When you have completed all work on a project or simply will no longer be logging hours on a project, you have the option to close it.
When you want to close a project, it is also always advisable to enter an end date for your subscription services, so they do not keep running in the background and keep reappearing in your invoicing module. Also always check whether the hours spent on the project have been submitted and approved, so you can invoice them or write them off if needed.
Effects of closing projects, by invoice method:
Within a project, you can create different types of services: Fixed Price, Subscription, or Time and Expenses. But what does closing your project(s) do to the different services in combination with the invoicing module? For example, are they still shown under 'to be invoiced' if something is ready to be invoiced on that service?
Fixed price
When a Fixed Price is ready under 'to be invoiced' and the project is closed, the Fixed Price will remain under 'ready'. If you no longer want to invoice it, you can write off this service. In the 'to be invoiced' overview, you can see that the project is closed because it shows (closed) after it.
If the Fixed Price service on the project has no invoice date set, or has a future date, it will remain under 'not ready', even when the project is closed.
Therefore, always make sure your fixed price services have an invoice date set, have been invoiced, or have been written off.
Subscription
When a project contains Subscription services with amounts that are 'ready' and the project is closed, nothing will be shown under 'to be invoiced' anymore. When the closed project becomes active again, everything will retroactively become 'ready', as the services should be.
Example: Suppose today is April 16, 2021, and you have a monthly subscription with a start date of March 1, 2021, with nothing yet invoiced. Both March and April are ready under 'to be invoiced'. The project is then closed. When you go to 'to be invoiced', nothing is ready anymore — not even the 'March' cycle.
Time and Expenses
When hours are ready under 'to be invoiced' and the project is closed, those hours remain under 'ready' — they do not disappear. If you no longer want to invoice these hours, it is recommended to write them off, so you have a clean 'to be invoiced' overview and the hours are no longer billable; after all, you are not going to invoice them. In the 'to be invoiced' overview, you can see that the project is closed because it shows (closed) after it.
When hours are scheduled in the future or have not yet been fully approved to be 'ready', those hours will remain there even when the project is closed.
Please note:
You cannot close a project when there are still assignments scheduled in the current week or in the future. Resolve this by removing them under the Planning tab on the project.
Once you have closed the project, it is no longer possible to log hours on it. Even if there are still active services on the project, you cannot log any more hours on it. Resolve this by setting the project back to active (temporarily).
Once you have closed the project, it is also not possible to modify or delete hours logged on the project. Resolve this by setting the project back to active (temporarily).
When a project is pending a sales process, that project cannot be closed.
Results of closed projects
It is important to close your projects so you always have an accurate overview of your ongoing projects and work in progress. The work in progress is removed as soon as you close a project. This makes it easy to track whether you stayed within your budgets for your closed projects.
Simplicate offers the option to filter by active and closed projects in various reports. For example, in the Project result report, you can filter by active or closed projects. In the Current result PROJECT RESULT column, you can see the result of closed projects (Invoiced revenue - Purchase costs spent - Employee cost price):
Do you use the Insights module? Then via Projects - Result per project, you have a detailed overview of all closed projects with the project result (both in € and in %):
