Projects, Budgets and Billing Plans
A project is where time, expenses, budgets and billing meet. The work breakdown is the spine that connects them.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → ERP - Projects & Time:
- Projects & Time — the console
- Work Breakdown — the recursive structure work is booked against
- Project Budgets — versioned budgets per element
- Billing Plans — how a project turns into invoices
The work breakdown
A recursive structure: elements containing elements, to whatever depth the work needs. Time and cost are booked against elements, and each carries its own billable flag — so a project can have billable delivery and non-billable internal phases without splitting it in two.
The breakdown links to your existing project and task records rather than replacing them, so this is a costing spine over the work you already track, not a second place to manage it.
How deep
Deep enough that a variance tells you something, shallow enough that people book to the right element without thinking hard. Three levels suits most work. Ten produces precise numbers about the wrong things, because everybody books to whatever element is nearest the top of the list.
Budgets are versioned
Budgets carry a version and an effective date, and hold quantity, cost and revenue by cost type.
Versioning is what lets you compare against the original as well as the current one. A project delivered exactly to its third revised budget, having tripled, is not a success — and only the version history shows that. Keep the original baseline and add versions rather than overwriting.
Billing plans
The plan decides how work becomes an invoice:
- Time and materials — approved billable time and expenses, at their captured rates.
- Fixed price — an agreed total, invoiced to a schedule or on milestones, with time recorded for costing rather than billing.
- Retainer — a recurring amount, with time recorded against it.
A plan can carry a cap, which is what stops a time-and-materials engagement quietly exceeding what the client agreed. Set it when the client set one; discovering the overrun at invoicing is the expensive way.
Revenue recognition and document type
The plan holds a revenue recognition method and the document type the invoice is raised as, so billing produces a proper transactional document that posts through the normal ledger rules rather than a special case.
Currency
Set the billing currency on the plan. It is stored on the entries too, so a project billed in euros stays consistent from time entry to posted ledger line.
Worked example
A fixed-price implementation is broken into Discovery, Build and Handover. The baseline budget is 60 days at £520 cost with £180,000 revenue. A change request adds version 2 with 12 more days. Billing is milestone-based on completion of each phase, and the profitability report compares actual cost against both versions — showing the project made its revised budget and missed its original by 20%.
Recommendations
- Three levels of breakdown unless you have a specific reason for more.
- Keep the baseline budget and add versions.
- Set the cap whenever the client agreed one.
- Choose the plan type before work starts — changing it mid-project means re-deriving what was already billed.