Use Projects to organize work and people. Use Clients to inspect a customer’s projects, invoices and finances when financial management is enabled.
Set up a project and its client
A client groups a customer’s projects and invoices. Its details include contact information, a customer identifier and notes. Creating a client does not create a customer login.
- Open Projects and start the project wizard.
- Choose an authorized client. Create one in the wizard if your permissions allow it.
- Enter the project name, description and colour. Enable categories for the kinds of work people will record.
- Add the participating members and their project permissions. Add targets if needed, then finish setup.
New projects require a client. Project management permission alone does not grant client creation or selection rights. If no client is available, ask an accountant with write access.
Older projects without a client remain supported. The permanent internal group collects that work with organization expenses and taxes; the group itself cannot be archived or deleted.
Group projects by client
In Projects, select Group by clients. Treetops remembers this choice separately from filters and the archive view.
Client headings can remain when no project matches the current page or filters. A client menu appears only with the required client or partnership permissions. Grouping grants no additional access to finances or client changes.
Tasks and required assignment
A task is a project work package with its own assignment and progress. It can collect tickets. The Tickets and Tasks guide covers creation, assignment, completion and time recording.
Enable Require a task for new mikrons in project settings or the wizard to require an active task on new time records. A ticket can supply its task. This setting also applies to guest workers on a shared project.
Existing records can keep their assignment. Changing the project, task or ticket can require a valid active task. A category remains required independently.
Ticket discussion and subscriptions
Keep comments, supporting files and subscriptions with the ticket. Discussion and notification instructions explain these controls and the mail requirements.
Budgets and quotas
A budget is an upper target; a quota is a lower target. They compare recorded hours, costs or gain with an entered amount. They do not stop additional work.
- With accountant write access, add a target in the wizard or open an existing project’s budget and quota controls.
- Choose Total for project history or Monthly for each calendar month.
- Choose hours, costs or gain, then budget or quota.
- Choose project, task or category scope and enter the amount.
Task and category scopes are separate. The same time record can count in both, so do not add those comparisons together. Enter an overall project target separately; scoped targets do not create one.
A cost target for the whole project counts work costs, project expenses, the project’s share of shared costs and VAT that you cannot reclaim. It leaves out estimated profit tax. A task or category cost target counts only work costs, because expenses and shared costs have no task or category.
Before 6 November 2026, whole-project cost targets counted only work costs. Existing targets keep their amounts, so they can now show higher use without new work. Check these amounts and change them where needed.
With the stage No financial management, hour targets and work charts remain. Money targets, rates and contract entries are hidden. Stored values return when you choose an earlier stage.
Read completion and target use
Expand a project in Projects for task progress and total targets. Use Monthly Budgets and Quotas for monthly comparisons. Accountants can inspect amounts through the selected project in Clients. Managers see hours and permitted monetary percentages; these do not expose amounts or rates.
Task progress measures completion. Target progress compares activity with the target. A budget can be used up while work remains unfinished.
Project-wide gain targets use eligible issued invoice shares and project-linked income adjustments, including open invoices. Task or category gain targets use recorded work valued at selling rates. Neither means cash received. Missing salary amounts can leave cost targets incomplete; inspect the warning before using their percentages.
Contract and payments
A project can keep its agreed price and expected payments beside the work. The contract amount is the total the client agreed to pay, without tax. A milestone is a part of it that you expect. A payment received is money that has really arrived.
- Open the client in Clients and select the project. Contract and payments is below Budgets and quotas. Reading needs accountant access; editing needs accountant write access.
- Enter the contract amount. Leave it empty while nothing is agreed: an unknown amount differs from an agreed zero. Enter 0 if the client pays nothing.
- Add milestones. A milestone is due on a date, on project completion or has no date yet.
- Record a payment received only for money that no invoice in Treetops covers. Enter its net amount and the date received. Link it to a milestone if useful.
The box shows what is received, what is Still to come and what is Not in a milestone yet. A note tells you when milestones add up to more than the contract amount. Changing milestones or payments does not change the contract amount. Deleting a milestone keeps its payments and removes their link.
All values use the organization currency. Enter net payments yourself; Treetops does not infer tax from bank payments. These entries do not issue invoices or change invoice payment states.
Payments received count as income. If a project has both payments and invoices, the box warns you that the same money can count twice. Keep only one of the two for the same money.
To set the most a project should cost, add a budget with the limit Costs in total for the whole project. Contract and payments in the chart explains how the charts use these entries.
A guest organization maintains its own entries on a shared project. It does not inherit the host’s. The stage No client invoices leaves these entries available; No financial management hides them.
Archive or delete completed work
Archive a finished project to retain its history. Archiving deactivates project memberships. Deletion has different consequences: it removes project work, tasks, tickets, targets and the organization’s project expenses.
Read the deletion preview. Issued invoices keep their saved lines and amounts, but affected project links are removed. Guest work, financial plans and invoice allocations can move to retained projects under partnership rules. Deleting a client also removes its bills and documents.
See Expenses and finances for chart definitions and Access and administration for membership archives.