Project administration bundles all sub-areas and actions that are stored directly on an individual project. You reach it via the detail view of a project by clicking the abbreviation or the description in the project overview. Which sub-areas appear depends on your role, the product line, and the licensed add-on modules.

The General group bundles the sub-areas you need most in day-to-day project operation: the master data, the structure of tasks and team members, and the module-dependent areas such as tickets, work items, offers, and documents.

Via Data, you open the master data maintenance of the project with the tabs General, Plan, Customer & Invoice, and Address. With the add-on module Project Planning, the item appears under the title Data & Plan, because the plan values are then maintained as well. Via Edit, you open the fields for changes.

A complete description of all fields with their availability hints is provided in the article Project data. On this page, ZEP additionally shows messages as long as the project is not yet fully set up or not yet bookable:

Additionally, ZEP checks the consistency of the project data and reports contradictions directly here. This way, you see right on the data page what is still missing for the project to be used productively.

The Project Plan is the graphical view (Gantt chart) of the project, its tasks including tickets, and the scheduled team members. It visualises the project structure and the timeline and at the same time serves the quick entry of plan figures such as tasks, team members, and planned values for the whole project.

Via the filter bar, you adjust what the project plan shows:

In the project plan, you edit the structure directly in the graphic. The following elements are available:

With the add-on module Ticketing system, the project plan also includes tickets and subtasks:

In the Project Team Member sub-area, you manage which persons are assigned to the project. Only assigned team members may book project times and receipts onto the project. Via the period selection and Execute, you see who may book in the chosen period; the list can be exported as CSV or Excel.

You set the function of a person via the Project lead column in the team-member row. Three functions are possible:

You assign further persons via Assign additional team members; only currently employed, not yet assigned persons are offered, filterable by employee category and search term. Via Copy team assignment from another project, you take over a complete team, and via the e-mail icon, you write to individual or all project team members directly from the project. Via the marker Only currently employed in the list, you hide assigned but currently not employed persons.

If a person does not appear in the selection, they are usually already assigned in the past or future, or their employment only begins later. In this case, extend the assignment period from the project start or assign the person via employee management. With the add-on module Locations & departments, an assigned person does not have to belong to the department of the project; in the department reports, the costs are then distinguished by department-internal and department-external team members.

Per person, you store one or several assignment periods via the blue bar. A click on the bar opens the assignment window with the following entries:

For several persons at once, you use mass editing: mark the desired rows via the checkboxes, choose the operation in the action selection field that appears, and confirm. Available are:

Via Edit planning, you open the day-by-day scheduling of the person directly from this sub-area; this function appears with the add-on module Resource Planning.

Tasks structure a project into professional work packages, often also called project phases or milestones. Through them, you map the complete structure and complexity of a project, from a simple to-do list to a deeply nested undertaking. Tasks are at the same time the basis of any Time Reporting: without at least one bookable task, nobody can book times onto the project.

In the task list, you see all tasks of the project. Several filter criteria are combined with AND, so that only tasks appear that meet all criteria:

Via Create new task, you create a task. In the dialog, you assign an abbreviation that is unique within the project, a description, optionally a superordinated task, and a sort order that determines the order in the selection lists.

This creates a hierarchy: a task with subordinate tasks becomes a summary or structuring task and is not bookable itself; bookings only go to the lowest level. The superordinated task temporally encloses the run times of its subtasks.

Example: In a multi-level engineering project, the task hierarchy maps the project phases and work packages:

No bookings go to the structuring tasks; they only bundle the hours and costs of their subtasks for the analysis. This way, even a very complex project can be mapped cleanly and analysed in a differentiated way at every level.

Via Copy tasks from another project, you take over the structure of a template project instead of creating each task anew. You select the template project and then all or single tasks.

The task overview works analogously to the project overview. Which columns appear depends on the product line and modules; the hierarchy is shown as an expandable tree. Configurable are, among others:

Directly in the row, quick actions are available:

For several tasks at once, you use mass editing: mark the tasks via the checkboxes, choose the operation in the action selection field, and confirm. Available are:

On the detail page, a task behaves like a small sub-project. It is organised, like the project dialog, into three tabs in which you set many values task-specifically and deviating from the project.

The three tabs at a glance:

The price group and the internal hourly rate can also be set deviating at task level, so that you can calculate and analyse internal rates in a differentiated way per task.

Additionally, a task can be assigned its own deviating task team members and an own activity list via dedicated functions, so that a sub-project can be calculated and analysed fully independently. The meaning of the individual fields, such as the types of accounting or the overbooking options, is identical to the project level and described in detail in the article Project data.

The ticket list per project shows all tickets assigned to this project with status, priority, processors, and deadlines. With the active ticket board, you additionally open a kanban board of the project-related tickets. Tickets are geared towards externally incoming matters, such as change requests or support enquiries from the customer side.

In the Work Items sub-area, you manage the internal to-dos of a project. Work items represent internal project-management topics, in contrast to tickets, which are geared towards externally incoming matters such as change requests or support enquiries. Both can be used in parallel and thus cleanly separate external matters from internal to-dos.

Work items are available in two views between which you can switch at any time: a list in tabular form and a project board (kanban) on which work items are moved between status columns via drag & drop. This way, you use the work-item management flexibly as a personal to-do list, for distributing work in the project team, or as a project-management board for the project lead.

