In the Projects menu, you can:

Click “Create new project” to set up a new project.
Click on a project’s short name in the project table to edit an existing project.
Click on the copy icon in the project table to duplicate a project.
Open the project and navigate to the “Actions” submenu to delete it.

Creating Projects

When creating a new project, you first need to enter the following basic project information:

General

Abbreviation:

Each project is uniquely identified by its short name. The short name can be any combination of letters and numbers.
In the Administration area, a sequential project number can also be configured if desired.

Description:

In the Description field, you can enter a more detailed name or title for the project.

In the selection lists — for example, when recording project time — you will always see the full short name of the projects, but usually not the full description. The description is shortened in these lists to prevent them from becoming too wide.

Additional information about the project can be entered in the Remarks field below as free text.

Start and End Date:

Enter the project’s start date here. Specifying an end date is optional.

Outside the period defined by the start and end dates, the project will not appear in selection lists for time or expense entries — meaning no times or receipts can be booked to the project, regardless of its status.
The start and end dates are also used as filter criteria in project planning and appear in reports and billing documents.

Status:

Select a project status. The default is the first status defined in the master data. For more details, refer to the help text for Status.

Department:

(Only available if you use the Locations & Departments add-on module.) Specify which department this project belongs to.

Categories:

Optionally assign one or more categories to the project.

Keywords:

Optionally assign one or more tags to the project.

Remark:

You can enter any additional project information in the Remarks field as free text.

Plan

Planned hours are available starting from ZEP Professional or with the Project Planning module.
The planning concept in ZEP is very flexible: you can plan hours, labor costs, and expenses/km allowance in detail.
The values entered here serve as reference values for the reports Project Status (Plan) and Overall Status (Plan).
For fixed-price projects, the planned figures also represent the amount to be invoiced.
Optionally, you can prevent overbooking of planned figures.
There is one planned figure per level, which can be defined in two ways:
1. As a fixed planned value (explicitly assigned)
2. As a dynamic (aggregated) planned value, which is the sum of all subordinate fixed or dynamic planned values

You can assign planned figures on different hierarchical levels:
1. Project
2. tasks (or sub-process)
  If you are using the Ticket System module, additional levels become available:
3. Ticket (planned hours only)
4. Subtask (planned hours only)

Examples:

Top-down Planning (from project to details)
In this approach, you define a total project plan figure first — for example, 100 planned hours. This defines the overall project’s planned effort explicitly.
You can then distribute these hours across subordinate levels — such as processes, subtasks, or tickets. ZEP automatically checks for planning discrepancies, meaning it will alert you if the total number of planned hours on lower levels exceeds the number defined at the higher level.
Bottom-up Planning (from details to total)
Alternatively, you can use a bottom-up approach, where planning starts from the detailed levels (tasks, subtasks, tickets). ZEP then sums up the planned figures from these lower levels to display the aggregated total planned value at the project level. To do this, leave the planned figure field (and checkbox) empty in the project setup. Then, enter planned figures for each subordinate task.
The project’s total planned figure will automatically be calculated as the sum of all subordinate planned figures.

This planning works across all levels in ZEP!

You can enter the planned figures in the menus Data & Plan, Tasks, and Project Plan. Any changes you make in one of these menus will, of course, be updated in the others. If you want to create a very detailed plan, the Project Plan menu is the right place: here you can see the planned figures in the overall context of all project planning data.
In the Project Status Plan report, the planned figures displayed in the Project Plan under “Planned Hours” are used for comparison with the actual hours.

If you plan all hours (billable and non-billable), select the option “Billable and non-billable times” in the Project Status Plan report; this will compare all actual hours with the planned hours.
If you plan only billable hours, select the option “Only billable times” in the Project Status Plan report; this will compare only the billable actual hours with the planned hours.

Customer and Invoice

Customer:
Specify the customer for whom the project is being carried out, or indicate if it is an internal project without customer assignment.
With the Invoicing module, you can specify whether invoicing to multiple customers should be possible for this project.
Customer Order:
In this optional field, enter the project name or order title under which the project is known to the customer. This will appear on the project and customer invoice, making it easier for the customer to identify the invoice.
Contact Person:
For customer projects, select your contact person at the customer from the list of all the customer’s contacts.
Currency:
Specify the currency in which the project is to be billed. All costs incurred for the project will be displayed in this currency in project evaluations and billing. Receipts recorded in another currency are automatically converted to the project currency. The project price tables are also entered in this currenc
Type of Accounting:
Select a billing type. For more information, refer to the help text for Billing Type.

Adress

Country and Federal state are optional.
URL: Insert a Hyperlink (Optional)

Submenus

After entering all project data, confirm your entries by clicking Save.
You can then provide all additional information about the project by selecting the corresponding submenus.

