Create & plan a project

A project holds everything about a job: its phases, its budget and fees, the team assigned to it, and the time and expenses logged against it. Building it out fully up front is what makes your timesheets, staffing, and reports accurate later.

Who can create projects

You can create and edit projects if you’re an Admin, or if you have both the Create projects and Edit all projects permissions. See Set up your firm for how permissions work.

1. Start a new project

Go to Projects from the main menu and click New project in the upper-right corner. Then choose how to build it:

• Start from scratch — an empty project you’ll fill in yourself.
• Use a template — pre-fills phases, budgets, roles, and rates from a template. On the Grow plan, Monograph also suggests team members for each role (see Role recommendations).
• Auto-generate from contract — upload a PDF and let Monograph read the phases, budgets, and roles from it. See Auto-generate a budget from a contract.

Click Next, then enter the basics:

1. Client — select an existing client or add a new one.

2. Project name — what the project is called. You can change this later.

3. Category — one or more project types (for example, Residential, Single-family). Categories power filtering and reporting later.

4. Number (optional) and Color — a reference number and a color to identify the project.

5. Project start date — when the project begins.

6. Fee type — Billable (billed to a client) or Non-billable (for example, an internal project).

Click Create. Monograph opens the project’s Budget page, where you’ll add phases, budgets, and your team.

2. Add phases and budgets

Phases break the work into stages you can plan and bill against — for example Schematic Design, Design Development, and Construction Documents. Every project needs phases: they’re what make timesheets, staffing, and reports work.

On the Budget page, use the Select a phase dropdown to add each phase. For each one, set:

• Date range — a start and end date (required for every phase). For an ongoing phase, set the end date well into the future.
• Linked phase — link a phase to the one before it so its dates shift automatically when the earlier phase moves. See Phases & timeline.
• Fee type — Fixed or Hourly. This affects how the phase is budgeted and invoiced; see Phases & timeline.
• Budget — the phase’s budget as a dollar amount, or as a percent of your Service Fee. Entering one calculates the other.

Save every phase

Click Save on each phase as you finish it. Any phase you leave unsaved when you leave the Budget page will be erased.

For how fees roll up into your Service Fee and Total Project Fees — and how to add consultant and expense budgets — see Budgets & fees.

3. Assign your team

Add the people who’ll work on each phase so Monograph can staff the project and compare planned hours against logged time.

1. On a phase, click Show assigned team to expand it.

2. Use the + Assign team member dropdown to add a person. If they have a default role and rate, it fills in automatically; if not, you’ll be prompted to choose a role and billable rate.

3. Enter planned hours for each team member — either a number of hours or a percent of the phase budget. These hours generate the person’s allocations in Staffing.

4. To put someone on every phase, click the ⋯ menu next to their name and choose Assign to all phases. You’ll still enter hours per phase.

Always set planned hours

Planned hours are what let Monograph tell you whether someone is over- or under-loaded and power the Profit and Team Forecast reports. If you’re not sure how to split them, use the percent option to divide the phase evenly — for four people, give each 25%.

Caution

A phase with a $0.00 budget can’t have team members assigned — give it a budget first. And once someone logs time to a phase, their role and rate on that phase can no longer be changed or removed.

Role recommendations

On the Grow plan, creating a project from a template shows a banner with suggested team members for each open role, based on who has worked similar categories and roles before and who has availability.

1. Review the suggestions. Use the dropdown to swap anyone out — the hours shown are each person’s available time over the project.

2. Click Apply to add the selected people to every phase at the matching role and rate, or Dismiss to ignore them.

Caution

Applying recommendations replaces any team members you’ve already assigned. Once dismissed, recommendations can’t be regenerated without recreating the project, and they clear automatically once anyone logs time.

4. Add project details

Open the Details page from the project sub-menu to store the rest of the project’s information. Much of it appears on the project’s Overview page and on invoices.

• Basic info — name, number, color, project type, categories, and client. You can also add invoice recipients, the project address that appears on invoices, and free-form notes (a good place for payment method, project source, or retainer terms).
• Project size — gross/net square footage and construction cost. See Budgets & fees.
• Consultant collaboration — invite consultants to collaborate and set up bill reminders.
• Share link — turn on a free, read-only link showing the project’s schedule (phases and milestones). It never exposes financial data, and you can switch it off anytime. See Phases & timeline.

Note

Once an invoice has been sent, the client on a project is locked and can’t be swapped. Changing the client later only affects invoices created from that point on.

5. Save it as a template

Once a project is fully built out, save it as a template so you can reuse its phases, budgets, and roles on similar jobs. Templates are the fastest way to start your next project and are what unlock role recommendations.

Next steps

Phases & timelineFixed vs. hourly fees, linked phases, statuses, and the schedule.

Budgets & feesConsultant fees, expense budgets, and additional services.

Milestones & deliverablesTrack key dates and what's due on the project.

Staffing & resourcingBalance your team's workload across projects.