Project Templates and Common Tasks: General Information

In MYOB Advanced, you can create project templates from scratch by adding every detail that you think will be required for a typical project of specific type. Alternatively, you can create a template based on an existing project which you think is a typical representative of projects of specific type.

When users create projects based on the templates, they can change any settings for particular projects—templates are used only to provide the default settings, thus making the project creation easier for users.

Learning Objectives

You will learn how to do the following:

Create a project template
Create a common task
Create a project based on the project template
Add a task to the project by using the common task

Applicable Scenarios

You create project templates and common tasks if you need to ease the creation of typical projects and typical tasks for existing projects, respectively.

Templates Created from Existing Projects

You can create a template based on an existing project. On the Projects (PM301000) form, select a project that is a typical project of specific type and click Create Template on the More menu. A template will be created with all the tasks that were included in the project. You can modify the created template as you want. You can delete some of the tasks and add new tasks.

Templates from Scratch

A project template is an entity that you select when creating a new project to auto-populate the budget, settings, and attributes of the project with default values that are appropriate for projects of the type. (You can override these values, if needed.) You can create project templates from scratch by using the Project Templates (PM208000) form.

When you create a project template, you can specify as many settings as you want, including the following:

General information: The broad information about the projects, including the default account and subaccount, default accrual account and subaccounts, and billing period. In the Status box on the Summary area of the form, you can see whether the specific project template is available for creating new projects. You can create projects only by using project templates with the Active status.
Visibility settings: The list of functional areas where the projects based on this template will be visible.
Template tasks: The tasks to be included in the projects based on this template. Tasks for the project template can be added by using the Project Template Tasks (PM208010) form.
List of employees: The employees who will work on the projects and the project manager who will be monitoring projects of the type. You also specify labor items and hourly rates for employees working on this project. Also, you can specify whether only the listed employees can work for the project.
List of equipment: The equipment to be used for the projects with appropriate non-stock items designating setup, run, and suspend rates and respective prices specific for projects of the type. You can specify whether only the listed equipment can be used for these projects.
Notes and files: Supplementary documents and notes to be provided with a project created based on the template. If the Project Quotes feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form, files and notes attached to a project template are also copied to the projects that are created from project quotes based on this project template.

Template Tasks and Common Tasks

A project template may include tasks that are actually templates of tasks that can be included in projects based on the template. You can add task templates to the project template.

You add the tasks to the project template and specify the settings for these tasks by using the Project Template Tasks (PM208010) form. When you create a new template task, you can specify whether it is automatically included in all projects based on the project template.

Template task settings include the following:

General settings are overall information about the task, including approver, tax category, default subaccount, and billing period. The general settings also include Visibility Settings, the list of functional areas in which this project task must be visible. You can make tasks visible only in the functional areas in which the parent project is visible—the scope for the task cannot be wider than the scope for the project.
Recurring billing can be used to implement the flat-price scenario with recurring payments when your future project uses flat rates for services or products you provide to your customer regularly. For more information about recurring billing, see Project Billing: Recurring Billing.
Notes and files: Supplementary documents and notes to be provided with a project task created based on this template task. If the Project Quotes feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form, files and notes attached to a project template are also copied to the project tasks added to project quotes based on this project template.

When a user creates a new project based on a project template, the user can add to the new project any of the tasks associated with this project template and any of the existing common tasks.

Common tasks are also templates of tasks, but they are not linked to any specific project template and can be added to any new or existing project. You create common tasks on the Common Tasks (PM208030) form. Generally, you provide the same types of settings for common tasks as for the template tasks: general, budget, and recurring billing settings.