Projects

A project is one job. Projects is a screen in the main nav, above Estimates — open one and the estimate, its change orders, every invoice and what you owe your subs are all in a single view.

#What a Project Is

A project is the work, not the paperwork. The Henderson kitchen is one project. The estimate you sent in March, the invoice that billed it, the change order for the tile upgrade signed onto that invoice, and the second invoice for the powder room they added in July are all filed under it.

A project is optional. Most work is a single job in itself — one visit, one price, one bill — and never needs one, so a new estimate or invoice belongs to no project unless you say otherwise. When work does belong together, it goes on exactly one project; a document is never on two.

#Creating a Project

A project is only ever created because you asked for one, and it is always given a name you typed. There are three ways in.

New Project on the Projects screen creates one up front. Give it a name — "Henderson kitchen" — and start adding work to it.

The field on a new estimate or invoice reads "No Project" to begin with. Leave it alone for ordinary one-off work, or pick an existing project to file the document under it. Picking one also addresses the document to that project's client and job site, so you are not typing them twice.

Add to project, on a document you have already sent or been paid for. Open it, choose Add to project, and either pick an existing job or name a new one. This is how a $200 repair that turns into a bathroom remodel becomes a job without you having to have known up front.

To rename a project, open it and click Rename in the action bar.

#The Numbers on a Project

Three figures sit at the top of every project.

Invoiced, Collected and Outstanding are all added up from the documents in the project. Nothing here is typed in and nothing is stored, so the three always agree with each other and with the documents themselves. Sign a change order and Invoiced moves; record a payment and Collected moves.

#Project Statuses

A project reads as Lead, Active, On hold, Complete, Lost or Archived. Jobkore picks one automatically from the documents, and you can override it with Active, On hold, Complete or Lost — picking Automatic hands the decision back. Lead and Archived are not yours to set: Lead means nothing has been accepted or sent yet, and Archived is its own action.

The automatic status reads Complete only when every invoice is paid, every scheduled payment is paid and no change order is still waiting on a client. Anything short of that reads Active. A project wrongly shown as finished is the one error you might never go looking for, so the default errs the other way.

On hold only ever appears because you set it — nothing in the documents produces it. A status you set by hand is kept until you change it or pick Automatic, the first option in the list: a project marked Complete with an unpaid invoice stays Complete, and the figures beside it still show the balance.

The Projects list has two tabs, Current and Archived, with a search box above them. On the Current tab you can also filter by status — All Statuses, or one of Lead, Active, On hold, Complete and Lost — and by client once at least one project has one.

#Documents on a Project

Below the numbers, the project lists its estimates and its invoices, each with its status and amount. It is the fastest route back to a document when you know the job but not the invoice number. Change orders do not appear as their own rows, because they are not documents — each one lives on the invoice it was signed onto.

Each row carries a trash icon that takes that document back out of the job. It removes the link and nothing else — the estimate or invoice keeps its number, its status and everything that has been paid against it, and it is still in your Estimates or Invoices list afterwards. The same thing is on the document itself as Remove from Project; either end works.

You can also move a document from one project to another, at any time, using the same Add to project action. Filing work under a different folder changes no money and cancels no agreement.

#Subs on a Project

A project carries a Subcontractors card showing what the job owes in total — Agreed, Paid and Owed — and underneath it every subcontractor on that job by name, with their trade and what you owe each one. Expand one to see the work agreed, record a payment, correct an amount or keep their paperwork.

You add a subcontractor to the job itself, with an Add Subcontractor row on the card when the job has none yet. There is nothing to tag and nothing to label on a document.

Those figures are for this project only, not that sub's lifetime balance across your other work. A sub's name and the rate you agreed with them never appear on an estimate, an invoice, a PDF or a share link. See Subs.

#Archiving or Deleting a Project

When a job is done and settled, archive it. It moves out of your current projects into the Archived tab, and its documents are untouched — every estimate and invoice stays exactly where it was, no number changes, and you can restore it at any time.

Archiving does not close anything out. If you are still owed money, the balance and the invoice are unchanged.

A project you made by mistake can be deleted outright, as long as nothing has been filed under it — no documents and no subcontractors. The project page offers one action that reads Delete while the project is empty and Archive once it holds work, so you are never offered an ending that would take something with it. To empty a project first, take its documents back out one at a time.