Professional services
You sell time. You need to know where it went.
A signed quote becomes a project, the project receives hours, and what the project actually cost comes out of the general ledger — not out of a field somebody filled in. VIA ERP joins those three, and tells you when it does not have the answer.
From the quote to the project
Quotes and orders are available on the cheapest plan. It is the project that needs a higher one.
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You price the work
Quotes, per-line discounts, per-line taxes and document-level taxes. The quote becomes an order without being retyped.
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The won deal becomes a project
Two triggers, both off by default: a deal reaching the pipeline stage you nominate, or an approved sales order. What carries over is configurable, and the conversion refuses to create a second project for the same deal.
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The project arrives dated
A template holds its phases in sequence, each dated from the end of the one before, and milestones attach to the phase the template names. The project does not start on an empty calendar.
Running the project
Business+Phases, tasks, templates
The shape of the project, reusable from one engagement to the next.
Milestones and deliverables
A deliverable's progress is computed: its completed tasks over its total. Nobody types it in.
Risks, then issues
An issue opens from the risk that predicted it and inherits its project. The task that settles it is written automatically, in the workspace's language.
Measurable goals
Target value, current value, unit, due date — on the project record.
Links between tasks
Four link types and a lag in days. The system refuses a self-link, a cross-project link, a duplicate and a cycle, including an indirect one. It is a record, not a scheduler: no link moves a date.
Documents
The project's paperwork and its templates, attached to the project.
The hours
Business+Entered after the fact, against a task, with an approval route that holds.
Billable or not, and at what rate
Every entry carries the flag and the rate. What is not billable is still counted.
An enforced route
Draft, submitted, approved or rejected, then invoiced. The transitions are constrained, and a rejection requires a reason.
Bulk approval
A manager clears a team's week in one action. Once approved, the hours are locked.
Approved hours feed the task
A task's actual hours come from what was approved, not from an estimate copied across by hand.
The project's money
Business+A budget by category
Budget lines by category, with their summary, on the project record.
The actual comes from the ledger
A project's real cost is the sum of the journal lines carrying it, broken down by account. It is not an amount copied onto a line: the typed field that used to do that was deliberately retired.
Both sales and purchase invoices carry the project
Each has a project picker, which is the condition for the ledger to know what it is talking about.
Missing data is not a zero
The answer distinguishes "no posted line carries this project yet" from "this project spent nothing". The difference matters when you are deciding.
The people
Business+Who is allocated, over what period, at what percentage.
A dated allocation
Person, period, percentage, planned hours — on the project record.
Over-allocation is counted across projects
The count sums one person's overlapping allocations across every project, not only the one you are looking at. It is also a dashboard indicator.
What VIA ERP does not do
Four expectations common in this business, and none of them is met today.
- No Gantt chart
Links between tasks are authored and read as a list. They are never drawn, and no link shifts the date of a successor.
- No timer
Hours are typed in afterwards. A task's "Start" button changes its status; it does not start a clock.
- No calendar view
Projects are read as lists and records, not on a calendar.
- An approved hour does not become an invoice line
The route runs as far as an "invoiced" status, and billing a project from its hours does not exist. The invoice is raised in the Invoicing module, carrying the project.
What your plan needs to include
Quotes, orders, contacts and invoicing are available on the cheapest plan. Projects need Business, and comparing budget against actual is an accounting capability at Professional.
Converting a won deal into a project has no plan condition of its own: they are two switches, off by default, inside the Projects module.
See this on one of your engagements
Take a deal you signed recently: we convert it into a project, enter a week of hours and look at what the ledger says about it.
Request a demo