Project Tips

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Overview

Projects are a simple yet powerful component of Time59.

A project consists of a project type (hourly or fixed fee), a description and an hourly rate or fixed fee amount.

Projects are flexible. A project can represent:

Projects need to be set up separately for each client. To make things easier, it is possible to copy the projects from an existing client when creating a new client.

When entering a time record you will select one of the projects you have created for the client you are entering time for.

Using Projects

Projects are flexible. How you use them is up to you.

The most important things to keep in mind are:

1) Each time record will be assigned only one project.

2) When a time record appears on an invoice it will be billed out at the hourly rate or fixed fee amount of the project assigned to it.

Here are a couple of ideas:

You can create a project to represent each member of your staff with their appropriate billing rate.

You can create multiple projects for the same matter with different billing rates.

You can create a fixed fee project and choose whether or not to have time records associated with that project appear on the invoice.

Handling hourly billing rate changes

Note: The following information relates to hourly projects only.

Eventually the hourly billing rate may change for a particular project. When this happens you should NOT change the billing rate value for the existing project.

Instead you should create a new project with the same name and the new rate.

Check the Active checkbox for the new project. Un-check the Active checkbox for the old project.

You can now enter time for the project and it will be calculated at the new rate. Previous time records will still be associated with the old version of the project record and will be calculated at the old rate.

This process can be repeated as often as the rate changes for a given project.

Handling fixed fee billing amount changes

The billing amount and project description for fixed fee projects can be changed at any time. When you create an invoice for a fixed fee project the current values of the billing amount and project description will be used for the invoice.

Remarks

When a project is no longer active for a client you can "un-check" the Active box for that project. The project will remain on file but will not appear in the project list when entering new time records.

Additional Information and Help

For additional information read the Quickstart Guide and Time Entry Tips on the time entry page.

You may also contact us using the Feedback form or at support@time59.com.