Projects are the central data object of service delivery in ZEP: time bookings, receipts, customer relationships, activities, employee assignments, and invoicing are all anchored on them. A cleanly structured project record is the prerequisite for every report and every invoice.
These articles guide you through the entire topic — from the concept through creation and maintenance to reports and special cases such as project closure or reassignment of project times.
Note: Project Management is part of the standard scope in ZEP Compact and ZEP Professional. It is not included in ZEP Clock, which is designed for pure attendance recording. Which fields and actions are visible on the project depend on the product line and the licensed add-on modules.
Projects as the central data object
A project in ZEP is more than just an entry in a project list. It is the bracket on which ZEP brings together the following data:
Master data such as project number, name, duration, project status, and activities
Customer assignment via the primary customer and optionally additional customers with the multi-customer option
Employees and roles via project assignments with hour budgets, project lead, and processing
Time data from project time recording, work items, and break regulations
Travel data from trips related to the project
Billing-relevant values such as prices, flat rates, planned amounts, cost centres, and revenue accounts
Permissions via the project lead, customer responsibles, and individual employee assignments
Interface values for the handover to external systems such as DATEV or Salesforce
This bundling makes the project record the pivotal point of service delivery. Every project time, every report, and every invoice references a project.
Embedding in the ZEP data flow
The project is at the centre of a network of data objects that all reference it. The most important effect chains in words:
Project creation → visibility: Without an active project status and a matching employee assignment period, the project does not appear in the selection lists of the employees.
Customer assignment → invoicing: Via the primary customer of a project, billing and delivery address, price tables, and the billing procedure are pre-filled.
Employee assignment → time recording: Only the assignment of an employee to a project with a valid assignment period enables the recording of project times.
Project status → booking rules: The status of a project controls whether times and receipts can still be recorded, released, or are already locked.
Activities and work items → detail recording: Employees book their times against the configured activities or against individual work items of a project.
Prices and cost centres → billing: Hourly rates, price groups, cost centres, and revenue accounts determine the commercial utilisation of the service.
Tasks in project management
The following articles cover all typical tasks around projects:
Creating, editing and deleting projects — the workflow from initial creation to deactivation or complete removal.
Project data — the reference for every field in the master-data areas, including duration, activities, and employee assignments.
Project administration — actions and sub-areas that are maintained directly on the project record.
Project overview — the list view with filters, sorting, mass operations, and export.
Project reports — standard reports around projects and project times.
Module-dependent extensions on projects
With each add-on module, further fields and actions are added to the project. The following overview shows the most important extensions:
Invoicing — invoice items, dunning levels, revenue accounts, flat rates per project. (More about the module)
Travel expense management — travel cost allocation to projects, receipt-type configuration. (More about the module)
Revenue and costs — project-specific price tables, daily-rate shares, and hourly rates. (More about the module)
Resource planning — assignment of employees to projects and work items. (More about the module)
Project planning — planned hours, planned amounts, Gantt chart, and plan comparison. (More about the module)
Locations and departments — project assignment to departments, visibility according to department permissions. (More about the module)
Ticketing system — tickets per project, mailbox assignment. (More about the module)
Quoting — quotes per project, transfer into invoices. (More about the module)
Document management — project documents, document statuses, tags. (More about the module)
Absences and overtime — consideration of absences in the project time report. (More about the module)
Which of these extensions are active for you depends on your product line and the licensed add-on modules. In the article Project data, you can see per field under which conditions it is displayed.