Overview
In CORE, every phase in a project hierarchy has a project type of either Main or Standard. The project type controls whether a phase can have child phases beneath it, and it determines how financial values such as contract amounts and billing totals are calculated across the hierarchy.
CORE supports a specific hierarchy structure. Understanding this structure helps you set up projects correctly and ensures that features such as Phase Dependencies and Contract Distribution can be used. These features require a supported hierarchy. CORE displays a warning banner on projects with an unsupported hierarchy to reinforce the best practice of using Main type projects as parents and Standard type projects as phases. See Warning Banner below for details.
Supported Phase Hierarchy
The supported hierarchy in CORE follows one rule: only Main phases can have child phases beneath them. Standard phases are always at the end of a branch in the hierarchy and cannot contain child phases.
A Main phase acts as a container. It rolls up the contract amounts, billing totals, and other financial values of all phases beneath it. A Standard phase holds its own values independently.
Supported example
The following structure is supported:
- Root Project (Main)
- Phase 1 (Main)
- Phase 1a (Standard)
- Phase 1b (Standard)
- Phase 2 (Standard)
- Phase 1 (Main)
Phase 1 is a Main phase and can contain Phase 1a and Phase 1b beneath it. Phase 1a, Phase 1b, and Phase 2 are Standard phases with no children.
Unsupported example
The following structure is unsupported:
- Root Project (Main)
- Phase 1 (Standard)
- Phase 1a (Standard)
- Phase 2 (Standard)
- Phase 1 (Standard)
Phase 1 is a Standard phase, but has Phase 1a beneath it. This makes contract rollups and date dependency calculations ambiguous.
Warning Banner
If your project contains one or more Standard phases with child phases beneath them, CORE displays a warning banner at the top of the Project Details page. The banner reads:
"This project uses an unsupported hierarchy."
The banner appears on all tabs of the Project Details page, including Overview, Structure, Budget, Transactions, Documents, To Dos, Notes, and Settings. It is not dismissible and remains visible until the hierarchy is corrected.
Note: CORE does not automatically correct the hierarchy or change any financial values, contract amounts, or billed amounts. The banner is informational only.
Why This Matters
Standard phases with child phases create ambiguity that affects several areas of CORE:
- Reporting — financial rollups cannot calculate accurately when a Standard phase contains children, because Standard phases are not designed to aggregate values from below.
- Phase Dependencies — the dependency engine requires a clean hierarchy. Phase Dependencies is unavailable on projects with an unsupported structure.
- Contract Distribution — Contract Distribution is unavailable on projects with an unsupported structure. Distributing contract amounts across phases requires all parent phases to be the Main type.
If you attempt to open the Phase Dependencies or Contract Distribution tools on a project with an unsupported hierarchy, CORE blocks access and displays a dialog explaining the issue.
Note: When you import a project, any phase found under it is created as a Main phase, regardless of what's specified in the import file. This is why an imported project can never start out with an unsupported hierarchy.
How to Fix the Hierarchy
To resolve an unsupported hierarchy, use one of the following options for each Standard phase that has child phases beneath it.
Option 1 — Change the project type of the Standard parent phase to Main
Open the Projects screen from the side menu Projects. Select the project on the grid and select View Details, then go to Settings Details. In the Project Type field, change the value from Standard to Main, then click Save. Repeat for each Standard phase that has child phases beneath it.
Note: After a phase is set to Main, CORE no longer allows Time and Expense entries to be logged against it. Before you switch a Standard phase to Main, move any Time and Expense entries on that phase to one of its Standard sub-phases. If you switch the type first, you will not be able to add new Time and Expense entries to that phase afterward.
Option 2 — Remove child phases from the Standard phase
Open the Projects screen from the side menu Projects. Select the project on the grid and select View Details, then go to the Structure tab. Locate the Standard phase that has child phases beneath it, then move the child phases to a different parent in the hierarchy, or delete them if they are no longer needed. Click Save.
Once all Standard phases with child phases have been corrected, the warning banner no longer appears on the next page load.
Note: Changing a phase's project type or restructuring the hierarchy does not automatically adjust its contract amount, billed amounts, or other associated financial values. Review the project's financial data after making structural changes to confirm everything is accurate.