Organize related projects

Often, you'll have more than one project that you're working on for the same customer. Or, a single project might consist of several phases or milestones.

In the Projects application, you have the flexibility to organize projects hierarchically into parent and child projects (up to 5 levels deep) and see those relationships immediately reflected on the Projects list. Plus, the relationships that you set up allow you to easily invoice parts of the project together to suit how the customer wants to be billed.

The parent project at the top of a hierarchy is called the root project.
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Projects

User type

Business, Employee, Project Manager, and Warehouse
Permissions

Projects: List and View

View related projects in the Projects list

By default, the Projects list uses icons and indentation to show you how projects are related. You might have single-level projects or multi-level projects with up to 5 indented levels.

  1. Go to Projects > All > Projects.
  2. In the Projects list, select Display hierarchy at the top of the window, if it isn't already selected.

Organize a project into a hierarchy

Start by mapping out how you want to organize the project.

Organizing a project into a hierarchy has two main benefits:

  • You can easily see how projects are organized.
  • You get enhanced billing flexibility, with the option to send a single invoice that includes child projects broken out.

For this reason, the hierarchy of a project typically reflects both your agreement with the customer and how you want the project to be invoiced. Although most projects have only 3 levels or fewer, you can create projects with up to 5 levels.

Build your hierarchy

Once you've decided how you want your project to be organized, you can build up your hierarchy. For each child project, you can control where it fits in the hierarchy by choosing its parent project. In the Projects list, the child project will be indented below its parent project.

Every hierarchy has a parent project at the top of the hierarchy. This top level parent project is called the root project.

A project can be both a parent and a child (except for the root project, which cannot be a child to any other project). In the following example, Proj 120 is the child of Proj 100, and it is the parent of Proj 120B.

Example: Proj 100 has three levels:

  • Parent project (root project): Proj 100 is the top level parent project in the hierarchy.
  • 2nd level child projects: Proj 110, Proj 120, and Proj 130 are child projects that represent the phases of this project. In the settings for the child projects, Proj 100 was selected as the Parent Project.
  • 3rd level child project: Proj 120B is a change order that is a child project of Proj 120. In the settings for Proj 120B, Proj 120 was selected as the Parent Project.

Create a subproject in a hierarchy

In a project hierarchy, subprojects are also known as child projects.

  1. Go to Projects > All > Projects.

  2. Find the project that you want to make a child project.

    If the project doesn't exist, you can create it.

  3. Select More actions > Edit at the end of the row.

  4. On the Project Information page, select the Parent Project.
  5. Optional: Select the Invoice with Parent to include the child project in invoices generated for the parent.

  6. Select the Customer for the project.

    You are required to select a customer for the project. For the child project to be invoiced with the parent project, you must select the same customer.

  1. Go to Projects > All > Projects.

  2. Find the project that you want to make a child project.

    If the project doesn't exist, you can create it.

  3. Select the Edit link to the left of the project.
  4. On the Project Information page, select the Parent Project.
  5. Optional: Select the Invoice with Parent to include the child project in invoices generated for the parent.

  6. Select the Customer for the project.

    You are required to select a customer for the project. For the child project to be invoiced with the parent project, you must select the same customer.

Track time, expenses, and progress for hierarchy projects

Although parent and child projects can be invoiced together, they are treated separately when it comes to tracking time, expenses, and other activity.

This means that:

  • When a transaction is posted for a child project (such as a time entry or expense), the transaction belongs only to the child project.
  • Activity on the child project isn't reflected in the parent project. For example, the Project Summary for the parent project won't include any time submitted for child projects