Overview
The Structure tab provides a centralized view of your project’s hierarchy, allowing you to break it down into multiple phases and manage them efficiently. This is especially helpful for projects that follow a parent-child structure, where phases can inherit financial values such as contract amounts and billing percentages from the parent project based on predefined rules. This ensures consistency and reduces manual data entry for large or multi-phase projects.
From this tab, you can create new phases, define contract values, and allocate billing percentages at each level. You also get real-time visibility into key financial and performance metrics, such as Contract Billed, Remaining Contract, Contract Used, Budget Spent, and Total Costs. These insights help you track phase-level progress and make informed decisions to avoid cost overruns or underutilization.
How To
Field Descriptions
| Projects > Project Center > Structure | |
|
Project: Contract Type |
Displays the contract type of the project suc h as Marketing, Overhead, Hourly, Fixed, etc. |
| Status | Displays the status of a project and is editable with changes saved immediately upon selection. The column is visible by default, but you can hide it using the column chooser. When updating the status of a parent project, CORE prompts you to apply the changes to its phases as well. You will require the Allow update security permission to update the status. |
| Percent Complete | Percent complete is the subjective determination of how far along a project or task is. You can update this percent complete value based on how complete the project or task is. For projects, you can calculate this percentage based on the contract amount used or spent and then bill the client accordingly. Note that you are alerted when the Budget Spent % exceeds the project completion percentage (% Complete). A warning icon appears next to the completion value. |
|
Contract: Amount |
Amount of the contract for a project/phase, including services and expenses. It represents the total consideration for a project (billable and non-billable Service Amount + non-billable Expense Amount). You can include or exclude billable expenses and taxes in this amount. When updating the contract amount of a parent project, you will receive a prompt asking whether you want to update the contract amounts of child phases based on their respective % of Project. If you select Yes, CORE then automatically recalculates the child phase contract amounts proportionally, preventing unintended changes and ensuring accurate distribution of the overall contract amount across all project phases. |
| % of Project | Percentage of parent project's contract amount to be used as the contract amount for a phase. It is a calculated field based on the contract amount and can be less than 100% in total. It can be 0% for hourly projects, but not for fixed projects. |
| Billed |
Amount of contract services and expenses that are flagged as billable and have been billed, including WUD and markup. It is calculated as: Billed Expenses Contract + Billed Services Contract |
| Billed Extra |
Amount of extra services and expenses that are flagged as billable and have been billed, including WUD and markup. It is calculated as: Billed Expenses Extra + Billed Services Extra |
| Billed % |
The percentage of the contract value that has been billed. It is calculated as: (Contract Billed / Contract Amount) × 100 |
| Contract Used |
Displays the sum of:
|
| Contract Used % |
Displays the percentage of project completion based on contract amount usage. Calculated as: (Contract Billed + Contract Unbilled) / Contract Amount × 100 |
| Remaining |
Displays unallocated portion of the contract amount after accounting for all billed and unbilled amounts. It is calculated as: Contract Amount - Contract Billed Amount - Contract Unbilled Amount |
| Billed Remaining |
Displays unallocated portion of the contract amount after accounting for all billed amounts. It is calculated as: Contract Amount - Contract Billed Amount |
|
Budget: Amount |
Total amount of the budget for a project or phase. It is calculated as: Budget Services + Budget Expenses + Budget Miscellaneous |
| Spent |
Total budget utilized to date. It is calculated as: Total Service Amount + Total Expense Amount |
| Spent % |
The percentage of the budget utilized. It is calculated as: (Total Service Amount + Total Expense Amount / Total Budget) × 100 |
| Hours | Total hours that have been budgeted for a project or phase. |
| Spent Hours | The total number of hours logged or worked on the project to date, whether approved or not. |
| Spent Hours % |
Percentage of the budgeted hours that have been utilized, whether approved or not. It is calculated as: (Total Service Hours / Total Budget Hours) × 100 |
| Remaining |
Displays a portion of the budget amount that remains to be spent. It is calculated as: Budget Amount - Budget Spent |
|
Unbilled: Hours |
Actual hours entered or recorded for a project or phase, whether billable or non-billable. |
| Services Contract | Amount of contract services that are flagged as billable and have been billed, including WUD. |
| Services Extra | Amount of extra services that are flagged as billable and have been billed, including WUD. |
| Expenses Contract | Amount of contract expenses that are flagged as billable and have been billed, including markup. |
| Expenses Extra | Amount of extra expenses that are flagged as billable and have been billed, including markup. |
| Total | The total value of all services and expenses, including extra. It is flagged as billable but not yet billed. This includes WUD and markup but excludes taxes. |
|
Accounts Receivable: Net Billed with Tax |
Amount of services and expenses that are flagged as billable and have been billed, after deducting discounts and miscellaneous adjustments. This amount includes item and main taxes but excludes retainer applied. It is calculated as: Net Billed + Tax |
