In my post Job/Project setup alternatives, I discuss  a couple of alternatives once you get a project and want to monitor its progress and results.  To recap:

• Set up a project team site if the project is either large and/or complicated.
• Set up a separate task plan to manage the project.  This is a subset of the project team site.

In the post We Got The Job! Now What?, I discuss maybe not even setting up a project in SharePoint and just setup the job in QuickBooks.  I then list reasons why you may want to set up projects in SharePoint.  The last reason being reporting across jobs/projects. This reason is why you should seriously consider setting up projects up in SharePoint.

So to illustrate another project alternative, I took the customers and jobs for QuickBooks’ Sample Larry’s Landscaping and Garden Supply company and set them up in Project List. Here is screen shot of the list:

I added Frequency, Estimated Work, Rate, and Estimated $ as fields not found in QuickBooks.  The frequency and estimated work is need for  customer & employee scheduling.  Since I already know the rate, frequency, estimated work, I can make a projection of total estimated customer revenue.  I added Service Type since I didn’t like the way QuickBooks sets up a separate description for the service being provided.  Service Type also let’s me report across all projects. Noticed that view we are looking at is only Active Jobs.  I also have views for Not Active Jobs and All Jobs.

I could have added similar information as is found in QuickBooks like Project Address, Project Contacts, etc. if I so chose. Based on this Project List, I can easily copy and paste the job information into QuickBooks as outlined in the import/export post.

I also decided to place this list on the main firm website since it will probably be accessed in various subsites.  Not only Service & Delivery for scheduling but also Marketing & Sales for customer relationship management.

Another advantage about having project information on SharePoint is that I can easily customize my list views to meet a particular business need.  The example I use here could not have been done in QuickBooks. It just doesn’t have that flexibility.   In fact, I had to run several custom reports and export them to Excel in order to put the data together the way I wanted it.

You may also want to either attach a copy of the Service Agreement to the project row or hyperlink the service agreement to the Service Agreement Library so it can be viewed directly from the list.