Below you will find a selection of important submenus that should be reviewed before activating projects:

Project Plan

Under the Project Plan menu item, you will find a graphical representation of the project, its tasks (including tickets, if applicable), and employees. In addition, it serves as a quick entry point for various planning parameters (tasks, employees, planned figures, etc.) for the entire project.

Project Team member

This is where the employee list for the respective project is managed.

If no employees are yet assigned to the project, no project times can be recorded for it, as the project will not appear in the selection lists for time and expense entry.

Tasks

Here you can record and modify the tasks for the project. Employees and planned figures (hours and costs) can be entered at the task level to structure the project in more detail.

If no tasks are yet assigned to the project, no project times can be recorded for it. At least one standard task is required. However, there are no limits to the complexity of the structure, and multiple subtask levels can also be created.

Default Billability

Here you define for the project employees whether the times for this project are preset as billable/non-billable in the time tracking and whether this preset can be changed.

Project Activities

Here you can select a custom list of activities for a project from the list of all activities (from Administration). When recording time for this project, only these project-specific activities can be selected.

Daily rate portions

If the project has daily rate components that differ from those defined in the master data, they can be specified here.

Format

Specify the billing format for projects that are billed based on actual effort. This format also applies to the project time report, which can be used for fixed-price projects as well.

Price table

The project's price tables are entered and managed here.

Travel Settings

Specify which billing rules apply when travel expenses are recorded for the project.

Change History

This section is only available if the checkbox “Record changes to project data” is activated in the settings. All changes made to the project are documented here.

Editing Projects

To edit an existing project, click on the project’s short code in the project list. In the editing form, you will find all the fields and options described above available for modification.

Please note that once a project has recorded bookings, certain editing options may be restricted.

The following submenus are recommended for managing and editing projects:

Invoice items:

Create invoice items, generate invoices, and add any “missing invoice items.”

Invoices

Displays a list of all existing invoices associated with this project.

Open items

Immediately shows which invoices are still outstanding and for how long.

Sales forecast

Based on the invoice items, the expected revenue for the coming months is projected.

Project additional fields

Customizable fields with names and content that can be displayed on the invoice.

Project Reports

You can run all evaluations for the selected project directly from the project menu.

If you want to evaluate multiple projects together or perform a specific evaluation for several projects, it may be more suitable to navigate via Reports > Projects.

Through the menu item Reports > Projects, you will be taken directly to the overview page with all available evaluation options for one or more projects.

Copy Project

You will only see the copy function in your project table if you also have permission to create projects. This allows you to duplicate the selected project from the table, including all planned figures, tasks, employee assignments, and price tables.

After clicking "Copy", a new project will be created whose short name consists of the original project’s short name plus the suffix “- Copy”, and you will be taken directly to the data page of the new project.
Here, change the short name of the new project and make any other necessary adjustments.

When you copy an existing project, the status of the original project is not copied — instead, the new project is automatically assigned the first status in the status list. The same applies to the project tasks

If you frequently carry out similar or identical projects, you can create a template project and copy it whenever needed, including all billing formats, tasks, employees, and price tables. You will then only need to adjust the required data, such as the short name, project title, start and end dates, and the planned external costs.

Delete Project

If you open the Delete submenu in a project, you will be shown whether the project can be deleted or which elements are preventing its deletion.

You can only delete a project if there are no project times, receipts, tickets (only with the Ticket System module), documents (only with the Document Management module), quotes (only with the Quotation Creation module), or invoice items/invoices (only with the Invoicing module) associated with it.

For projects that have assigned quotes, you can remove these assignments by clicking the Delete assignments first button. After that, you can delete the project.

You can completely delete a project from ZEP if it was completed more than 10 years ago.

In the menu of the corresponding project, click Actions > Delete. If the project was completed (end date) more than 10 years ago, ZEP will offer the following option:

“The project is older than 10 years. You can delete it completely and permanently, including all booked times and receipts, as well as all associated items such as documents, quotes, tickets, invoices, work packages, planning entries, and change history.”

Deleting the project may take some time; therefore, it will be queued for deletion and removed in the background.

If you want to archive a project instead, we recommend defining a non-bookable project status (see Administration > Projects > Project Status) for archived projects and setting the project’s end date.

In the Projects menu, only projects whose duration overlaps with the current month are displayed by default. When you set a project’s end date, it will gradually disappear from your project list over time. However, if you want to generate reports for completed projects, you can adjust the displayed period and filter the list to show only projects with the Archived status.

In reports, projects are always available for selection according to the set time period — meaning you will only see projects whose duration overlaps with the reporting period.

Create, edit and delete projects