ERP — projects, time, rates

The working half of the workspace: Projects, Customers, Time entries, and the rate cards behind them.

Projects

A project belongs to a customer and carries the things a project carries: a number, the timeline, the budget, and the team on it.

Open one and you get its record — the basics, timeline and budget, and the people assigned. The team section is where you add someone rather than a separate screen.

Customers

The same companies as the CRM's organisations, seen from the delivery side. The customer record holds the billing details and the rate card: what an hour of which kind of work costs for this customer.

A customer with no rate card is not a problem until you bill; then it is the first thing missing. It is worth ten minutes early.

Time entries

Hours against a project. They are what turns work into an invoice, and what makes the question "what did this project actually cost?" answerable.

The list is a table like any other: filter it, search it, correct a row.

Rate items and people

Behind the scenes: the kinds of work you charge for, and the people who do them. Both are lists you will touch rarely and be glad exist when a rate changes.

Doing it by asking

• "Book 3 hours on the Northwind implementation for today, kickoff workshop"
• "Which projects have unbilled hours from last month?"
• "Create a project 'Website relaunch' for Meyer GmbH, starting next Monday"

For a long job — checking every open entry against its rate card, say — send it to the background with /parallel; see work that runs in the background.