Add Projects

Elorus enables you to record and bill the time you spent on various tasks on behalf of your customers. You can also use the time tracking feature for internal use to track the time required for specific tasks and to better price your's and your partners' time!

Set up a project

The first step to organize your time is to create one or more projects according to your needs.

Access to create new projects comes with the role of administrator and users with sufficient permissions in Time tracking and project management.

Users with limited contact access can only view and create projects for contacts they have access to.

From the main menu click "Projects" and then "Add". There, you need to name the project, connect it to a client, and designate its billing method and rate.

Project Details

Create your project record by filling the details below:

• Name (mandatory): An indicative title for the project, e.g, "Website makeover"

• Description (optional): A brief analysis of the individual project components.

• Client (mandatory): You can select from the list - it is the contact for whom the project is being worked on.

• Client portal setting: Select "show all time entries" or "show billable time entries" to allow your client view hours tracked for the project through their client portal. This will give you the additional option to share related attachments.

Billing method

You can choose between the following options (image below):

• Fixed cost: Irrespective of the length of time or expenses assigned to the project, the client will be charged a pre-agreed X amount.

• Hourly rate: Charge an amount for each hour spent on the project. You will find the hourly rate field right below the billing method.

• Task hourly rate: Fee for each hour spent on individual project tasks. You can set the rate when adding a task.

• Assignee hourly rate: Billing per user hourly rate, for each of the users working on a project. A rate can be added at the teammate selection step - default assignee hourly rate is set as default in “Users” and can be adjusted for each project when adding.

• Non billable: You can also not bill the project, in case this is an internal process you just want to monitor.

*If you select hourly rate option, you can type the preferred amount on the Hourly rate field.

Select team members

The final step is to select the team members to participate in the project. They will be able to track time and view project information, provided they have the necessary access rights.

All you need to do is search the users you wish to participate in the project and click Add. The selected users as long as yourself (Aka the user creating this project) will be the Assignees.

Access level

There are two access levels in a project: user and manager.

A ‘manager’ is capable of viewing all related information, progress of time tracked along with expenses and invoices. They may also add time on behalf of another teammate if their role in the organization allows them to. “Users” can only view their own tracked time in a project and have no access in financial data. Administrators and Business managers automatically become managers when assigned to a project, whereas a project manager may be given this status on the spot. Employees and Project managers who have not been given manager status are also assigned the simple role of ‘user’ (Wallace Brown in the above image).

For custom roles, you may find out the related permissions in the relevant article.

Cost per assignee

The next section of the add project process enables you to monitor costs of labor.

Regardless of the billing method you have selected in the previous step, you can enter the rate of your employee or partner that will work on the project. In the Users & Roles setting, you can add how much they are paid by the organization per hour, however you can also customize per project.

Rate per assignee

All users have their own default rate, added in Settings-> Users & Roles. However, you can freely adjust per project in case rate per assignee is your selected billing method. A column similar to the one below will appear:

By clicking Save, the project is created and you are ready to start tracking the hours you and your team spend on it!

Project tasks

Each time you enter time for the project you can select one of the existing organization wide tasks or use project-specific tasks that you can create in this step. All you need to do is click on "Add new" and type-in the name of the task, which is how it will appear on time registration and reporting. The below image will be useful;

As you can see, you may also include a description, helpful internally on your organization for project invoicing, should you select this invoicing option.

Hourly rate is available for projects billed by hourly tax rate.