Setting Up Your first project
A Project is the top-most layer of time-tracking and planning. All time entries are tracked within a project, and all tasks live within a project too. All projects are sub-divided into categories (the kind of work), and can belong to a client (the organization or individual that the project belongs to).
When building your first project, you should first define the building blocks it depends on: categories and clients, and also optionally tags and capacity types. Once these are done, you can create the project, select the appropriate categories and assign personnel.
Categories
Categories are the work types that time is tracked against. They appear on every time entry and every project. Categories are established globally across your organization so that work can be tracked across projects. They act as templates for your project — when you add a category to a project, it inherits the global template's settings.
Create at least one global category before creating a project. You cannot track time on a project without at least one category.
Clients
Clients represent an organization or individual that "owns" the Project. This could be your organization if the project is internal, or someone you are doing work for. Client association is required for projects when billing is needed, but are not otherwise required. A Client can have an unlimited number of projects associated with it, unless your subscription otherwise limits this.
It doesn't really matter if you create the client after the project and then link them, but it saves a couple of steps.
Tags (optional)
Tags are labels you can attach to users, projects, clients, categories, time entries, and Project Manager tasks.
Remember that a tag only appears when its scope includes that entity type. For example, a tag with only the Projects scope enabled appears when tagging a project but not when tagging a time entry.
Define your tags before creating projects and categories so they are available for assignment from the start.
Capacity Types (optional)
Capacity Types define categories of work capacity — for example, Design, Development, or Marketing. They are used to match users to tasks and categories based on skill set.
Capacity types are only available when Capacity Planning is enabled in Settings > Organization > Project Manager. If you do not see this page, enable Capacity Planning first.
Creating a Project
With building blocks in place, navigate to Settings > Projects and create a new project (see Managing Projects).
Click Add Project. The New Project form opens. Enter a Project Name — the Task Prefix (one to five capital letters) and the Stub are suggested from the name. To type your own stub, turn on the switch at the end of the Stub field.
Choose the Client Name, set Time Tracking (see below), and add any tags in Add Tag. Project Color, Description, and Project State are optional.
Click Submit. The project's page opens with the Project Categories and Project Personnel sections below it.
The Stub field only appears when your plan includes Project Manager. If you do not see Add Project, contact your administrator — only users who can manage projects can add them.
All Personnel vs Assigned Personnel
The Time Tracking field on the project form has two options.
All Personnel means every active user in your organization can track time against this project. This is the simplest setup and works well for small teams or internal projects where everyone participates.
Assigned Personnel restricts the project to specific users. Only users you explicitly assign can see and track time against it. Choose this when different teams work on different projects and should not see each other's work.
Project Categories
After creating the project, open the Project Categories section on the project's page and click Add Category. In the Add Project Category dialog, choose a global category, adjust Billable, Rate, and Cost if needed, and click Save. Each project category is based on a global category template and inherits its rate, cost, billable flag, and state.
Locked global categories enforce consistency. When a global category is locked, project-level billable, rate, and cost settings cannot be overridden. Use this to ensure billing rates are uniform across projects.
Project Personnel
This section is only relevant for projects set to Assigned Personnel.
In the Project Personnel section on the project's page, click Assign Personnel. The dialog shows two columns: Personnel (available users from your organization) and Assigned To Project. Click a user to move them between columns, and use Filter Users to find someone by name. Click Save to apply. Only active users appear in the available list.
Kanban Stages
If Project Manager is enabled, the Kanban Stages section of the project form lets you choose which of your organization's stages the project uses on its Flow Board. Two sections are available:
Backlog Stages — stages for work that is tracked but not actively in progress.
Doing Stages — stages for work currently in progress.
Under each heading, tick a stage in the Available list to add it to the project. Use the up and down arrows to reorder, or click the close button to remove a stage from the project. Stages themselves are created under Settings > Stages — if none are listed, create them there first.
Kanban stages are only available when Enable Stages is turned on in Settings > Organization > Project Manager.
General Tips
A project should encompass a single deliverable, within the same general scope of work. If you were developing a website and promotional campaign for a client, for instance, it would be better to separate these into distinct projects attached to the client.
What to Avoid
Creating a project without categories. Every time entry requires a category. Without one, entries fall into an uncategorized state that is difficult to report on or bill.
Skipping client assignment. If you plan to bill for time, assign a client when creating the project. Retrofitting a client later means revisiting project settings before generating an invoice.
Ignoring task prefix and stub. The task prefix and stub lock once tasks are created. Choose them deliberately — they appear on every task ID and in every URL.