When creating a work item, the following fields are available:

In the project, you find the work items under General > Work Items; all work items assigned to this project are shown. If you create a work item here, the project is already preselected and no longer changeable in the dialog. As assignee, only persons assigned to the project are available. If an administrator creates a work item in a project in which they are not a project team member themselves, they cannot set themselves as assignee but can assign the work item to another person or create it without an assignee.

The project work items are available in two views. Via the icon at the top right, you switch between them; depending on the current view, the tooltip reads Switch to board or Switch to table:

The offer list per project shows all offers created in the context of the project, including status, volume, and transfer to invoices. This way, you track an order continuously from the offer to the billing in one place.

The document list per project maintains documents with status, category, tags, and versions. It is suitable for the structured filing of all project-related contracts, concepts, protocols, and delivery documents in a central location accessible to all project participants.

The Change History logs every documented change to the project data: who changed which field to which value and when. This makes subsequent adjustments fully traceable. Typical use cases are the proof for a data protection request, the audit proof towards an inspection, and the later reconstruction of a project configuration.

The sub-area appears as soon as the recording of project-data changes is activated in the administration. How you switch on the recording is described in the article Other – Administration.

The Project settings group bundles the professional defaults that control the booking and billing behaviour of the project. It is visible for administrators and project leads.

The default billability defines how new project times are preset during recording.

Four presets are available:

How the setting works:

Under Project Activities, you define which activities are available for this project during time recording. If the list remains empty, all activities defined in administration are allowed; as soon as you maintain an own table via Add activity, only these are available.

Daily rate portions stagger which share of a daily rate is billed per booked number of hours; they apply exclusively to the type of accounting expenditure at daily rates. Per line, you define an hour range via from hrs and To hrs and the chargeable daily rate portion within it, for example 0.5 daily rates from 4 to 6 hours and 1 daily rate from 6 hours. Without an own definition, the staggering from administration applies.

Under Project Work Locations, you assign certain work locations to the project. Via Change project location assignment, you select the locations and confirm with Apply. If project locations are defined, only these locations are available during time recording, and also when rebooking in the project time report, only a location from this list can be chosen; a target location that is not assigned stays unchanged. This keeps the location assignment consistent across the whole project, and with active travel expense management, the subsistence costs are calculated correctly per location.

The Billing Settings group bundles the commercial defaults of the project, from the layout specification for the record to prices, receipts, and travel.

Under Format, you define how the services billed by effort are displayed; the same format applies to the Time Report, which can also be used for flat-rate projects. You control separately for the Invoice attachment, the Project Accounting, and the Time Report the level of detail with which the content appears.

In the detailed report, you select per area how the individual entries are output:

For billing by hour, you additionally control the subtotals (none, by task, by task and ticket, by activity, or by price group) and show tasks, activities, remarks, locations, and tickets; the billable travel times can be shown separately in the summary.

For billing by daily rate portions, you additionally output the number of hours per line, show remarks, locations, and activities per day, and optionally take into account the price factors for hourly rates.

Further switches show a billable or price group column, insert a page break at groupings, or hide unbooked tasks. Via the output language, you determine in which language the record is created.

Example: For a detailed customer invoice, you output the working times as a table with subtotals by task and shown activities, while for a compact internal control you choose only the summary without times. The underlying invoice and revenue values themselves arise in interplay with the areas Invoicing and Revenue and costs.

The Customers sub-area appears for projects with the option Allow invoicing to multiple customers. Here you manage the customers assigned to the project and define the primary customer, who serves as the default for invoice address, order reference, and contact person. Useful for consortium projects or shared orders with proportional billing.

In the Price Tables, you store the project-related prices per price group and activity, as hourly or daily rates depending on the type of accounting. The default values are taken from the customer and employee master data and can be adjusted for exactly this project:

Useful for special projects with deviating conditions. The basics of the price logic are described in the area Invoicing.

Under Project-Price-Group, you determine which price groups are available in this project. This controls according to which price logic billing happens:

A deliberately restricted selection (for example Standard, Premium, or Maintenance) keeps the price structure of a project clear and prevents mis-assignments.

The Receipt Settings define which receipt types may be booked onto the project and which amount is invoiced to the customer. Via the selection amount to be invoiced, you determine per receipt type which portion is transferred to the invoice, for example the total amount, only the profit portion, or only the expenses. Team members can only record receipts of the released types; the global receipt-type master data is maintained by administrators in the administration.

Under Travel Settings, you store the project-specific rules for travel costs that complement the global travel settings from the administration for exactly this project:

The Billing group bundles the invoice functions available directly on the project. They map the path from the service to the finished invoice and are used for the day-to-day invoicing of a customer project.

The group comprises the following items; their operation in detail is described in the collection Invoicing:

The Resource Planning group bundles the project-related scheduling of team members onto days and hours and the comparison of the planning with the actually booked times.

The group comprises the following items; concepts and operation are described in the collection Resource Planning:

Via the Reports submenu on the project detail view, you reach all reports focused on exactly this project, without having to open the central reports area. Available are, among others, the cover page as a printable summary, the project time and receipt analysis limited to the project, the Time Report, the Project Accounting or project revenue, as well as the plan views Project Status Plan and Overall State Plan and the revenue view Project Status Revenue. Which reports appear depends on the product line, role, and licensed modules.

A complete overview of all project reports, including the global lists from the main menu and their interplay with the central reports area, is provided in the article Project reports.