The Project Summary page

The New drop-down menu allows you to add the following project-related entities right from the Summary page:

• Team Member

• Charge

• Expense

• Related Ticket

• Note

• Calendar Item

• Attachment

The function is identical to the New buttons on the respective project pages.

From the Tools menu, you can do the following:

• Set the Project Status to Complete. This option is hidden for project templates. Refer to Completing a project.

• Inactivate the project. Inactivate and activate a project

• Save the project as a template. Refer to Save a project as a template.

• Run the What's Due Report. Click this button to launch a report that displays all tasks for which the due or end date is the selected date.

• Merge project data into a document. Refer to Creating documents with Document Merge.

Organization or Organization Name refers to the organization associated with the entity. This field is always required.

• In View mode, the name will appear as a hyperlink for users with permission to view the organization, and as plain text for all others.

• In New mode, enter the name of the organization. As you type, Autotask will suggest possible matches. Click an organization name to select it and populate the field. Alternatively, you can click the selector icon to choose the organization from a list. On some entities, such as ticket and opportunity, you can click the plus icon to the right of the selector icon to quickly create a new organization. Refer to Adding an organization.

• In Edit mode, this field cannot be modified for some entities (for example, projects and devices).

For this field, you can select a different local term. In your Autotask instance, it may be labeled Account, Business Unit, Client, Company, Customer, Organization, or Site. Refer to Selecting a currency and local terms and symbols.

Classifications are associated with icons that provide visual identifiers used to categorize and search for organizations. They appear with the organization name throughout Autotask. Refer to Classification icons.

On the New Organization or Edit Organization pages, select a classification option from the drop-down menu.

This field is optional and can be edited. It is available on multiple entities and can provide a cross-reference to an external numbering system.

Enter the first day of the date range when the entity is active or valid. It will default to today's date but can be modified.

Contracts

The start date of the contract becomes the billing date for all items billed under the contract.

EXAMPLE  If the Start Date is the 21st of the month, billing for all contract billing items will recur on the 21st. If you want your billing date to fall on the beginning or end of the month, but pro-rate services for the remainder of the current month, refer to Billing for a partial first month.

NOTE  If the Start Date is on a date not in the current period (for example, the start date is on the 31st and the next month only has 30 days), the last day of the month will be used for the billing event.

IMPORTANT  You cannot edit the Start Date for a recurring service contract once the service/bundle period has been added and the contract has been saved.

Opportunities

Start date is used to calculate the number of days the opportunity is in the pipeline.

Projects

The start date for all phases, tasks, and issues must be >= Start Date.

Billing Rules

The start date is the start of the first billing period and the first billing date. It also sets the schedule for all following billing dates. It must be greater than or equal to the contract start date.

EXAMPLE  If the start date is January 3, the next billing date will be February 3. If you enter a date of day #29, 30, or 31, and a month does not have that many days, the start date of that period will be the last day of the month. If you enter a day that is the last day of that month, we will use the last day of every month following that month.

Each period's charge is created using the most recent unit count, which is established by the date entered into the Determine Units/Create Charges on: field. The count date can be the same date as the billing date, or an earlier date.

If there is no unit count on the start date of the first billing period (because the day number selected to determine the unit count is greater than the day number of the start date), Autotask will do a unit count when the rule gets created to use for that first billing period.

Enter the last day of the date range the entity is active or valid.

Contracts

If the end date is not the planned last day of a billing period (you have a partial last month), the charge for the last billing period will be prorated.

Opportunities

Enter a projected end date for the work associated with the opportunity. The field does not affect revenue or profit forecasts.

Phases

When you add tasks to the phase, the phase end date adjusts to the end date of the latest task.

Billing Rules

No charges will be created for periods that would have started after the end date. If left blank, charge creation stops on the contract end date.

If you enter a date that is later than the contract end date, a message that includes the contract end date will appear.

This field appears on entities that are part of the billing workflow, and is applied to labor and charges.

• If you assign a purchase order (PO) number to a quote (on the Terms tab), and then close the associated opportunity using the Won Opportunity Wizard, any charges created using the Won Opportunity Wizard will inherit the PO number.
• If you assign a PO number to a contract, the associated billing items inherit the contract's PO number.
• If you assign a PO number to projects, tickets, or tasks, that PO number will override the associated contract's purchase order number.
• The PO number appears on invoices. A separate invoice is created for each PO number. If an organization has multiple billing items that are assigned to different PO numbers, Autotask will generate multiple invoices for that organization.

Refer to Working with purchase order (PO) numbers.

The length of the contract or project in days. This field is linked to the Start Date and End Date.

• In a project, you can enter the number of days in the Duration field after you enter a date in the Start Date field, or you can enter an End Date and Autotask will calculate the Duration. Selections made in the Schedule Settings section will determine whether the project duration is calculated using calendar days, or include non-business days and holidays.

• In a contract, Duration is calculated as calendar days between the Start Date and End Date.

In View mode, the duration is displayed as a progress bar.

