Creating, modifying and deleting projects

You can create two types of projects in Scoro:

• One-off projects
• Retainers

This article will walk you through a one-off project setup. If you’re working on retainer projects, check out our retainer management article in Scoro.

1. Creating a new project

You can create a new one-off project from scratch or from a quote. 

• From scratch – add a new project from any view in Scoro using the quick action buttons in the top right corner. Alternatively, open the Project module and click the New button there.
  
• From quote – first, compile a quote and then turn this into a project. You can find detailed instructions on how to do that in our article Using quotes for price proposals and budgeting.

Whichever approach you take, you will end up in the project modify view, where you can specify all the project details and set up the budget. Let's dive into it!

1.1. Adding project data

The left-hand side is home to all general project settings and data, such as the project name, start, and due date, status, etc. You can assign each (type of) project a different color to make it easier to distinguish it in lists. 

Use the description field to share information with the project members and to document any special agreements or terms and conditions.

Under Project members, mark the names of the team members who will participate to ensure they have proper access to all project-related information. 

Tick the Members only box if the project should not be accessible to anyone outside of the project members. If you don’t tick that box, the project can be accessed by all users with the right to view other projects. This right can be granted or limited by the site administrator with the help of permission sets.

If you want to share a project between multiple entities, tick the Shared between entities checkbox and select the necessary entities if you have more than two.

1.2. Setting the budget

What you see on the right-hand side of the project modify view depends on the subscription you have. Simpler plans support only one-off projects and don’t include project budgets. Higher plans support both one-off projects as well as retainers and include a separate Budget and pricing section, which lets you set the budget for the project. You can check the features included in your package from here. 

For one-off projects, you can choose between three different budget-setting methods:

• Set manually – lets you define the budget manually. You can track either time, money, or both simultaneously. If you don’t want to track both, simply leave the irrelevant field empty.
  
  
  • Total hours – use this field to set a time budget, i.e. many hours worth of work you will do for the client. This way you can monitor logged hours against this budgeted total as the project progresses to avoid overservicing and negotiate more hours with the client when needed.
  • Total budget – this is your monetary budget, i.e. the sum you expect to receive from the client for the work you do. As the project progresses, you can track how much of it you have already earned based on the work you’ve completed.
  • You can also define the cost budget for by enabling the Add estimated costs toggle. This way, you can also track your actual internal and external costs against the estimates to see if you manage to stick to the expected profit margins.
    
• Quoted – if you created the project from a quote, Scoro will fill in the budget fields based on the quote, including the costs. If you don’t want to use the quoted values, you can override them by manually setting the budget.
  
  
• Detailed – you can create a more detailed budget under the Budgets module and link it to the project here. Use the two autosuggest fields to link the relevant budgets.
  
  
• The Income field shows only the budgets based on sales documents
• The Cost field shows the budgets based on purchase documents. Read more about creating a detailed budget.
  

The Count pass-through cost as revenue toggle is relevant for you if you outsource services (e.g. use freelancers, print project-related materials, etc). It determines how Earned revenue is calculated on the project summary bar.

• When enabled, outsourced services are included in revenue at their full selling price
• When disabled, only the margin is counted as revenue 

In the Pricing section, you can decide which price list to apply and which selling prices to use for revenue calculation.

• Role prices – logged hours are multiplied by the selling price set for the user role to which the team member who performed the work is assigned. Opt for role prices if your hourly selling price depends on who delivers the work.
  • For example: a Senior Copywriter logs 10 hours of work. The selling price of a Senior Copywriter is 120 EUR/hour. The resulting revenue is 10 x 120 = 1200 EUR.
• Service prices – the logged hours are multiplied by the service's selling price linked with the activity type. Opt for service prices if your hourly selling price depends on the service, not the person who delivers the work.
  • For example: a Senior Copywriter logs 10 hours of work. The selling price of the copywriting service is 100 EUR/hour. The resulting revenue is 10 x 100 = 1000 EUR.

If you created the project from the quote, this section is already prefilled based on the data on the quote.

1.3. Phases and milestones

Adding phases and milestones to your project at this stage is also possible. 

Use phases to structure your project into goal-oriented sections. If you’ve set up task bundles, you can link them with phases in the project view.

You can also effortlessly set up a waterfall project using the Back-to-back phases toggle switch. It automatically creates finish-to-start dependencies between project phases and milestones. The length of the dependent phases can later be easily adjusted on the project Gantt chart. With the toggle-off, you can manually define each phase's start day and milestone.

You can also add milestones to indicate significant checkpoints in the project. These help track progress and make sure that important steps are completed on time. 

Setting up phases and milestones is an optional step. If you skip it, you can effortlessly set up the phases and milestones later in on the Gantt chart as well.

2. Project templates

When adding a new project, you can also save it as a template for similar future projects. You can read more about project templates from here.

3. Modifying and deleting a project

If you're in the project list view, click on the project number or the briefcase icon to enter the modify view.

If you're in the project detailed view, click the Modify button to modify the project.

If you want just to update the project start and end date, you can do so directly from the project header without going into the modify view:

1. Click on the project time frame dates
2. Select the new project start or end dates
3. If you've already planned out some project tasks, scoped out resources, and placed some bookings before the project timeline changes, tick the Bookings and Phases and tasks to shift these items according to the new project start date while keeping the same spacing between all items.

The new start and due dates for the shifted phases and tasks may fall on weekends, depending on your settings under Settings > Work and projects > Projects:

• If weekends are included in the workweek, tasks and phases can fall on the weekends.
• If weekends are excluded, the dates will move to the nearest weekday (Saturday to Friday, Sunday to Monday).

4. Deleting a project

To delete the project:

1. In the project detailed view, click the Modify button
2. Click the Delete button in the upper right corner and confirm your choice.

5. Personal projects

If you wish to manage personal information and keep it private, it's possible to create personal projects in Scoro. These are strictly personal, and work-related projects should not be marked as Personal.

Note! If your site does not allow creating personal projects, change the settings of your site under Settings > Work and projects > Projects and activate the setting Use personal projects, or turn to your site administrator. 

If you wish to create a personal event in the calendar or add a personal task, simply mark it as Personal or link it to your personal project.

Note! Personal activities are not work-related and will not be counted as such in reporting. Other users and administrators only see the status of these activities and the title Personal, unless they are participants of your personal project. 

You can see your own personal events in the work report using the Event/task type filter. 

6. Project tags

Projects can have tags that make filtering and reporting easier.

You can create, modify, and delete project tags under Settings > Site settings > Tags and relations.