Projects & Time Tracking
Track project time, budgets, and generate invoices from billable hours.
Projects
Projects let you track time and budget for client work.
Project Fields
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Project name |
| Client | Associated contact |
| Status | Active, Completed, Archived |
| Budget | Total budget for the project |
| Hourly Rate | Default rate for time entries |
| Start / End Date | Project timeline |
Time Entries
Log time against projects from the project detail page.
Each time entry includes:
- Date — When the work was done
- Description — What was worked on
- Duration — Hours and minutes
- Billable — Whether this time is billable
Generating Invoices
From Projects → Milestones, open Generate Invoice (progress invoice) to bill:
- Unbilled billable time (hourly projects), remaining milestone amounts, or a percentage of a fixed price
- Optionally, registered billable expenses
The invoice is created as a draft. Line tax uses the project contact’s default tax rate (Contacts → Bookkeeping), or no tax if the contact is tax-exempt / has no default — the same rule as Sales → New Invoice. Send the draft from Sales → Invoices to post the ledger.
The project must have an associated contact to generate invoices.
Billable expenses
A supplier's cost can be passed on to the project's customer: register the bill line as a billable expense, with a markup if you charge one, and Generate Invoice adds it at cost plus the markup. Ask ARIA "Bill line 2 of BILL-00031 to the Acme website project at 15% markup", or use the API (POST /api/v1/projects/{id}/billable-items).
- Only an approved bill's lines can be registered (not a draft, void or trashed bill); expense-claim lines need an approved or paid claim, and journal lines a posted journal.
- A line can be on one project only. Registering it again on the same project changes its markup until it is invoiced; after that it cannot be changed.
- Registering posts nothing: the cost is already in your books through the bill. The invoice bills it.
Budget Tracking
The project page shows:
- Total Hours — Sum of all logged time
- Total Billed — Sum of all invoiced amounts
- Budget Used — Percentage of budget consumed