Delete a Project

Flowtly Editorial Team3 min

Deleting a project removes it from your lists and views. Two things are worth knowing before you start: not everyone can do it, and a project that still has budgets or property bookings attached will refuse to be deleted until you detach them.

Who can delete a project

Only two roles can delete a project:

  • Administrator
  • Projects Manager

Account Managers can also delete, because that role carries the Projects Manager permissions with it — you do not need to grant anything extra.

Project Leads cannot delete projects, including projects they lead. A Lead has elevated privileges on their own projects — editing, planning, managing members — but deletion is deliberately not one of them. If you lead a project that needs deleting, ask an Administrator or a Projects Manager.

If you do not hold one of these roles, the Delete button does not appear on the project page at all. There is nothing to enable in your own settings; the permission comes from your role, which an Administrator assigns.

How to delete a project

  1. Open the project from the Projects list.
  2. Stay on the Overview tab — the Delete button only appears there.
  3. Click Delete and confirm in the dialog.

What deletion actually does

The project is archived, not destroyed. Flowtly records the date it was deleted and stops showing it in project lists, pickers and reports. The underlying record and its history remain in the database.

This matters in two ways:

  • Nothing you have already invoiced or reported on silently changes its numbers because a project was deleted.
  • If a project was deleted by mistake, the data has not been shredded — contact support, who can tell you what is recoverable in your case.

When Flowtly refuses to delete

Two things block deletion. In both cases the project is left untouched and you are told which one applies.

Budgets are linked

If any budget includes this project, deletion is refused. A budget that quietly lost one of its projects would keep reporting a total that no longer matched what it contained.

What to do: open the budget, remove the project from it, then delete the project.

Property bookings are linked

If any property or asset is booked to this project — a room, a desk, a piece of equipment — deletion is refused, because the booking would be left pointing at something that no longer exists.

What to do: end or reassign the bookings on that project, then delete it.

Connection map

Refers toDerived fromPart ofPlanned vs actual
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
budget covers project. invoice billed from project. project is of type project-type. project staffed by person. project-rate rates person. project-rate applies on project. time-entry tracked against project. task belongs to project. project-folder groups project. project linked to budget. project needs role. booking planned vs actual time-entry.coversbilled fromis of typestaffed byratesapplies ontracked againstbelongs togroupslinked toneedsplanned vs actualBBudget — The financial envelope an engagement is measured against — what was planned, versus what has actually been spent.BudgetPProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectIInvoice — A sales document issued to a client: line items, dates, tax. It is created, reviewed, previewed and then sent.InvoicePProject type — Fixed-price, Time & Material, Non-billable or Internal. It decides how the project's tracking and reporting behave.Project typePPerson — An employee. The central record the rest of the workforce data hangs off — profile, documents, leave, benefits, rates.PersonMMember rate — A team member's billing or cost rate on a project. Rates are per member, so the same person can cost differently on two projects.Member rateTTime entry — What actually happened — work time logged against a project.Time entryTTask — A unit of work inside a project.TaskPProject folder — A grouping of projects, for organisations running more than a handful.Project folderRRole — One job to be done on a project. It may be open, partly filled, filled or over-filled, and it exists whether or not anyone is booked on it.RoleBBooking — One person committed to one role for a stretch of weeks, at a percentage of their time. A booking is a plan, not a record of work done.Booking

Related terms