Teamwork's data model is built around the client as the top-level entity. Every project, task, time log, budget and invoice belongs to a client, which is what lets you see revenue, utilisation and profitability rolled up at client level, not just per project.
From outermost to innermost:
- Client (also called Company): the top-level entity representing a customer organisation. All work, revenue and profitability roll up to client level. A single client can have multiple concurrent projects.
- Project: a discrete body of work for a client. Contains all tasks, milestones, resources, time logs and financials for that engagement. Projects can be set to Tentative (pre-win) or Active (confirmed).
- Task List: a grouping of tasks within a project, representing phases or workstreams. Tasks must belong to a task list — they can't be added to a project without one. Task lists can be associated with milestones to mark delivery gates.
- Milestone: marks a point of progress in a project, such as the end of a phase, and can be tied to a task list.
- Task: the core unit of work. Carries an assignee, time estimate, due date, comments, attachments, tags and custom fields. This is where time gets logged and tracked against estimates.
- Subtask: a child task used to break work down further. Subtasks can have their own assignees and estimates, and roll up to the parent task.
Alongside this structure sit the operational and financial objects, attached at the project or task level:
- Allocations: planned resource assignments on a project for a specific person over a defined time period. Sit in the resource planner, separate from task assignments, and can be applied to tentative (pre-win) projects for early capacity planning.
- Time Logs: records of time spent against tasks, task lists or directly against projects, each carrying a billable/non-billable flag and a rate. The primary mechanism for revenue recognition and invoicing.
- Budget: the financial envelope for a project. Can be fixed-fee, time-and-materials (with an optional cap), retainer or milestone-based.
- Invoice: generated from time logs and/or milestone triggers, and syncable to connected accounting or ERP systems.
Portfolio: a view across multiple concurrent projects, used for cross-project capacity and reporting rather than a strict level in the client hierarchy itself.