Using statuses with your projects

To help you record the progress of your project, you can assign a status to each project, group, or project item. You may want to record a physical status (such as completing the stage of a job) or a financial status (such as the final payment being made).

You can choose which project levels, group levels and project item types that you want to apply a status to. This is optional. You do not have to apply a status to any levels in your project if you don't want to.

Along with recording the status, you can also record the percentage complete of your project, group, or project item.

You can also use the project status to control:

  • When cost and revenue transactions are posted to your projects.
  • When groups or project items can be removed from a project's hierarchy.
  • When your projects can be archived.

You can set a default status for your projects, groups and items. You do this using the Project Structure Settings | Defaults window.

You can apply different statuses to the different levels of your project's structure.

When a status, that does not allow cost and/or revenue transactions is applied at one level in the project structure, you cannot enter costs and revenue transactions for any groups or project items below it in the project structure. You can still enter costs and /or revenue transactions for sub-projects.

Example

You have a project with the following structure:

You have a Complete status that does not allow costs or revenue. The Complete status is applied to the Phase 1 group in the project's structure. You cannot enter costs or revenue transactions for the Kitchen and Plumbing project items.

If the Complete status is applied at the top Example project level, no costs or revenue transactions can be entered for the project.

When you change a status on your projects, it can affect how your transactions processed.

The following table shows how the processing of transactions are affected if you have:

  1. Applied a status that allows costs and/or revenue to a project item (or its parent group or project).
  2. Analysed that project item to a transaction that has not been fully processed.
  3. Changed the status of that project item (or its parent group or project) to one that does not allow costs and/or revenue.
Type of transaction How processing is affected

Timesheets and expenses

Can be processed as normal.

Sales Ledger and Purchase Ledger batch transactions

The batch cannot be committed.

Sales orders and returns

Can be processed as normal.

Quotations - free text items

The converted sales order is not assigned to the project.

Purchase orders and returns - standard items

The order can be received and invoiced.

Stock cannot be allocated to the project.

Purchase orders - free text items

The order can be received.

The invoice cannot be posted to the project.

To set up statuses for your projects, groups and items

  1. Project Structure Settings.

    Choose which projects level, group levels or project item types you want to apply a status to.

    1. To use a status for project levels, group levels and project item types, select Record and track project status for each level that you want to apply a status to.

    2. Select Record percentage complete for each of the project levels, group levels and project item types that you want to record the percentage complete for.
    3. To set a default status for each project, group, or project item type. select a status from the Default Status drop-down list on the Default tab.

    Open: Project Accounting > Utilities > System Setup > Project Structure Settings

  2. Create your project statuses.

    You can choose whether:

    • Cost or revenue transactions can be recorded for each status.
    • Groups or project items can be removed from a project hierarchy.
    • Projects can be archived.

    Open: Project Accounting > Project Maintenance > Project Statuses.

    1. To add a new status, click Add.
    2. Enter the status Description.

    3. Set the options for this status:

      Allow Costs

      Select this to allow projects with this status to receive cost postings.

      Allow Revenue

      Select this to allow projects with this status to receive revenue postings.

      Allow Archive / Delete

      Select this to:

      • Allow projects with this status to be archived.
      • Allow project items with this status to be removed from a project's structure.
      Note:
      • You cannot also enable Allow Costs or Allow Revenue when Allow Archive / Delete is selected.
      • You cannot disable Allow Archive / Delete for a status that has already been applied to an archived project.
    4. To save your changes, click OK.

  3. Set the status on your projects, groups or project items.

    Open: Project Accounting > Projects > Amend Project Status.

    1. Select the project to amend by its Code.

      The project's structure appears. Each project level, grouping level and project item in the structure is displayed, along with their status, percentage complete and narrative.

    2. To change the status of a project, groups or project item, select a new state from the Status list. If you change the status of a project, sub-project, or group, you can choose to apply that status to items in the structure below.

      Note: To change the status, the Record and track item status setting must be enabled in the Display Features for that item in the Project Structure Settings.

    3. To change the percentage completion for an item, click on the figure in the Comp (%) and enter a new figure.

      Note: To change the percentage complete, the Record percentage complete setting must be enabled in the Display Features for that item in the Project Structure Settings.

    4. Use the Narrative column to record any comments about the project item.
    5. When you have finished amending the status of your project items, click Save.

    You can do this using the Amend Project Status window or the Amend Project window.

To remove statuses from your projects

If you no longer want to track the status of your projects, you can hide the existing statuses for projects, groups and project items. The existing statuses are still applied, but are no longer visible.

To hide your project statuses, you must:

  1. Set existing statuses for all levels in the project structure to Not Applicable.

    This means that you can add costs and revenue to your projects, remove groups and items from the project structure, and archive your projects.

  2. Clear the Record and track item status option for your project levels, grouping levels and project item types, in the project structure settings.

See also

Other tasks

Deleting projects

View Project Status

Overview

Archiving projects overview