Time entries which have been submitted for approval or final invoicing by the user who created them are indicated with a padlock-and-key icon. The key indicates that the time entry can be “unlocked” by “un-submitting” the corresponding date.

During the time and expense approvals process, supervisors can mark time entries and expense claims as requiring attention by the user who created them. The supervisor will usually attach a note to this status outlining the nature of the clarification that needs to be made. Entries requiring attention can be edited, provided the Timesheet user first “un-submits” the relevant date(s).

When a time entry or expense claim has been approved by a supervisor through the Time & Expense Approvals mode of the Projects application tab, it will appear with a padlock icon. Time entries and expense claims which have been approved cannot be edited in the Timesheet application tab at all, but can be modified in Invoice Approvals.

Declined time entries have been rejected and cannot be approved for invoicing. They will, however, still be included in dashboard and tabular reporting.

An Entity is your distinct business or organization. All Clients, Resources, Projects, etc. are nested beneath a parent Entity. Most users will only have one Entity in their Navigation Tree, but some customers may need to define multiple Entities to manage larger corporate structures.

Each Client represents one customer. All activity for that customer is nested below the Client level. Internal activities or activities shared amongst multiple customers are grouped under separate pseudo-Clients named “[Internal Activities]” and “[Shared Projects]” respectively.

Portfolios are optional groupings of related Projects. A Portfolio is entirely independent of your Clients; Projects carried out for different Clients can be grouped under the same Portfolio.

A Project is an activity that you need to measure. It will usually comprise multiple related Tasks and may have a timeframe and/or budget against which you measure progress. Projects may be associated with one or more Clients, Portfolios and/or Assets, but can be associated with only one Contract and/or Workgroup.

Tasks are the individual activities that make up a Project. Typical attributes are that each “belongs” to a single job function (“role”) and may require one or more specific skills. Task dependency—such as when one Task cannot be started before another has finished—is managed in the Project Scheduling mode of the Projects application tab.

Related Tasks can be defined as Sub-Tasks within a Task Group. This is particularly useful when a Task requires the skills of several Resources, requiring it to be split into separate Sub-Tasks so that each can be allocated to an appropriately-skilled Resource.

Similar to Task Groups, Project managers may define certain Tasks as able to have Jobs created under them. These accommodate Work Orders, Job Sheets or other similar short-term, one-off field activities which would be impractical to create and manage through the Project Management module. Jobs can be added to these Tasks by Timesheet users directly in the Timesheet module.

Your Resources are the staff, contractors and equipment required to carry out Tasks. Each Resource is capable of performing one or more roles (broad job functions), and may have specific skills to allow ProjectPartner to recommend them as suitable when scheduling Projects’ Tasks.

Your Resources belong to Workgroups, which are used to manage Resources’ workloads. Supervisors or team leaders can only assign work to those Resources in their Workgroup. Resources can be assigned to different Workgroups at different times, but can only be a member of one Workgroup on any given date. Projects may optionally also be associated with a single Workgroup.

Suppliers are external or subsidiary organizations to which you subcontract certain kinds of work on an arms-length basis. Suppliers have Contracts for the provision of goods or services required for your Projects.

Suppliers specify their pricing as Contracts; their charge price becomes your cost price. Contracts manage the relationship between their ProjectPartner charge rates and your ProjectPartner cost rates. Projects may be associated with one Contract only.

Infrastructure managers may choose to associate Projects with Assets. Functionally, these work the same way as Clients and Portfolios, and effectively provide another dimension for analysis. Projects may optionally be associated with one or more Assets.

Your saved Dashboards and Reports parameters are organized within Report Groups based on the same core Report or Dashboard type.

Saved Dashboards and Report settings make running regular reports on updated data easy. Including relative timeframes—like “Current Fiscal Year” or “Previous Month”—or specific start and end dates in your Reports’ settings means those Reports will always automatically select the data you need.

These saved Dashboards and Reports can be even more useful within your organization by making them Shared Reports. The Navigation Tree indicates which Reports are shared with you by your colleagues, and those which you’ve created and are sharing with colleagues.

The many customization options in the Settings module are organized into Settings Groups. These include related pieces of information which are unique to your ProjectPartner setup.