Project codes must be unique; a message appears if you attempt to enter a non-unique code when adding a new project.

On the Project lines - planning and Project lines - financial forms, this field shows the project the line belongs to.

This field shows the status of the project. For each status, you should use a status type that represents the progress of the line. The available status types are 'Offer', 'Order', 'Actual costing' and 'History'. Unlike the status types in purchase, sales and production orders, the project status type is merely informational.

For each status, you can set the shading and color of the project lines in the planning graph of the project lines. The shape is determined by the project settings.

Use this informational field to assign a priority to the project line.

To display order data in projects, you need to create one or more links between the project and the order structure. By linking orders or order lines to the project, up-to-date order information is available from within the project about the planning, the costs incurred, and the revenues. Links can be established with a wide range of items, including sales orders, sales lines, purchase orders, periodic invoice lines, and operations. Order information can be linked at different levels, depending on the information you want to see at that level. For example, you could link a sales order at project level, to give you a general overview of the financial and planning data for the entire project. To get detailed information, you could link various production files belonging to the sales order to a phase, and link operations from one of the production files to the activities within a phase. You can also see more information by viewing the linked order or order line itself from within the project line.

You can link multiple orders or order lines to a project line, provided they are of the same order or line type, so that the data can be totaled in various project fields. This means you can link various production orders to a project line, but you cannot link both a periodic invoice line and a sales line to a project line.

Project lines of the 'Plan group' type cannot have any links. The link type will always be 'Not applicable' and cannot be changed.

Note: You are recommended to link one or more sales orders to the project first, before linking other orders related to the sales order. Because of the financial calculations to be made, a sales order must be linked to the project, as the sales order is leading in the financial processes.

Examples of links

This is the date and time when the Calculate project line items process was last executed.

This is the date the project (or project component) is expected to start. If the start date has been entered, the Wk field will automatically show the week number of the start date. To configure how a change to the start date affects the finish date and the lead time, use the Project settings option.

• In the Estimate column, enter the expected start date of the project line.

  The date may move as a result of a change to the planning. The date can also be changed manually, if required. If the plan type is 'Estimated', the planning will be based on the estimated start date.

• For projects, subprojects and phases with underlying lines, calculations are always based on the underlying project lines (plan type 'Calculated based on underlying project lines). The Estimate column will show the earliest start date found on the underlying project lines, and the planning will be based on this start date. If the project line does not have any underlying lines, this check box will remain empty.
• If an order is linked to the project line (or parent project line), the Order information column will show the start date from the linked order. If the plan type is 'Calculated based on linked order information', the planning will be based on this start date.

This is the date the project (or project component) is expected to finish. If the finish date has been entered, the Wk field will automatically show the week number of the finish date. To configure how a change to the finish date affects the start date and the lead time, use the Project settings option.

• In the Estimate column, enter the expected finish date of the project line.

  The date may move as a result of a change to the planning. The date can also be changed manually, if required. If the plan type is 'Estimated', the planning will be based on the estimated finish date.

• For projects, subprojects and phases with underlying lines, calculations are always based on the underlying project lines (plan type 'Calculated based on underlying project lines). The Estimate column will show the last finish date found on the underlying project lines, and the planning will be based on this finish date. If the project line does not have any underlying lines, this check box will remain empty.
• If an order is linked to the project line (or to a parent project line), the Order information column will show the finish date from the linked order. If the plan type is 'Calculated based on linked order information', the planning will be based on this finish date.

This is the lead time of the project line. To configure how a change to the lead date affects the start date and the finish time, use the Project settings option.

• If you enter the estimated start and finish dates, the estimated lead time will be calculated automatically. You can also enter the lead time yourself if the start or finish date is missing, or if only one of these dates has been filled in.
• If the project line has underlying lines, the plan type will be 'Calculated based on underlying project lines', and the lead time will run from the earliest start date until the last finish date found on those underlying lines.
• If the project line is linked to an order and the Order information column has a start date and a finish date, the lead time is calculated automatically based on these data.

Note: The lead time of a milestone is always 0 days.

The Restriction and Restriction date fields on the General tab enable you to control the planning by specifying restrictions for project lines, such as 'Do not start before'. In combination with the date you specify to the right of the restriction, this will create a condition that will be used during the planning process for the line. In the Gantt chart, restricted lines have the symbols you specify for Restricted start date and Restricted finish date on the Gantt chart settings form.

You can find an example in the Processes folder of the Help.

Use a plan type to define the dates to be used for calculations in a project. Choose whether the calculations on the line should use the estimated start date, finish date or lead time, the dates on the underlying project lines, or the dates specified in the linked order. The plan type also determines which information is visible in the Gantt chart.

As the project progresses and more details become available, you can choose another plan type in order to use the most reliable data available at that time. This allows you to set up a project in phases.

The Plan type field can be filled in the following ways:

• Manually
• Automatically, by selecting the relevant setting on the Basic data form
• Automatically, after adding underlying project lines (only for the type 'Estimated').

Consider the following when choosing a plan type:

• Estimated: The calculations on the project line and in the Gantt chart use the estimated values entered in the Estimated column.

  The plan type 'Estimated' can be used at the start of the project, when only a rough estimate can be made of the time required or the costs to be incurred. At this stage, the project line is not yet broken down into activities, subprojects, etcetera.

  Once underlying lines are added to a project line (project, subproject or phase) of the plan type 'Estimated', the plan type is automatically changed to 'Calculated based on underlying lines'. You can now no longer change the plan type back to 'Estimated'.

• Calculated based on underlying project lines: The calculations on the project line and in the Gantt chart use the combined values from the underlying lines. The sum total of those values is displayed in the Estimated column on the General tab. The values in this column can now no longer be changed manually, because they are determined automatically.

  The plan type 'Calculated based on underlying project lines' is available only for lines of the types 'Project', 'Subproject' and 'Phase'.

• Calculated based on linked order information: The calculations performed on the parent project line and in the Gantt chart are based on the values from the order (or the order line) linked to the project line. Those values are shown in the Order information column.

  The plan type 'Calculated based on linked order information' can be used if order information is available, such as a planning or posted costs.

Use this informational field to enter the date on which the progress is to be checked.

This is an informational field in which you could enter the date on which the project must be completed at the latest.

Select the Complete check box to indicate that the project line has been completed. In addition, you can specify the date on which a project was completed.

Confirmation of a project as complete is an important project status. Once a project line has been marked as 'Complete', only some of the information on the project line can still be changed, such as the value of the Complete check box itself, the descriptions, the memo, and the texts. Project lines marked as 'Complete' can no longer be moved in the Gantt chart. Also, these lines will not be re-scheduled if they are successors of another line.

The following processes can no longer be executed when a line has been marked as 'Complete':

• Calculate units, costs and revenues: No more calculations will be performed for project lines of the 'Project' type that have been marked as 'Complete'. Of course, if project components have been confirmed as complete, but the project has not, recalculations will still be performed for the components.
• Copy projects
• Create plan group lines
• Determine bottlenecks.

This check box is selected as soon as the Determine bottlenecks process has been performed and a bottleneck has been detected in the project. A bottleneck is defined as a discrepancy between the estimated start and/or end date of a project line, and the start and/or end date of the linked order information.

You can also manually select or clear this check box.