Everything in Teamwork.com sits inside a client. Each client has projects, and each project holds the task lists, tasks, time and budget that roll up into your invoices and reports. Learn this structure first: every setup choice in the rest of this path builds on it.
What | A 10-minute overview of the building blocks in Teamwork.com and how they connect. |
Why | Your clients, rates, templates and permissions all attach to this structure. Getting it right now saves rework later. |
Who | Site owners and administrators setting up Teamwork.com for their team. |
This is step 1 of 8 in the Owner and Administrator onboarding path.
At a glance
Work flows down from the client to tasks. Time logged on tasks is then tracked against the project budget and invoiced, so every hour and every invoice can be reported back at client level.
The building blocks
Building block | What it is | What you use it for |
|---|---|---|
Client | The customer organisation you do work for. Your own company is the owner company. | Grouping projects, and seeing revenue and profitability per client. |
Project | A discrete body of work for one client. | Holding all the tasks, people, time and financials for that piece of work. |
Task list | A group of tasks inside a project, such as a phase or workstream. | Structuring the work. Every task must sit in a task list. |
Task | The core unit of work, with an assignee, estimate, due date, comments and files. | Assigning work and tracking it to completion. |
Subtask | A smaller task inside a task. | Breaking work down further, with its own assignee and estimate. |
Milestone | A key date or deliverable in a project. | Tracking deadlines and, if you choose, triggering an invoice. |
Allocation | Planned time for a person on a project over a set period. | Planning capacity before tasks are fully defined. |
For more detail, see Projects, Task Lists, Tasks and Milestones.
How work turns into revenue
Time your team logs is what connects the work to your finances.
- Time logs. People log time against a task, a task list or the project. Each entry has a date and is marked billable or non-billable.
- Rates. A billing rate is applied to each billable entry. You can set rates for a person, a role, a project or a client.
- Budgets. Each project can have a budget: fixed fee, time and materials (with an optional cap), or retainer. Logged time is tracked against it so you can see planned against actual.
- Invoices. Invoices are created from logged time, milestones or both, and can be sent to your accounting software, such as Xero or QuickBooks.
Tip: Set your rates before your team starts logging time (step 5 in this path). Otherwise, you may need to go back and update existing time entries before your revenue reports are accurate.
Who sees what
What each person can do depends on two things: their user type, and the permissions you give them on each project.
User type | Paid seat? | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
Standard user | Yes | Your own employees who manage and work on projects. Can be made a site administrator. |
Client user | No | People at your clients who need to follow and take part in their projects. Up to five active projects each. |
Collaborator | No | Third parties who complete assigned tasks, comment and view files, but cannot add tasks or log time. |
Site administrators control site-wide settings. Project permissions control what each person can see and do within a project, so a client user only sees the projects you add them to.
For details, see Teamwork.com User License Types and User Permissions and Access. You will set these up in step 3.
Done when
You can answer these three questions for your own business:
- Who are our clients, and which projects will sit under each one?
- How do we bill: fixed fee, time and materials, retainer, or a mix?
- Who needs a paid seat, and who can be a client user or collaborator?
Next step: Step 2: Set up your company and clients.