Project Management

User Manuals | Billing | Project Management

Introduction

Managing complex Projects, which include various activities, is easily done using RangerMSP Contracts.

You can create multiple Project Contracts for each Account, and they can all be Active at the same time. This enables you to manage multiple projects for the same Account at the same time.

For every Project Contract, you can create related Tickets, To-dos, Tasks, Appointments and Charges which will all be tracked under that Contract, allowing you to view all open issues for the project, activity history, and more.

How is it Done?

For example, setting up a new server is a complicated project which demands performing several tasks in order to complete the project:

• Creating the Project
  Create a new Contract for this project, set it as a Project and add as many tickets (i.e. complex tasks) as you need: a ticket for the building phase, a ticket for post config, a ticket for firewall config, etc. You may also add tasks for smaller items which need to be done within this ticket. Note that you may also use RangerMSP tasks for simple task management directly within the Contract, and you can add as many tasks as you need for each project from the Contract's Pending tab.
  To easily create the activities (tickets, tasks and appointments), you may also use activity templates. This feature allows you to set up a predefined activities template, and create the activities under the contract's Pending tab in a click.
  To use activity templates for this purpose, you should create a Contract template, add the activities as entries to this template and then apply this template for your project. You can read more about using this feature in the Activity Templates user guide.

• Tracking
  In order to track all open items for the project, you can view the Contract's Pending tab and Tickets tab to see all pending Tasks, Appointments and Tickets. You can also view the project's activity history, including Tickets, Charges, History Notes, related Documents (and emails), and more in the Contract's History tab.

• Logging Charges
  When you need to log the work performed, parts used, etc. you can add charges to the ticket (which will be logged under the project's contract since the ticket is related to this contract), or to the contract. This way you can easily bill the customer for all work performed for this project in a single Invoice/Charge report.

• Reports
  There are also several other reports which can help you analyze activity at the project (i.e. contract) level, or summarize information, such as view all the Charges for a Contract, or report all open Tickets, Tasks, and Appointment for the Contract, all parts used for the project, etc.

Project Contracts are treated as one-off Contracts and therefore:

• Project Contracts will not be included when you renew all Contracts for next month using the Batch Copy Contracts wizard.

• Project Contracts can be excluded when invoicing using QuickBooks or Xero Link. This way you can invoice Project Contract when the project is complete or when it reaches a certain milestone without having to worry that it will get invoiced as part of the regular batch invoicing procedure.
  To configure the default setting visit the QuickBooks (or Xero) tab under the Tools > Options window and select whether to include Project Contracts or not. You can also control it each time you batch invoice.

See Also

• Activity Templates
• Contracts
• Reports