Projects

Some jobs are bigger than one visit. A multi-phase retrofit, a plumbing install that takes five separate work orders to finish, a big equipment swap that runs over several weeks — that kind of work needs somewhere to live that isn't just a single Service Request or a plain to-do on a We Owe.

Projects give that work a home: a phase board to track where it stands, start and target dates, and a running tally of how many of its work orders are actually done.

Find it under Projects in the sidebar (Service Manager and Admin).

What a Project Is

A Project is a We Owe, the same record type used for commitments, warranties, and sales opportunities. That means a project automatically comes with everything a We Owe already has:

A reference number like WE-1042 you can search and refer to
Comments, attachments, and a full activity history
Sub-tasks you can assign to teammates
Watchers who get notified when things change
The ability to link as many Service Requests (work orders) as the job needs

The only things that make a project different from a plain commitment are a phase, a start date, and a target date — three extra fields that show up once a We Owe is a project.

When to Use a Project Instead of a Plain We Owe

Reach for a project when a job is going to take more than one visit to finish and you want to track its progress at a glance. A single-visit commitment ("follow up on that quote," "call back about the part") doesn't need a phase board — it's done when it's done. A project is for the job that's going to run for weeks and touch several work orders before it's complete.

Creating a Project

Go to Projects
Click New Project
Enter a title, pick the customer, and optionally set a Project Start and Project Target date
Save

Every new project opens in the Planning phase.

Turning Existing Work Into a Project

If a commitment turns out to be bigger than expected — or a sales opportunity you just won needs to move into execution — you don't need to start over. Promoting a commitment or a won opportunity converts it into a project in place, so its history, comments, sub-tasks, attachments, and any work orders already linked to it all come along for the ride. Nothing gets recreated, and nothing gets lost.

Warranty claims can't be turned into projects — they're a different kind of work with their own lifecycle.

The Project Board

The Projects page is a kanban board with four lanes, one for each phase a project moves through:

Planning — the job is scoped but work hasn't started
Scheduled — visits are on the calendar
In Progress — techs are actively out doing the work
Complete — the job is finished

Drag a card from one lane to the next as the project moves forward, or change its phase from a dropdown right on the board's grid view. You can switch between the board layout and a sortable grid using the view toggle at the top.

Each card on the board shows the customer, the project owner, a progress bar for its linked work orders, and — if a target date is set — a badge showing that date, which turns red if the project has run past it without being marked Complete.

Narrowing the Board

Use the filters on the left to narrow what you see:

Status — defaults to showing only open projects; widen it to see completed or canceled ones too
Phase — jump straight to one lane, like everything currently In Progress
Owner — projects assigned to a specific person
Branch — if your company runs multiple branches

Tracking Progress With Linked Work Orders

The real value of a project is watching the actual field work add up. Link Service Requests to a project the same way you'd link them to any We Owe — from the project's page, or when creating a new Service Request from within it — and the project automatically shows you how many of those work orders are finished versus how many are still open.

This is where it's worth understanding exactly what "finished" means: a work order counts as finished as soon as the technician has completed it in the field — even before the office has closed out the billing. That's on purpose. A project board is meant to show you how the actual work is progressing, not how far along invoicing is. If your crew has wrapped up every visit on a five-work-order install but the office hasn't billed the last one yet, the project still shows as fully complete on the progress bar — because the work genuinely is done.

If a work order tied to the project gets canceled, it's left out of the count entirely — it doesn't count against you as unfinished, and it doesn't drag the percentage down.

One thing that deliberately does not happen: linking or unlinking work orders never changes the project's own target date. The target date is whatever you set it to, and it stays that way regardless of what's scheduled on the individual visits underneath it.

Dates and Overdue

A project can carry a Project Start date and a Project Target date — separate from any due date the We Owe itself might have. The target date can't be set earlier than the start date; NORDVEST will stop you if you try.

If a project's target date passes and the project hasn't reached the Complete phase yet, it's flagged Late — both on its card on the board and on its own detail page. Once a project is marked Complete, it's never flagged late again, even if it finished after its original target — the badge is there to prompt action while a job is still open, not to shame a finished one.

On the Project's Own Page

Open a project the same way you'd open any We Owe — click its title from the board or search for it. In addition to everything a normal We Owe page shows (comments, attachments, sub-tasks, linked contacts), a project's page also shows:

Its current Phase, changeable right there if you have permission
Project Start and Project Target dates
A Work Orders progress summary — the finished/total count, the percentage, and a progress bar

Who Can Use Projects

Creating, editing, and moving projects requires the same permission as managing We Owes generally — Service Manager and Admin roles. If you don't see the Projects link in the sidebar, ask an admin about your permissions.