Introduction to project management

Overview

Review some of the base concepts that make up project management at a high level. We recommend that you review these concepts to get a better understanding of how the feature works, as well as the different components of the feature you'll use in your day-to-day workflow.

Understand the structure of a project

The Project record is a folder containing all relevant work, documentation, data for related items on your project. If an action takes place on a job within the project, this is recorded in the project record.

A project collects and contains information from the following areas:

• Estimates/budgets/change orders

• Project information, such as project manager, dates of completion, and payment terms

• Jobs and appointments

• Invoices

• Applications for Payment

• Purchase orders/bills

• Payroll/timesheets

• Technician/office staff activity

• Documents, such as photos, forms, uploaded documents

How projects are created in ServiceTitan

You can create projects using two different methods to support multiple or varying workflows that your business may follow.

Option 1

Create a project manually from the location profile, customer profile, or from an existing job using the Actions dropdown.

• Examples:        

  • Creation of project when a bid is won

  • Creation of a project to start management jobs/work performed

Option 2

Automatically create a project when booking a sold estimate from a sales job into an install job

• Examples:        

  • Residential install workflows                

    • This workflow should only be performed when using the Line Items Estimate workflow.

    • This workflow shouldn't be used when using the placeholder estimates workflow.

Use project labels

One of the most important aspects of managing projects is using project labels.

Project labels organize your budgeted (expected) revenue and expenses and compare them to your actual (realized) revenue and expenses in real time and are completely customizable for the needs of your business.

Use project labels to identify:

• A phase of work, such as Rough-in, Trim-out, Start-up

• A type of expense, such as material, equipment, labor, subcontractor

• A type of work performed or sold, such as plumbing, electrical, HVAC

• A location where work is performed, such as room 1, room 2, bathroom, kitchen

• Or, any other way you want to categorize and track costs and revenue across a project

See Overview of project management setups and workflows to go over setups and recommended workflows for implementing project management based on your business's workflows.

View insights on the Budget vs Actual table

Click Financials on a project record to see a budget-versus-actual comparison for the project on the Budget vs Actual (BvA) table. Generate your budget and then use the BvA table to manage your budget and track your progress as you generate actuals. The table updates in real-time after refreshing your page.

The Budget vs Actual table allows you to customize how and which costs you track, set your expected budget for expenses and revenue, and track your performance in real time against your set budget.

Your project labels determine how costs and revenue are shown on the BvA, allowing you to track your costs and revenue by project labels.

Choose progress billing options in projects

With project management, you can choose how you send invoices to collect payment for your performed work.

Use progress billing to bill your customers throughout the project, based on milestone completion. Before generating progress billing for a project, confirm that the contract allows for progress payments.

Note: Progress billing is optional.

The two most common ways of progressively billing are to add an invoice directly to the project or use the Application for Payment workflow.

• Add invoice: With progress billing, you can bill customers as you reach specific milestones in a project. You can create a non-job invoice and progress bill without the AIA Billing style.

• Application for Payment (AFP): AFP allows you to progressively bill customers based on the amount of completed work and stored materials. To progressively bill, customers may require you to submit Applications for Payment and Continuation Sheets. Use this workflow if the contract calls for an AIA-styled document, schedule of values, Continuation Sheet, and/or outlined retainage percentages.

Note: Avoid using job invoices to bill for project revenue. In construction projects, job invoices capture costs and material consumption, while Applications for Payment or progress billing captures revenue.

Set up project management prerequisites

To successfully use project management, set up and configure your account to the needs of your business. This includes setting up:

• Business units and categories (required): Create business units, trades, and divisions for your residential new construction work. If you only work on residential new construction, you don't need to separate new construction business units. For more, see How to add or edit business units and Use business unit categories.

• Pricebook (required): Create a service in your pricebook to bill customers for specific milestones. You can create billing tasks for specific phases, or generic billing tasks that can be used across different phases of work. For example, Rough-In-Billing or Contract Billing. For more, see Add services to your pricebook.

Tip: You can also create a material task so you can add subcontractor costs as a non-chargeable material to invoices. For more, see Add subcontractor cost.

• Job types (recommended for certain workflows): Create new job types for projects to track your progress in milestones. For example, a typical new construction project has three phases: Rough In, Trim Out, and Start Up. For each phase, create a job type so you can add default project labels to the job type to capture and record actuals efficiently. For more, see Set up and use job types.

• Payment terms (recommended): You can use payment terms to manage the due dates of sales invoices and vendor bills. Tracking the due dates of sales invoices helps you manage payment collection and disbursement accurately. For more, see Create payment terms.

• Technician payroll (required): Add hourly pay rates to technicians to track their paid time hourly in the Budget vs Actual table. Add burden rates to track the overhead cost of technicians' labor. For more, see Enter payroll settings and Calculate technician burden rates.

Note: Setting up payroll and ensuring your timesheets are entered/recorded accurately helps you automate the generation of actual labor costs on your project. Having payroll costs entered and keeping accurate timesheets is essential for accurate cost data to be reflected on the BvA table & reporting.

• Purchasing/Inventory: Use ServiceTitan's Purchasing and/or Inventory module to simplify tracking costs from vendors and assigning costs correctly to projects and jobs.

• Client Specific Pricing: With client-specific pricing, you can use rate sheets to set unique time and material pricing to a project and all subsequent jobs booked from that project. For more, see Set up unique prices with client-specific pricing.

• Sales tax: Tracking sales tax is a necessity for any business. ServiceTitan has several options for tracking sales tax. The sales tax setup guide walks you through calculating sales tax with singular tax zones.