A work package assigns an employee a planned effort in a fixed period — referring to a planning object from the project hierarchy (customer, project, task, ticket, or subtask). Unlike a ticket or subtask, the work package itself is not a booking object: project times are still recorded against the underlying planning object; the work package automatically sums up the resulting actual hours in the period.
This makes the work package both a steering unit (remaining effort, workload, status) and a shortcut for project time entry — a kind of personal favourites list of currently relevant topics.
Note: No times can be booked on work packages at customer or project level. They serve only for long-term planning — the actual hours come automatically from all bookings against the underlying projects (customer WP) or tasks (project WP). Remaining effort and "Done" status are not available for these special forms.
A work package bundles planned hours, a period, a responsible employee, and a content (project, task, ticket, subtask, or customer). During processing, ZEP automatically maintains the booked actual hours and the remaining effort and calculates the status from them. Project managers use work packages to steer the progress of individual tasks, while employees keep their own workload transparent by maintaining the remaining effort regularly.
Creating work packages
You always create a new work package in the context of a parent object. Depending on what the package is associated with, choose one of the following paths — the resulting form is identical in all views.
From the project view
Open Projects > [project] > Resource Planning > Work Packages and click Create new work package. ZEP automatically assigns the package to the project; you choose the responsible employee in the dialog from the list of project employees.
From a task, ticket, or subtask
If the work package is at a finer level than the project as a whole, open the respective task, ticket, or subtask and switch to the Work Packages tab there. The creation workflow is analogous; the package is referenced to the chosen object.
Note: Work packages at ticket or subtask level require the Ticket System module. Without this module, only project, customer, and task work packages are available.
From the customer view (cross-project)
Under Customers > [customer] > Work Packages, you see all work packages assigned to a customer across all projects. Cross-project packages (for example, general account care) can also be created here without being bound to a specific project.
Fields in the creation dialog
In the creation dialog, you capture the following fields in this order:
Title (mandatory, maximum 64 characters) — the name under which the package appears in lists and reports.
Employee — the responsible person processing the package.
Planning period (from – to) — start and end date. The quick links let you choose typical periods (month, current, future) in one click.
Planned hours — the planned processing time, entered in hours or alternatively as a duration in days.
Note (textarea, maximum 255 characters) — free descriptive text for the package.
When you create the work package from a task, ticket, or subtask, ZEP takes over the planning period and the planned hours from the planning object as a preset — provided they are stored there and no other work package exists for this object yet. You can overwrite both values before saving.
You can also create multiple work packages on the same planning object — for example to split the processing into phases or to schedule several employees in parallel. The preset from the planning object only applies to the first package; further packages start with an empty period and no planned-hours value.
During processing, automatically calculated fields are added:
Actual hours — sum of all project time bookings allocated to the linked object (project, task, ticket, subtask).
Remaining effort — estimate of the remaining work time, maintained by the employee. It is set via a separate dialog (see Maintaining remaining effort).
Work factor — quotient of remaining effort and available time until the end date. Basis for the status calculation.
Status and colours
ZEP automatically calculates the status of a work package from plan, actual, and remaining effort and from the remaining period. The colours form the basis of the traffic-light logic in lists and reports.
['Status', 'Colour', 'Meaning'] | ||
Done | grey | Remaining effort has been explicitly set to 0. |
Uncritical | green | Work is running, remaining effort fits into the remaining time. Even when planned hours and actual hours are already equal but the package has not yet been actively set to Done, the status remains Uncritical — only the click on Done sets the remaining effort to 0 and switches the status to Done. |
Nothing to do | grey | Work factor per day = 0 (package currently without workload but not done). |
Overloaded | yellow | Employee has parallel packages with work factor > 1 per day. |
Remaining effort > Planned hours | yellow | Remaining effort plus actual hours exceed the originally planned amount. |
Overbooked | red | Actual hours already exceed the planned hours. |
Expired | red | End date reached, remaining effort still > 0. |
Maintaining remaining effort
Remaining effort is the decisive control element: as soon as it is maintained, ZEP automatically adjusts work factor and status. As the remaining effort drops, the work factor drops — if it stays the same or rises, the status switches to Overbooked or Remaining effort > Planned hours.
Why remaining effort instead of percent progress? An employee can usually estimate much better how many hours they still need than quantify an abstract degree of completion. ZEP uses this estimate directly to calculate work factor, workload, and status — as soon as the remaining effort drops to 0, the package no longer generates workload.
