Managing Projects

Projects are a ring-fencing of spend and can be used in a number of ways. They are designed to be used for job costs or project costs. However, if you are a Xero user you can elect to use projects in Zahara with a tracking category in Xero. For each project, you can see the orders and invoices and also set a granular budget. 

First off, head to Business > Projects

Now click ‘New Project’

 

• Give the project a Name and a Code.
• The address can be used for deliveries when raising orders.
• The start and end dates are optional but we recommend you populate them.
• Set the status to active – projects can be disabled/made inactive so no further orders or invoices are assigned to them. 
• Projects Budget – this is a big figure for spend – ie how much in total do you expect to spend on this project? 
• Project Income – perhaps you have a signed contract with the income – you can put it in here.
• Project Manager – you can assign a Project Manager that can be used in approvals.

Now click Add.

From the project list view, you can see the status of projects. To view the contents of a project, click the edit button. Users will need the project edit permission to see inside a project.

If a project doesn’t have a green status icon, it won’t show up in the list view, so make sure any projects you want to show have an enabled status. 

Inside the project, you can set what nominal codes can be used when someone is raising an order against this project. If a budget is created – see the section below – then nominals can be set to the budget. 

You can also head into a division and set the project restrictions. This means if you only want a division to be able to buy against 3 active projects. You can set them in the division. 

Click the Nominal restrictions tab. Switch Nominal Restrictions to On. 

Then click Show nominal codes to select the nominal codes you wish to use for the restrictions.

In the example above, the three green codes will be the only codes available to choose when creating a Purchase and this project is selected. 

• Orders Value – Gross value of all orders raised against the project.
• Invoice Value – Gross value of all invoices raised against the project.
• Projects Accruals – The difference between Orders Value and Invoices Value. This does not include invoices without an order.
• Profit – The difference between the Project Income and Orders Value.

Exporting the project list will calculate the positions for you as well as shown below. There is an additional help article for this. Click here

You may want a granular budget on your project. You can create a budget in Business > Budgets and then assign it to the project. A budget can be based on nominal codes or cost codes (or whatever you have named them to). You can then see the progress of the budget inside the project looking for any overspend. You can also use budget parameters in the approval and workflow processes with the over budget condition.  Please view our Knowledge Base guides on creating Budgets for more information. 

Give the budget a name and then set it to Indefinite.

As you can see we have three different nominal codes where we can spend different amounts.
Click next and commit the changes 

Now go back into the budget and assign it to the project. 

After creating an order with a value, you will see this represented on the project budget preview- this is a good way of seeing simplified spend against nominals without referring to a more in-depth report.