Overview
Project Settings enhance efficiency for your projects by allowing you to set defaults and restrictions on project transactions. If you use Project Management, project settings also provide additional options for your projects.
Who uses this feature
Administrators, Project Managers, Operations Managers, Accountants
Applies to all business types
Things to know
If you use Project Management, you see additional tabs in Project Settings for Project Labels and Default Preferences. If you don't use project management, you can still use the Project Setup section of the Project Settings screen.
Project Labels
With Project Labels, you can create a visual representation of your expense spending to enhance efficiency on your projects Budget vs Actual tables. You can nest labels under each other to form a hierarchy of labels. This allows you to drill down into the lower levels of detail in the Budget vs. Actual table.
Using project label hierarchies allows you to identify incurred costs, where you might be overspending, and where the project may be over budget. Project label hierarchies also increase efficiency throughout a projects billing by improving your project manager's visibility into expenses.
For more on how to create project labels, see create project labels. For more on how to use project labels in the context of your project workflows, see use project labels.
Default Preferences
After you've created project labels, you can set them as defaults for pricebook items, job types, and technicians. This streamlines the labeling of expense items in projects.
When you add default project labels to an expense type, it's automatically assigned to an item when it's added to a project estimate or invoice. For example, you can set the Labor label as the default for all labor service items.
You can also assign labels to a specific pricebook item or technician. The assigned label takes precedence over the default label. For more, see assign default project labels to expense items.
Project Setup
In the Project Setup section of Project Settings, you can select your default project settings, preferences, and revenue recognition method.
Revenue recognition method
On the Project Settings screen, you can select one of the four default revenue recognition methods for your projects:
Sales Basis Method
Completed Contract Method
Percentage of Completion Method
Cash Basis Method
After you select a revenue recognition method, you can select whether you want to apply it to:
All current and future projects
Only future projects
You can also set a different revenue recognition method for individual projects in situations where you want to recognize revenue differently from the default selection.
For more, see set up revenue recognition for projects.
Retainage
Retainage is a percentage of the invoice that is not billed until the project is complete and the customer has approved the work. In Project Settings, you can assign a project label for retainage items to reflect accurately on your Budget vs Actual table.
For more on how to set up retainage in your account, see Set up retainage based on Application for Payment.
Require all transactions to match Project Business Unit
The Require all transactions to match Project Business Unit toggle restricts all transactions on a project to match one of the project's business units (BUs). Transactions on a project include jobs, invoices, estimates, purchase orders, requisitions, and applications for payment.
Once BUs are assigned to a project, all future transactions must match at least one of the project's BUs. This restriction can be removed by doing one of the following:
Remove the BUs assigned to the project.
Update the BUs assigned to the project to include the BU of the transaction you want to add.
Note: This setting is not recommended for companies that strictly perform residential services with multiple BUs.
Automatically Set Business Unit
The Automatically Set Business Unit toggle automatically sets the business unit (BU) to a project record when enabled. The BU is automatically assigned to a project from any of the following sources:
The BU of the job created from the first sold estimate of a previous job, when the project was generated.
If the project was previously created first, the BU assigned to the first sold estimate itself.
The BU of a lead job that generates a project when it's created if there's a sold estimate on a job.