Idea to project close: intake, planning, delivery and billing

#Purpose and scope

This chapter follows a project from demand intake to billing. The Project Management home page shows budget versus actual, status, completions and overdue attention items, and the Dashboard gives the project view.

#1. Intake: from idea to project

1. In Intake create an intake with a code, title, description, business case, requester, estimated cost, estimated benefit and score.
2. Move the Stage through Idea, Review, Approved or Rejected.
3. Choose Convert on a row that is not rejected or already converted.

#2. Create a project

1. Either start from a template: Templates lists reusable blueprints; choose Instantiate and give a project name. BSuit creates the project with its WBS, activities and milestones and reports how many of each.
2. Or create it directly in Projects: group, manager, location, status, priority, planned and actual dates, currency, budget, estimated cost and revenue method.

#3. Plan the work, budget and people

1. Break the scope down in WBS and Activities; group work under Epics for agile projects.
2. Set the working calendar in Calendars and holidays in Calendar exceptions.
3. Enter the cost budget by category in Budget lines.
4. Allocate people in Resources, with cost and billing rates in Resource rate cards. The Workload heatmap shows allocation by week and flags over-allocation in red.

#4. Track delivery

1. Follow the plan on the Gantt and the Kanban board; Sprint analytics shows burndown and velocity for agile projects.
2. Log risks in the Risk register and problems in Issues.

#5. Change orders

1. Record a change request in Change orders with its cost impact and schedule impact in days. Status starts as Draft and can be Submitted.
2. Use the Approve or Reject row action to decide it.

#6. Forecast cost and profitability

Cost forecast and P&L shows BAC (budget), Committed, Actual, EAC (forecast), ETC (to complete) and VAC (variance) by cost category, plus margin.

#7. Billing and revenue recognition

1. Record billing items in Billing: billing type (Milestone, Time & Material, Fixed Fee, Percent Complete), amount, status Draft, Invoiced or Paid, invoice date and whether it is billable.
2. For percent-complete revenue, pick the unbilled receivable and revenue ledgers and choose Recognize.