Projects View

Flowtly Editorial Team7 min

To review and manage a specific project or phase, navigate to its profile. In the Projects list, you can use the "Go to Project View" button to access the Project page, which includes the Overview, Phases, Tasks and Project financials tabs, plus a Members drawer opened from the page header. Alternatively, you can go directly to a Project or Phase page by clicking on its name in the Project List.

Overview Tab

The Overview tab provides a centralized summary of a project’s key information, structure, and administrative controls. It is designed for both visibility and quick management by users with the appropriate roles. Budgets Section If the Budget module is active for your organization, you can manage the project's relationship with budgets within the Overview tab. This section lists all budgets connected to the project. A project can be connected to multiple budgets. Budgets cannot be edited directly here, but:

  • Clicking a budget tile redirects you to its Budget Details page.
  • Clicking “Go to budget” takes you to the page with Budgets list.

You can remove a budget assignment by clicking the ❌ on the tile. To connect a Project/Phase with a Budget, click the "Add New" button in the top right corner of the Budget section and select from the list of existing budgets. Once saved, the budget will appear in the section.

Note: Projects and Phases can be connected to different budget. Additionally, if you want each project phase to be connected with the same budget as parent project, you will have to do it manually for each project phase. Notes Section A single common note can be added per project. Click “Add note” to provide the note initially. To edit an existing note simply click into the field, make your changes, and press Enter to save. When no note exists yet, an empty-state visual appears with the message “No notes for the project.”

Members Drawer

Project members are no longer managed from a tab. Instead, a Members drawer opens from the project page header and lists everyone assigned to the project. Old bookmarks or links to a "members" tab still work: they are redirected automatically to open this drawer. To add a member:

  1. Click on the "Add employee" Button: Opens a form to select and assign an employee.
  2. Select the Employee: Choose the employee from the list.
  3. Assign a Role: Specify the role of the employee in the project.
  4. Save: The employee will appear in the list.

Note: You can assign a role to an employee only once. However one employee can have multiple roles in the same project (e.g. 1 employee can be Accountant manager and Tech lead at the same time). If a role has already been assigned to an employee, it will no longer appear in the list of available roles.

Once saved, the employee will appear in the member list within the drawer. You can also modify a previously selected role by clicking "Edit employee" button and remove a member from the project by clicking the Bin button and confirming the choice.

Phases Tab

A Phase in Flowtly is a separate entity within a parent project. It operates with the same functionality as a project but maintains its own settings, such as:

  • Independent Budgets – Each phase can have its own budget allocation.
  • Distinct Start & End Dates – A phase can run on a different timeline than its parent project.
  • Separate Employee Assignments – Employees can be assigned either to a specific phase or parent project.

Phases allow for better organization of complex projects by breaking them down into manageable sections while keeping all related work under one main project structure.

How to create a Phase

There are two ways to create a phase inside a project:

1. Creating a Phase from the Project Page

  1. Navigate to the dedicatedProject page.
  2. Go to the Phases tab.
  3. Click "Add project phase".
  4. Fill in the following form details:
  • Name (Required)
  • Type (Fixed price, Internal, Not billable, Time and Material)
  • Date From (Optional)
  • Date To (Optional)
  1. Click Save.

Once saved, the phase will appear under the parent project in the Projects List.

2. Creating a Phase from the Projects List page

  1. Click "Add project" on the top-right corner of the Projects List page.
  2. Fill out the project creation form as usual.
  3. Navigate to the Project edit mode of the newly created project.
  4. Select a Parent project for it.
  5. Save the changes.

Now, the project will become a phase of the selected parent project.

Employee Access & Time Logging

Employee assignments and time logging depend on whether the phase was created from scratch or converted from an existing project.

1. When a new Phase is created under a parent project

  • All employees assigned to the parent project will be automatically attached to the phase.
  • Employees can log time under both the parent project and the phase.

2. When a separate Project becomes a phase of another Project

  • Employees assigned to the parent project will be granted access to the phase.
  • Employees who were assigned only to the phase before the assigning will not gain access to the parent project.

3. When an Employee is added only to a Phase

  • The employee will be able to log time only under that phase.
  • The employee will not be displayed as attached to the parent project.

4. When an Employee is added to the parent Project

  • The employee will automatically gain access to the parent project and all of its phases.
  • They will be able to log time under both the parent project and any of its phases.

Key Takeaways

Phases function as independent units but inherit employee access from the parent project.
✅ If an employee needs to work across all phases, assign them at the parent project level.
✅ If an employee should only work on a specific phase, add them directly to that phase.

By using phases correctly, you can better structure complex projects and ensure smooth collaboration among teams while keeping billing and resource management efficient.

Tasks Tab

The Tasks tab tracks the project's task lists and individual tasks, letting you break project work into trackable items with their own status and recurrence. See Project Tasks for details.

Project financials

The former Profitability tab is now Project financials, which follows the project's money from plan to actuals across several sub-tabs:

  • Initial budget – the planned costs set up for the project.
  • P&L over time – planned vs. actual profit-and-loss charts.
  • Budget realization (preview) – a per-tag rollup of planned, contracted, and invoiced amounts; only shown once an Initial budget exists.
  • Plan vs Actual (preview) – a table of planned vs. actual revenue, cost, and net per month; also requires an Initial budget.
  • Related costs – every project transaction (and transaction assignment) linked to the project.

