Skip to main content

Manage Project Activities

Project Activities are the high level phases of work that are undertaken on a project such as design, development and management; they are not low level todo tasks. All time recorded in Workup is allocated to a Project and an Activity. Activities should be created at the level/granularity that you want to record and analyse time.

Project Activities are listed on the Activities tab on the Project page. The list will provide a summary of each activity including billing data if the project has billing enabled. There are several views that can be selected to show different aggregated data against each activity such as actual time spent, billed value and costs.

Creating a Project Activity​

This is done by pressing the Add New Activity button on the Activities tab. This will bring up the Add Activity dialog. The fields that can be entered when creating a Project Activity are described below:

  • Activity Name: a unique name for this activity on the project
  • Category: a category allowing time against activities across multiple projects to be aggregated and analysed
  • Business Role: an optional business role which defines the skills needed for this activity, can then be used for selecting resources for the activity
  • Estimate: the estimated/budget effort for this activity in days or hours
  • Active?: whether this activity is still active and that it can used in scheduling
  • Billable?: whether this activity is billable and will be included in billing calculations and invoices. Setting this to on will make the below fields visible:
  • Resource Rate Type: the user can different rate types to calculate the Billed Total amounts for the activity and the Billed, Cost and Profit amounts for the project. See section Assigning Rate Types below for more information on rate types.
    • Activity Rate
    • Project Resource Rate
    • Resource Default Rate
    • Resource Role Rate
  • Billing Rate: the billing rate per day or hour for that specific activity (in the project currency). This is used for calculating the Estimated Total amounts for that activity. It is also used to calculate the Billed Total amounts, if a Resource Rate Type of Activity Rate was chosen.

Assigning Rate Types​

Workup supports a number of different rate types to calculate project billables and costs. The 4 types below can be selected when creating or updating a project activity.

  • Activity Rate: Activity billed totals will utilise the Billing rate specified for this activity (i.e. the field referring to below). Currently, an activity rate must be specified for every billable activity. This is because it is used to calculate the Estimated Total amount for that activity. Billing Totals will also use this amount, only if the Activity Rate rate type is chosen for that activity.
  • Project Resource Rate: Activity billed totals will use the resource's assigned rate for this project when billing time to this activity. You can find this rate by adding or editing a resource on the Project Overview page - a dialog box will open with a Project Day Rate field.
  • Resource Default Rate: Activity billed totals will utilise the default rates that are specified for the resource. You can view and edit these rates by navigating to Resources, then choose your target resource. On the View Resource page, The External Day Rate (currency) is used to calculate Activity billed totals and the Internal Day Rate (currency) is used to calculate Activity and Project costs.
  • Resource Role Rate: Activity billed totals will utilise the role rates that are specified for the resource. On the same View resource page you can Add Role Rate. Here you can select a Business Role and specify internal and external rates for each. That Business Role must then be selected on the Add/Edit Activity dialog box.

In addition to the above rates, it is also possible to define a Default Internal Day Rate and Default Internal Day Rate for the organisation. This can be done by the Billing Admin user in the Org Settings page in the Admin section. Navigate to Scheduler and the billing admin can assign organisation default internal and external rates. In the event that a particular rate type is chosen for a project activity, and that particular rate has not been defined, Workup will revert to these default rates in the cost, billed and profit calculations for activities and their projects.