Monthly Project Sign-off

Flowtly Editorial Team4 min

At the end of each month, the account manager of a client project confirms the hours and rates that will be billed for that month. Once they sign it, finance sees the month as signed on the project list and can invoice it. The signed report is kept as the record of what the client was shown.

Who does what

  • The project's account manager signs. This is the person on the project's team with the Account Manager position. Holding the Account Manager role in the organisation is not enough on its own: you sign only the projects where you are a team member in that position. A phase with its own account manager is signed by that person.
  • Finance follows. People with access to invoices see the sign-off state of every project and are notified when a month is signed or re-opened. They do not sign.
  • An administrator re-opens. An administrator can re-open a signed month so that it can be corrected. An administrator cannot sign on the account manager's behalf.

Only projects with a client have a sign-off.

The Sign-off column

The project list has a Sign-off column; on a phone, each project card has a Sign-off row instead. It shows the state of one month for each project:

  • Not started: nobody has started the review yet.
  • In review: the account manager has started the review and has not signed it yet.
  • Signed: signed, with the date and the name of the person who signed.
  • Re-opened: an administrator re-opened a signed month, and it has to be signed again.
  • Not applicable: the project has no client.

The Sign-off month selector next to the filters picks the month. It starts at the previous month, the one usually being closed, and your choice is kept in the page address, so a link you share opens the same month. The column cannot be filtered by state yet.

Click a state to open the review of that project and month. The column is shown to people with access to invoices, to administrators, and to anyone who is the account manager of at least one project.

Reviewing a month

  1. Click the state in the Sign-off column, or open the link in a notification.
  2. Click Start the review. Flowtly prepares a draft of the client report for that project and month.
  3. Check the hours and rates. You can adjust a line, and every adjustment needs a reason.
  4. Check the Leave this month panel. It lists each team member's leave in the month, in working days and hours. Leave is shown for context and is never subtracted from the hours. When a leave runs into the previous or next month, only the part inside this month is counted.
  5. Click the sign-off button and confirm.

While you review, the draft is visible only to you. Others see the report once it is signed.

After signing

  • The month shows Signed with the date and your name, and finance is notified.
  • Open the signed report opens the report exactly as it was signed.
  • To change a signed month, ask an administrator. They click Re-open and confirm; the month shows Re-opened, and the account manager reviews and signs it again.

Hiding a person from a client's reports

Some clients should not see the name of a particular person who works on their projects. On the client's page, the Overview tab has the section People hidden from this client's invoices and reports. Pick a person and click Hide. To show the name again, use the remove button next to it. This needs the clients manager role.

Only the name is hidden. The person's hours, rates and totals stay on the client report and on the invoice: the report shows them as a hidden person, and the invoice line leaves their name out. Internal reports are not affected. The rule applies to every project of that client, and months that are already signed keep the report as it was signed.

Notifications

Sign-off notifications belong to the Invoices category of your notification settings, where you can turn them off. A notification opens the review of that project and month.

Connection map

Planned vs actualRefers toDerived fromPart of
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
purchase-order-line estimated against time-entry. budget covers project. counterparty defaults to project. invoice billed from project. project is of type project-type. project identified by project-reference. 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-template creates project. project measured by project-kpi. project-phase is a child project of project. project needs role. booking planned vs actual time-entry.estimated againstcoversdefaults tobilled fromis of typeidentified bystaffed byratesapplies ontracked againstbelongs togroupslinked tocreatesmeasured byis a child project ofneedsplanned vs actualOOrder line — One line of a purchase order: a role priced by the hour with the hours estimated for it, or a deliverable priced as an outcome. A deliverable carries no hours at all.Order lineTTime entry — What actually happened — work time logged against a project.Time entryBBudget — 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.ProjectCCounterparty — The other side of a financial document — a client billed, or a supplier owed.CounterpartyIInvoice — A sales document issued to a client: line items, dates, tax. It is created, reviewed, previewed and then sent — or, when it went out some other way, recorded as delivered.InvoicePProject type — Fixed-price, Time & Material, Non-billable or Internal. It decides how the project's tracking and reporting behave.Project typePProject reference — An optional key a project carries so systems outside Flowtly can name it. Unique within the organisation, and never reused once it has been given to a project.Project referencePPerson — 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 rateTTask — A unit of work inside a project.TaskPProject folder — A grouping of projects, for organisations running more than a handful.Project folderPProject template — A reusable blueprint for a project: its phases, task lists and tasks, with timings held as day offsets rather than dates. It carries no client, no team and nothing financial.Project templatePProject KPI — A measure attached to a project, either filled in by hand as dated readings or computed from the project's finances, optionally compared with a target.Project KPIPPhase — A stage a project runs through. A phase is itself a child project, so everything true of a project is true of a phase.PhaseRRole — 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 a role, or directly to a project, for a stretch of time — at a percentage of their time, or for a number of hours on each chosen day. A booking is a plan, not a record of work done.Booking