About estimating and managing projects with Ajera
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With Ajera, growing firms can quickly produce accurate estimates and complete projects on time and within budget.
You can quickly estimate projects for proposals and later refine the estimates to working budgets and schedules after the contract is won. In addition, you have instant access to project-specific reports.
Using Business Development, you can also track and analyze your marketing efforts.
Here are some typical tasks that you may perform to guide your project from a proposal to a completed job:
Set up the project
Depending on what your company sets up as a standard practice, you add projects by:
Begin the budget
You can begin by indicating that you are working on a proposal and that your firm has not yet won the contract for the job.
With the project open in the Project Command Center, on the Project Info tab > General subtab, select Preliminary in the Status field.
| Note: | A status of Preliminary allows you to enter your marketing time to the project. If you want to ensure that no time is entered to the project until the contract is won, change the status to Hold. |
You are now ready to begin working on an estimate in one of these ways:
Win the job
You win the contract.
Change the status of your project to Active. With the project open in the Project Command Center, on the Project Info tab > General subtab, select Active in the Status field.
If, based on your estimate, you choose not to enter a bid for the project, or if your firm is not awarded the work, you can change the status to Closed.
Manage the project
You are now ready to produce a working budget and schedule for your project:
- Refine and expand on the budgeting information you already entered to produce the estimate. Change information as your project changes.
- If you know the employees or employee types working on the project, assign them to the appropriate phase or task.
- Produce a schedule for project.
- Update the RPC % Complete for each phase.
- Ensure that the status of each phase remains correct. For example, assign a status of Work Hold to a phase if it is no longer available for time entry.
When you are finished budgeting the project, and if you no longer want to allow any changes to it, click the Final Budget button on the Manage tab of the Project Command Center. You can still add or change schedules or resources assignments when the budget is final.
Review the client invoice
When a client invoice is ready for review before billing, you can use billing review stages to help move the invoice smoothly through the review process, if the invoice is based on a standard invoice format or on a custom design created with the Client Invoice Designer.
A billing review stage consists of notes and a descriptive name that indicates where an invoice is in the review. Your billing review stages should mirror the ones used at your firm.
During billing review, you preview the invoice from the Client Invoices window or from the Project Command Center. Enter your notes and select the next billing review stage when finished. Ajera can notify the next reviewer that the invoice is ready, and the review process continues as needed.
When you print the invoice as final, the billing review stage automatically updates to Final.
Close the project
After you have finally billed a project, be sure to enter actual complete dates and other project notes according to your company's policy. In this way, you can better evaluate this project for future estimating and marketing purposes.