Line of Business lets you classify finances and segment data. This field is displayed when Organizational Structure (Line of Business) is activated and enabled. It is available on the following entities: Contract, Opportunity, Sales Order, Project, and Ticket. Refer to Introduction to Line of Business.

If a contract is associated with a different line of business than the ticket or project, billing items always inherit the line of business from the contract, not the parent entity. Refer to Line of business inheritance rules for dependent entities.

Select a pairing of Business Division > Line of Business.

A department is an organizational entity in your company that is associated with resources and work types, and plays a role in project security.

Projects:

Selecting a department is optional. When a department is associated with a project, it can be used to search, filter and group project-related data. It does not restrict which resources and work types can be assigned to project tasks.

An opportunity is a potential sale you have identified. This field appears on entities that are associated with a sales opportunity. Depending on permissions, the opportunity name or a link to the opportunity is displayed.

Select an opportunity or click the plus icon to add a new opportunity. You must select an organization first. All active opportunities associated with an organization are available.

CRM notes and To-Dos:

CRM notes and to-dos created from the organization or contact entity can optionally reference an active opportunity for the organization. When you add a note from the Opportunity page, the Opportunity Name field is defaulted in.

Contracts:

If the contract is created while running the Won Opportunity or the Won Quote wizards, the opportunity is referenced here.

Projects:

You can associate an opportunity with the project and do the following:

• If this is a proposal project, convert the proposal into a project while running the Won Opportunity Wizard. Quoted charges will become project charges. The opportunity's Total Revenue and Total Cost forecast will populate the project's Estimated Revenue/Cost fields (if these fields do not contain any values). Refer to Closing opportunities you have won.
• Use the linked opportunity's user-defined fields to update the project's user-defined fields. Refer to Copy opportunity UDFs to project UDFs.
• When the project is completed, you can update the opportunity to Implemented from the Complete Project wizard. Refer to Completing a project.

Quotes:

Select an active opportunity, create a new opportunity, or allow the opportunity to be automatically created. If the opportunity is created automatically, it will have the same name as the quote, and the remaining fields will default to the values described in Default values for auto-created opportunities.

Sales orders:

If Procurement is enabled, sales orders are automatically generated from opportunities when the Won Opportunity wizard is run. The field is read-only.

Tickets:

An opportunity will appear in this field if the Won Opportunity wizard was run and Associate this ticket with this opportunity was selected, creating this ticket in the Post Sale queue.

The user responsible for the overall completion of the project. Use the Department, Workgroup or Queue filters to narrow the results, and/or use the column filters. The project lead will receive an email notification that the project has been created.

This field defaults to the user who is creating the project, but can be modified or cleared.

All entities:

• Selecting a contract is optional. If no contract is selected, standard time and materials billing will apply.
• The Contract field is not active until an organization is selected.
• The field is unavailable if you do not have security permissions to modify the contract.
• If you selected a recurring service contract, you must also select a service or a service bundle.

Devices:

• If the item you are installing is a printer associated with the Xerox PageConnect/XPPS program, the Contract must be a recurring service contract and is required.

Tickets:

• The Contract field may already be populated if the customer (or, if it is a sub-organization, the parent organization) has set up a default Service Desk contract.
• If you select a device that is associated with a contract, the device's contract will prevail, unless you manually select another contract.

Projects:

• If you select a contract that has a start date after the project start date or an end date before the project end date, a warning message opens. To select the contract anyway, click OK. Make sure you edit the contract and extend the contract timeline, if appropriate.
• To create a contract to associate with the project, click the plus sign . You can select the contract type. The Organization Name defaults to the organization associated with the project. You can change the organization to an organization that is a parent organization to the project organization. Refer to Sub-Organizations.

The resource in your organization who will take overall responsibility for the account relationship. The field can be displayed on other entities but will be view-only.

Users who are selected as account managers must have security permissions to view the organization type and Mine or higher object permissions. Account managers have the same security permissions as account team members. Organizations where you are the account manager or a team member can be found under My > CRM >  Organizations. Refer to CRM security settings.

The contract type is selected when the contract is created, and cannot be edited. On all entities it appears, it is view-only.

Contract types are used to support different billing needs. Options are Block Hour, Fixed Price, Per Ticket, Recurring Service, Retainer, and Time & Materials.

For examples of when to use each contract type, refer to Business cases and contract types.

There are three system project statuses: New, Inactive, and Complete, but you can configure additional ones. Refer to Project statuses.

To inactivate a project, select the Inactive status. Inactivating a project puts the project on hold. The project will no longer appear on active project lists, and tasks will no longer appear on the My Tasks & Tickets page. Resources will no longer be able to track time or enter notes on the tasks for this project.

To re-activate an inactive project, select any status other than Inactive or Complete.

Any time you update the project Status or Status Detail, a new project note detailing the change is saved in the Project Notes view.

The Status Date and Time fields are updated each time you select a different status, even if the project status is set to Complete.

NOTE  The project's Complete Date is set the first time the project status is updated to Complete, and will not be changed.

This field is hidden if the project is a template or a baseline project.