Project

A project is a record that maintains the details of your project and milestones that you have set for any undertaking. The project record can be linked in quotations, sales orders, delivery notes, sales invoices, purchase requests, purchase orders, and purchase invoices. This way you can keep track of all the activities that happen around this project.

Task

Every project is broken into tasks and each task is allocated to a resource. Some ERP software allows you to create and allocate a task independently of a project. Tasks are an incredibly powerful tool for organizing and breaking down your project into bite-sized, doable missions for your team. Most ERP systems will allow you to set priority, start and end dates, dependent tasks, assign departments and users, expense claims, etc.

Timesheet

A timesheet is a consolidated document that helps your team track their working hours, broken down by how much time was spent on which task (and what activity). These details can help gauge individual productivity, reduce overheads, and set the right expectations for various tasks. You can create timesheets to track billable work for customers. These timesheets can be tracked against the project and tasks so that you can get reports on how much time was spent on each task or project.

Project Cost

Each project—which comprises tasks—is bound to cost a certain amount of money. To track the cost of a project (primarily considering services), timesheets are evaluated for the actual time spent on each task/project. This is only possible if timesheets are accurately tracked. This is especially helpful in monitoring the budget for the project.

Project Profitability

A project is rarely linear. Throughout each project, new developments take place. These can lead to more investment in terms of time, money, material, etc. Based on all the income and expense entries against the project, you can generate a profitability analysis report for a project. The profitability of a project is the difference between the revenue generated from a project, versus the costs associated with it. This helps you stay on track and ensure you don’t overspend.