| Open |
Outstanding amount on invoices, yet to be paid by a client. It is calculated as: Net Billed w/Tax - Write-Off - Paid w/Tax - Retainer Applied |
| Retainer Balance |
Retainer amount remaining or unused on a project or phase. It is calculated as: Retainer Received - Retainer Applied |
| Write-Off | Displays the amount that has been written off and will not be invoiced to the client. |
|
Cost: Billed |
The total cost of all services and expenses that have been billed to the client. |
| Contract Billed | Costs associated with all non-billable time and expense entries. |
| Services Billed | The total cost of all contracted services that have been billed to the client. |
| Contract All Cost | The total cost of both billed and unbilled contracted services excluding extras. |
| Services All Cost | The total cost of both billed and unbilled services. |
| Non-Billable Cost | Costs associated with all non-billable time and expense entries. |
| All Cost | The total cost of all services and expenses. |
Add Project Phases
You can add phases to projects by drag-and-drop action as well as by using the standard Add action. In general, when a parent project is selected, CORE treats all the project phases as selected too. When you create a phase for a project, it automatically inherits some of the parent project attributes (such as project manager, budget, groups, rules, contacts, terms, etc.) and allows you to choose which ones to inherit. Additionally, expanding a parent project row expands the entire project hierarchy. CORE remembers the last parent project you opened, so it stays expanded the next time you return.
To add a phase to a parent project, watch this video or follow these steps:
- Open the Projects screen from the side menu > Projects.
- In the list view, select a project on the grid that you want to make the parent and click
to select View Details.
- In the Project Center view, click
to select Add Phase or go to the Structure tab and select a project on the grid.
- Click Add Phase.
- On the Add New Phase screen, enter the required information. Check Field Descriptions above for details.
- Phase ID: Phase ID and Project Name are independent fields in CORE. Entering or editing a Project ID does not auto-populate or overwrite the Project Name when creating a project, adding a phase, or creating a project from a template
- Phase Name: Project Name is entered and maintained independently of Project ID. Changes to the Project ID do not affect the Project Name.
- Contract Type
- Split Amount/Enter as Sum: As a project manager, you can enter or calculate the contract amount for the project.
- Contract Amount: Although contract amount is required for fixed-type contracts, it is a good practice to set it for hourly projects as well.
- Click Split Amount if you want to split the Contract Amount into:
- Contract Service Amount
- Contract Expense Amount: Check Field Descriptions above for details.
- Click Calculate Contract Amount if you want CORE to calculate the contract amount for the phase on a percentage of construction cost basis or unit cost basis.
- You can also select the parent project attributes that should be inherited by the new phase. Then click Save & Done or Save & Add Another.
The newly added phase is displayed on the grid under the parent project. You can see the project hierarchy regardless of which level you are on; the current level is highlighted to indicate where you are in the entire hierarchy.
Manage Project Structure
CORE allows you to not only add phases to projects, but also reorder these phases in the project hierarchy or move any project to the parent project level, in case something changes. In the Projects detail view, you have a drop-down at the top that allows you to access any project or phase in the hierarchy and view its information. You can see the project hierarchy regardless of which level you are on; the current level is highlighted to indicate where you are in the entire hierarchy.
On the Structure tab, you can view the entire project hierarchy as well as details of each phase in a grid. Project managers can make informed decisions about things like percent complete or contract amount. They can also delete or merge multiple projects and phases.
Note: In case of a 'Main' project, it displays totals and the values are calculated based on the values of all phases.
To manage a project hierarchy, watch this video or follow these steps:
- Open the Projects screen from the side menu > Projects.
- In the list view, click
- In the Project Center view, go to the Structure tab.
- Review the project information in the grid and edit some of the values, if needed. Check Field Descriptions above for details.
- Start Date
- End Date
- % of Project
- Amount
- Percent Complete: percentage of completion of a project or its phase.
- Select a project or phase on the grid and then click Add Phase if you want to add a new phase to it. Select the attributes of the parent project that you want to copy to the new phase such as assignments, taxes, budget, class, etc.
- Hover over the project hierarchy in the grid and click
on the row to drag it up or down to reorder it. This affects how the project structure is displayed on reports and invoices, or while entering time against the project.
- You can select multiple rows and then click Actions > to either delete those projects (or phases) or merge them into one.
- Click More > View Reports to run some comparison and analysis reports on the projects. You can also select the Display Full Project Hierarchy option from the More menu to display all projects and phases within a root project. When disabled, only the selected root project or phase and its child projects are visible, maintaining the current view.