About the project life cycle

Any new project you create in Visma.net ERP is automatically assigned the In planning status.

Before you make any project active or submit it for approval, you must thoroughly plan it and specify all the key properties.

You can create a project either from scratch or from a template.
If you use a template, your new project will be populated with the template settings, and you need to enter only information that differs from the information in the template.

When adding a new project from the Projects (PM301000) window, you should enter the following information:

• General settings:

  This information includes the description, start date, end date, and invoicing period.
  You also select one of these invoicing options: on the date of the customer statement, at the end of each month, at the end of each quarter, or at the end of each year.

• Visibility settings:

  You can specify the workspaces with which you want to integrate your project.
  We recommend that you select only those workspaces that you will use to post documents related to your project.

• Tasks:

  You can define the tasks for the project.
  A task in a project is a separate work unit with its own life cycle, budget, cost, and revenue.

• Employees:

  You specify the employees to be engaged in the project.
  You can override the default labour class specified for specific employees by defining different labour classes for regular working hours and for overtime hours.

• Attributes:

  You can specify attribute values for the project if a group of attributes has been assigned to projects in the Project accounting preferences (PM101000) window and for project tasks if a group of attributes has been assigned to tasks.

A project in the planning stage is not available for selection in data entry windows in other modules.

To projects and project tasks that are in the In planning status, you can add activities by using the Projects (PM301000) and Project tasks (PM302000) windows.
For instance, you can add an employee task for planning budgets for project tasks while at the stage of project planning.
However, the transactions generated for completed activities (if any) cannot be released until the project gets the Active status.

After preparation has been completed, you can take the project off hold by clearing the On hold check box in the Projects (PM301000) window and saving it.

Active projects become available for selection on the windows of the modules you have selected for integration with the Projects module.
For more information, see: About integration with other modules
When users create transactions in the integrated modules, they can link the transactions with a specific project task by specifying the project and task.
Also, they can specify whether the transaction is invoiceable for the project task.
If users do not want to link a transaction with any project, they can specify the non-project code.

Budget changes often occur during the course of the project.
In Visma.net ERP, you cannot change the initial budget, although you can enter the revised figures for the project budget.
The revised budget appears in a separate column.

A project life cycle ends when the project is either completed or closed.
The project is considered completed when all its tasks are completed.
You complete the project by assigning it the Completed status.

A project may end prematurely when the customer stops using the services your company provides.
In that case, you can close the project before completing all its tasks.