Opening the remaining-effort dialog
Open the work package via the list in the employee, project, or customer detail page. Next to the read-only Remaining effort field, a pencil icon appears — a click on it opens the separate remaining-effort dialog. Enter the estimated remaining processing time there, in hours or days. With OK, you commit the entry, ZEP recalculates work factor and status.
„Done" button at completion
When the work on the package is finished, click the Done button in the remaining-effort dialog. ZEP sets the remaining effort to 0 and the package to status Done — it no longer generates workload and is hidden from the default filter view.
Adjusting the planned effort
As soon as a remaining effort has been maintained, the link Adjust planned effort becomes active in the main form next to the plan field. A click takes the current actual value plus the estimated remaining effort as the new plan value. This way, you bring the plan in line with the actual estimate — useful when it turns out during processing that the original plan was too tight or too generous.
Viewing the change history
Via the history icon next to the remaining-effort field, a popup with the full change history opens. Per estimate, you see:
Date of the estimate
Planned hours and actual hours at the time of the estimate
Remaining-effort hours as the entered value
Employee who entered the estimate
The table is sorted in descending order by date — the latest estimate is at the top. This lets you trace how the effort estimate has evolved over time and whether corrections were made early.
Click actions on a work package
A click on a work package in the list or on a work package bar in the Gantt view opens a context menu. Which actions are offered depends on the package type and your rights:
Edit work package — opens the creation form with the current values for changes. Visible to everyone who may edit the work package.
Copy work package — creates an identical copy (useful for recurring packages or as a template). Visible if you may create a new package on the respective planning object.
Delete work package — removes the package after a confirmation prompt. Only for authorized users.
Enter remaining effort / Set work package to Done — analogous to the remaining-effort dialog (Edit via pencil icon, „Done" button). Not available for customer or project work packages.
Switch to planning object — jump to the associated customer, project, task, ticket, or subtask.
Record project time — only visible for own bookable work packages; opens the booking form with preset values (project, task/ticket/subtask, note).
On hover over a work package (in the list or on a Gantt bar), ZEP shows a flyover tooltip with the most important data at a glance: planning object (customer, project, task, ticket/subtask if applicable), period, actual hours, planned hours, remaining effort, status, and the note if available.
Filters and sorting in the list
The work package list offers a filter section at the top of the page in all views:
Period with quick links — default period is the previous month up to two months into the future, so that running and immediately upcoming packages are visible.
Work package status as a checkbox filter — options Escalated, Uncritical, Critical, Done. By default, the first three are active; completed packages remain hidden until you turn them on explicitly.
Sorting by date, employee, project, task, or further criteria.
Condensed display — a more compact table form for more rows per screen.
Workload charts — shows a graphical workload visualization below the table: a grey area for the employee's daily availability and brown bars for the workload generated by work packages. On hover over a bar or the grey area, the respective hour or percentage value appears. If the work package selected in the list is part of a bar, ZEP highlights it as a dark-brown section within the bar.
Favourites — saves frequent filter combinations for quick access.
The filtered table can be exported as Excel or CSV via the export icon at the top right — useful for analyses outside ZEP or as a snapshot at a cut-off date.
Workload in the scheduling matrix
As soon as an employee has work packages assigned, ZEP sums their daily work factors and shows the result as an additional row Workload (work packages) in the scheduling matrix — both in the employee view (Employees > [person] > Resource Planning > Planning) and in the project view (Projects > [project] > Resource Planning > Planning). If the work package workload exceeds the availability on a day, an additional red exclamation mark appears as a warning.
This way, you see at a glance whether the estimated remaining efforts of the work packages can realistically fit into the remaining days or whether you need to shift packages or redistribute the scheduling. A detailed description of the scheduling matrix and its summary rows is in the article Capture and Manage Scheduling.
Recommended approach in practice
For work packages to deliver their full value as a steering instrument, the following rhythm has proven useful:
Create packages early. As soon as the project structure is clear, slice the work into manageable packages (typically 4 to 40 hours) and create them at the appropriate level (project, task, or ticket).
Choose realistic plan effort. Rather estimate somewhat generously — a later correction via Adjust planned effort is documented and traceable.
Maintain remaining effort weekly. Establish a fixed routine (for example Friday afternoon or Monday morning). This keeps status traffic lights meaningful and project managers detect bottlenecks early.
Set completed packages to Done immediately. They no longer generate workload and do not block the view.
On plan/actual deviation, correct the plan instead of ignoring. The function Adjust planned effort documents the correction via the change history and preserves the meaningfulness of reports.