an existing engagement. You’ll need to be on the team (or the owner) to see a private project, and you’ll need project-create or project-edit access to make changes.
Fill in the essentials: client, owner, department, dates, and how the work will be billed. A client-billable project needs a real billing method; you can’t leave that as “not applicable.”
Add milestones and tasks, assign them, and move the project through its stages as work progresses. Each stage only opens a few sensible next stages, not the whole list.
Before you close it out, make sure every task is done, every milestone is approved, and any billing milestones are paid: those three checks are what actually let a project close.
Key concepts & fields
| Concept | What to know |
|---|---|
| Stage | Where the project sits in delivery: Draft, Initiated, Planning, Active, Under review, Invoiceable, Invoiced, Completed, Closed, Suspended, or Cancelled. You change it through the dedicated stage/status action, not by editing the project directly, which is what keeps the lifecycle honest. Closed and Cancelled are dead ends with no way forward. |
| Health | A separate green/amber/red signal that travels alongside stage. Turning it amber or red, same as suspending or cancelling, asks for a short reason, at least 5 characters, so there’s always a record of why. |
| Owner | The person accountable for the project. Only the owner (or someone with organization-wide admin access) can remove people from the team. The free-text “project role” label you type in for a team member (say, “Project manager”) is just a label for display; it doesn’t hand out any actual rights. |
| Billing classification & method | Client-billable, internal non-billable, pro bono, or pre-contract, paired with how it’s billed: fixed fee, milestone, retainer, time-based, or hybrid. A client-billable project always needs a real billing method; “not applicable” isn’t allowed there. |
| Allocation | The percentage of someone’s time a project assignment uses up. Add up a person’s allocation across every active project and it can’t pass 100%, though simply being added to a team costs 0% until you actually give them a percentage. |
| Milestone | A delivery checkpoint with its own approval and, for billing-relevant ones, its own invoice status. Its due date has to fall inside the project’s start and end dates. |
| Task | An assigned piece of work used to track delivery progress and, when your organization requires it, time logging. Every task needs to be marked done before the project can close. |
| Closing preconditions | Three checks, in order: every task is done, every milestone is approved, and any billing-relevant milestone has been paid (or marked not applicable). All three have to clear before Completed or Closed is allowed. |
| Archiving | What happens automatically the moment a project reaches Completed or Closed. It moves to the Archive view (not deleted, just out of the active list), and you can still reopen it back to Active from there. |
| Visibility | Private, Internal, or Organization. A private project only shows to people on its team; if it’s not visible to you, opening it looks exactly the same as it not existing at all: you’ll see “Project not found” either way, which can be confusing the first time. |
Troubleshooting
A stage isn’t offered
You can only move one step along the allowed path. Active, for instance, can go to Under review, Invoiceable, Completed, Suspended, or Cancelled, but not straight to Closed. If the stage you want is genuinely missing from the list, your organization may have switched it off; ask an admin.
Closing the project is blocked
One of three things is outstanding: a task that isn’t done, a milestone that isn’t approved, or a billing-relevant milestone that hasn’t been paid (or marked not applicable). Clear those first, then try again.
The project vanished right after I completed or closed it
That’s expected, not a bug: reaching Completed or Closed archives it automatically. Look in the Archive view; it’s all still there, and you can move it back to Active if you need to.
Suspending or cancelling won’t save
Type a reason of at least 5 characters. The same minimum applies whenever you lower health to amber or red.
I changed the dates and got an error naming a task or milestone
Shrinking the start or end date past a task or milestone that’s already scheduled outside the new window isn’t allowed. Move that item’s due date first, then adjust the project’s dates.
An assignment won’t save, saying it would allocate the employee at X%
Their total allocation across active projects would go over 100% with this one added. Lower this assignment’s percentage, or free up room by trimming one of their other project allocations.
I opened a project and got “Project not found,” but I know it exists
This is also exactly what a private or internal project you can’t see looks like; it isn’t reserved for genuinely missing records. Ask the owner to add you to the team, or check that the project’s visibility and department line up with yours.
I can’t remove someone from the team
Only the project owner or someone with organization admin access can remove team members. A “Project manager” label typed into their row doesn’t count, even if it looks official.