Each sub-tab is addressable via its own URL segment (/projects/:id/financials/:subTab), so a specific sub-tab can be linked or bookmarked directly.

Wherever these sub-tabs break actual figures down by month, a cost is counted in the month its document relates to rather than the month it was paid. See Budget P&L & forecast for the full rule and how it affects monthly comparisons.

Every row in Related costs carries a Tags column listing the categorization tags on the cost itself. A row is left blank when its cost carries no tags, so an empty column is a statement that nothing is tagged rather than a sign the column is not working.

The tags shown are the ones on the underlying document, and the two kinds of cost are tagged in different places:

  • an invoice cost shows the tags on the incoming invoice,
  • a bank transaction cost shows the tags on the transaction.

So a cost that appears here untagged is tagged where that document lives — on the incoming invoice, or on the transaction in Transactions — not on the project. Tagging it there makes it appear in this column, and in the tag rollups under Budget realization.

The Tags filter above the table follows the same rule and matches both kinds of cost, so filtering by a tag returns invoice costs and bank costs together rather than only one of them.

Where a tag was applied to only part of a document, the chip states that share as a percentage — Shared · 25% — because the cost is split across several categories rather than belonging wholly to one.

Every amount states its tax basis

Budget realization labels the tax basis of each column, so you do not have to infer it. Planned and contracted amounts are always net of VAT. The invoiced column states its own basis, because that is the one that can vary: it reads net, gross, or mixed when the invoice lines behind it were not all recorded on the same basis.

Flowtly settles the invoiced basis when an invoice line is recorded rather than when it is displayed. A line that arrives carrying gross values is converted to net before it is stored, so the figure you read has a known basis rather than an assumed one. Structured e-invoices are the common case, because a document can state its line values either way.

That guarantee runs forward from 5 August 2026. Invoice lines recorded before that date were stored as the source document supplied them, so a project drawing on older documents can still include lines held at gross — which is what a mixed label is telling you. Flowtly does not convert them on its own, because how each line was originally supplied was not recorded at the time and cannot be recovered from the value alone: nothing about a figure distinguishes a gross amount from a net one. If an older invoiced total looks high by roughly its own VAT rate, check it against the net total on the source document.

Plan vs Actual, month by month

Plan vs Actual lays the project's months out in rows and compares each one against the plan: revenue, cost and net, with the variance between them. Each figure is shown as plan → actual, followed by how far the actual ran over or under.

Variance colour reads as better or worse than planned, not as up or down. Spending less than planned and earning more than planned are both shown as favourable, so a cost 10% under plan and revenue 10% over plan are coloured the same way — and revenue 10% under plan is not.

A dash and a zero mean different things. A dash means no plan was set for that month. A planned zero is shown as a figure, because deciding to spend nothing in a month is a plan, and not planning the month at all is not. Dashes therefore appear in the variance columns as well, since there is nothing to compare against. Reading a dash as "zero" would understate a plan; reading a zero as "no plan" would overstate it.

The trend line needs at least two months with activity before it is drawn. A single point cannot show a direction, so the table carries the figures and the chart says why it is not showing one.

Where the cumulative figure lives

Every row in this table is a month, and there is no total row beneath them. The question this sub-tab answers is one of pacing — whether the money moved when it was planned to — so it is read down the month axis rather than summed. A line at the foot of the table says where the cumulative figure is instead, and links to Budget realization.

The two sub-tabs are not two views of one number, which is why the total is not repeated here. Plan vs Actual compares each month against the amount the budget planner set for that month. Budget realization compares the project as a whole against the Initial budget, which is a single planned amount per tag with no month attached to it. A total on this table would restate a figure that is calculated elsewhere, from a different plan, and the two would not have to agree.

When the project has no plan

The sub-tab appears once the project has an Initial budget, but the figures it compares against come from the budget planner. These are two different things, so a project can open this sub-tab with nothing to compare. When that happens, a prompt names what is missing and links straight to the planner.

The prompt sits above the table rather than in place of it. An unplanned project still has real spend, and that is often the most useful thing on the screen — so the actuals stay visible and the plan side reads as dashes until a plan exists.

The monthly basis is the same everywhere

The months in this table are the same months used everywhere else in Project financials: a cost counts in the month its document relates to, not the month it was paid. See Budget P&L & forecast for the full rule.

That also means the awaiting/received split does not move an amount between rows here. Whether a cost has been settled is a separate question from which month it belongs to, so paying an old invoice does not change which month it lands in on this table.

Example use cases

  • A Project Manager needs to quickly understand the budget status and key notes for a project before a client meeting.
  • An Operations Manager needs to assign a new team member to a complex project and ensure they have access to all relevant phases for time logging.
  • A Finance Controller wants to review the total labor costs and hours worked by employees on a specific project over the last quarter to assess profitability.
  • A Business Analyst needs to break down a large, long-term project into distinct phases, each with its own budget and timeline, for better management and reporting.

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