The Projects Module - CS

The projects module is a powerful area of Clik Service that allows you to track an initial quote right through to the sales invoice.

Projects can be described as an umbrella with the potential to hold multiple quotes, jobs, purchases and invoices beneath it.

Important Tips:

• Cost values are crucial. When adding times, materials and misc items make sure you’ve got figures in the blue cost boxes otherwise the system cannot calculate predicted and actual margins.
• When looking at the figures on the front screen of the projects module, think of 'quoted' as the total amount of quotes raised, 'estimated' as the number of quotes accepted and 'actual' totals as the live job/purchase/invoice values.
• When a quote is accepted you must click 'Add to job costing' for it to appear in the estimated value boxes.
• Don’t raise jobs with materials and then separate purchase orders with the same items. If you do this you’ll double your materials cost. Always raise the purchase orders by going to Activity > Purchase orders > New > Create PO with materials.

Getting Started – Quotes

You can either raise a project through the projects tab at the top by clicking 'New' or if you’ve already raised a quote and then want to turn it into a project you will need to go into the quote and click on Activity > Projects > Link > New Project.

When you’ve raised a quote, make sure you’ve added all the times, materials and miscellaneous items with cost as well as sales prices. The cost prices are always highlighted in blue.

You can raise more than one quote within a project. For example, you could use the 'Copy quote' button within projects and un-tick the 'Active' button. By un-ticking the active flag the value of that quote will be removed from the quoted values on the projects detail tab.

Acceptance – Converting the Quote and Raising Jobs

When a quote has been accepted you will need to move the value to the estimating tab.

To do this open the quote within the project that has been accepted, then click on 'Add quote items to job costing'.

Here you can choose whether to select 'All active quotes' or only the ones highlighted.

You can highlight more than one quote by holding down Ctrl and clicking on each quote you want to move to job costing.

Once you have clicked on 'Add quote items to job costing', you can click on the 'Job costing' tab and the values from the quote will now be on the 'Estimate' tab.

To raise job sheets you can then either click on the 'Costs' tab under the 'Job costing' tab, then click on Create > Job Sheet. Or you can raise the job sheet from the accepted quote by clicking on Activity > Job sheets > New.

Note: If you use the first option, Create > Job sheet, the times and materials options will carry over the estimated costs as real costs. You may want to use the 'Create with materials only' option and then book labour in when it is used on the job sheet.  You can also raise purchase orders with material items from within the activity tab of the job sheet. This will ensure materials are not double booked.

When you look at the details tab you will begin to see actual costs appearing in the right-hand blue box.

Click on the I button at the bottom to see a full breakdown of where costs are calculated from.

When a material item is added to a job it will first use the cost on the job, then the purchase order cost and finally the purchase invoice value.

The costing method button on the 'Details' tab, allows you to select at what point a cost is shown. The default value will show them straight away when added to a job but you can omit costs until purchase invoices are received.

Billing – Raising Invoices

The key to seeing actual margins is raising sales invoices. Again this can be raised from several places.

You can raise the invoice from the quote with various options (full value, selected items, blank) by going to activity > invoices > new.

You can raise invoices from the project module by going to the Job costing > Charges then click on 'Create an invoice'.

You can raise an invoice from the job sheet by going to Activity > Invoices and creating a new invoice. But this way you will need to invoice the value of the job sheet (which could be different to the quoted value) or raise a blank invoice and add your own value.

Analysis – Reviewing Margin & Project Map

When you have raised quotes, jobs, purchase orders and sales invoices you will get a detailed breakdown of margins on the 'Details' tab of the project.

You can also click on the 'Project map' tab to see how many items are linked within the project.

At any time you can double-click on any of the boxes to view the item in question.