Projects form the foundation of Beeswax. Just about everything is done within a Project.
Tasks, Milestones, Quotes, Invoices, etc. So its important when starting to use Beeswax that you begin thinking in terms of Projects.
That’s right…even your day to day running costs and administrative tasks should be put under a Project. We recommend creating an Admin Project for this purpose. And, it makes sense to create a new Admin Project for each Tax Reporting period.
For example, if you report tax quarterly it would make sense to create a new Project each quarter. Call it something like “Admin 2018 – Qtr 1” and assign it to your own Company. Things that you would put into this Project might be rental costs, office supplies, equipment purchases, etc.
You might also wish to put in key filing dates for tax reporting as Milestones so you and your bookkeeper (assuming you have one) have full visibility of these dates as they approach. Plus anything else that you think is important to track here from an internal perspective.
Similarly you may wish to include administrative Tasks to track activities like Bank Reconciliation. By adding and tracking these administrative things as actionable Tasks you’ll get a better understanding of how long these things actually take. Something most small businesses tend to ignore. For instance, how long should it take to reconcile a bank statement? If you’re paying someone by the hour, wouldn’t you like to capture this information in order to better understanding it. And if you don’t capture this data then you’ll never really know.
Of course you might genuinely have an internal Project that needs to be done. Such as moving offices. This should be a Project in it’s own right so you can not only track costs but manage Tasks in and around all the other things going on in your business.
We use the word Company to mean any entity that you work with. We needed a relative generic name that describes the entities that we assumed most Beeswax businesses do business with and this was the best we could come up with. It’s not perfect. we know. Taxonomy can be tricky. However so long as you understand what we mean then Beeswax will make sense the more you come to terms with this idea of Company.
In the majority of cases the entities that Beeswax businesses work with are in fact Companies. Either Pty Ltd or LLC etc. But whether they are actually real companies is somewhat irrelevant. You can make a Company an individual. Or individuals, such as a husband and wife who need design work done on a renovation. In such a situation you would simply create Company for them and perhaps call it something like Mr & Mrs Smith…just think about who the invoice should be made out to and give the entity this name. Simple as that.
Creating a Contact (or User) for each of them under this Company might seem added work or superfluous but you’ll see why it’s necessary when we come to tracking Invoices as well as any other communication related to the Project.
The Project List view shows all your Projects along with top level information that you can see at a glance. Beeswax calls this the “Red Light, Green Light” approach. Things that need your attention are usually shown in Red while anything that appears green means it’s OK.
Each Plan allows you to have a certain number of Open Projects. If you reach your quota then you will be prompted to upgrade your Plan otherwise you’ll need to Close a project in order to Open another.
Just remember that in order to close a Project you have ensure that:
