Projects

Projects let you organize larger client engagements into a single record that ties together tasks, tickets, time, and a budget. Each project belongs to one client and can be assigned a project manager.

Overview

The Projects module lets you:

• Create projects scoped to a client, with an optional project manager
• Track a project through a defined set of statuses
• Set a timeline with start and due dates
• Define a budget in dollars, in hours, or both
• Group Tasks and Tickets under a project
• Track time logged against the project's tasks and its tickets, rolled up into one hours total and burn-down
• Track spend against a dollar budget with a cost burn-down and over-budget signal
• See a project's profitability — invoiced revenue against logged-time cost, with profit and margin

Navigate to Projects

Go to PSA → Projects in the left sidebar to open the project list.

Project list

The list is searchable and can be filtered by status. Each row shows:

Column	Description
Project	Project name, with the description shown beneath it
Client	The client the project belongs to (links to the client record)
Status	Current project status
Progress	Task-completion progress at a glance — a bar and percentage showing how many of the project's tasks are Done (e.g. 75% · 3/4 done). Shows "No tasks" when the project has none
Items	Count of tasks and tickets linked to the project
Budget	Budget amount and/or budget hours, or "No budget" if neither is set. When an hours budget is set, the column shows the percentage of those hours used and an Over budget badge once logged time passes the budget. When a dollar budget is set, it likewise shows the percentage of the amount used and an Over budget badge once spend passes the budget
Dates	Start date and due date when present

Use the Search projects… box to filter by name, and the Status dropdown to filter by a single status. Results are paginated 25 at a time. The list also respects the global client filter when one is active.

Project statuses

Status	Label	Description
NOT_STARTED	Not Started	Project created but work has not begun
IN_PROGRESS	In Progress	Work is actively underway
ON_HOLD	On Hold	Temporarily paused
COMPLETED	Completed	Project finished
CANCELLED	Cancelled	Project cancelled

When creating a project you can choose Not Started, In Progress, or On Hold. The Completed and Cancelled statuses become available when you edit an existing project.

Creating a project

1. Click Create Project on the Projects page.
2. Fill in Project Details:
   • Project Name (required)
   • Description
   • Client (required)
   • Project Manager — any user in your organization
   • Status — Not Started, In Progress, or On Hold
3. Set the Timeline:
   • Start Date (defaults to today)
   • Due Date
4. Optionally set the Budget:
   • Budget Amount (USD)
   • Budget Hours
5. Click Create Project.

A summary panel on the right previews the project name, status, client, start date, and budget as you fill out the form.

Project fields

Field	Required	Notes
Name	Yes	Up to 200 characters
Description	No	Free text
Client	Yes	Each project belongs to exactly one client
Project Manager	No	A single user; shown as "Unassigned" when not set
Status	No	Defaults to Not Started
Start Date	No
Due Date	No
Budget Amount	No	In USD
Budget Hours	No

Project detail page

Opening a project shows its description, a tabbed work area, and a sidebar with summary information.

Tabs

Tab	Contents
Tasks	The project's tasks, with status, priority, assignee, and due date. Use Add Task to create one.
Tickets	Tickets associated with the project, with status, priority, assignee, and created date. Use New Ticket to open a ticket pre-linked to this project and client. You can also link an existing ticket to this project from that ticket's Edit form, or pick the project on the standalone New Ticket form.
Time Entries	A read-only, combined view of all time logged against the project — both time logged on the project's tickets and time logged on its tasks — newest first. Columns are date, user, source (a link to the originating ticket or task), description, and duration (billable entries are flagged). Use Add Time (see below) to log time without leaving the project.
Timeline	A read-only schedule view (Gantt-lite) of the project's tasks. Each scheduled task is a bar positioned across the project's date range (using the task's start date and due date) and coloured by status, with a marker on any blocked task. Tasks with no dates are listed separately as unscheduled. See Task dependencies & timeline below.
Milestones	The project's dated phases / checkpoints, each with a status and an optional due date. Add, edit, re-status, and delete milestones to track the project to completion. See Project milestones below.
Documents	Documents from the Documents module — SOWs, network diagrams, quotes, and other files — attached to this project. Attach an existing document, follow it through to the Documents module, or detach it. See Project documents below.
Comments	A discussion thread for the project. Post a comment, edit your own, and delete your own (or any, with project delete permission). Each comment shows its author and when it was posted. See Project comments below.
Notes	Collaboration notes attached to the project — context, decisions, and status updates that belong to the project itself rather than to a single ticket or task. Each note shows its author, when it was added, and an optional importance badge. See Project notes below.

Tasks

Each task row shows:

Column	Values
Status	To Do, In Progress, Blocked, Done
Priority	Low, Medium, High, Critical
Assignee	The assigned user, or "Unassigned"
Due Date	The task's due date, if set

Click a task to open it. See the Tasks documentation for the full task workflow.

Tasks can also carry an optional start date (alongside the existing due date), set on the task's new/edit form. Together the start and due dates place the task on the project Timeline.

Sidebar

The right-hand sidebar includes:

• Summary — task and ticket counts

• Budget — budget amount and/or hours (shown only when a budget is set). When an hours budget is set, a burn-down bar shows hours logged against the budget, the percentage consumed, and hours remaining; once logged time exceeds the budget the figures turn red and an Over budget badge appears showing how far over you are. The logged total combines time on the project's tasks and time on its tickets, with a line below the bar breaking the total down into hours on tasks vs. hours on tickets. The first time logging time pushes a project past its hours budget, Ascent also sends an over-budget notification to the project manager and your org admins (respecting each person's notification preferences). It is sent once per crossing — logging more time while already over budget will not re-notify — and resets if logged time later drops back under budget.

  When a dollar budget (Budget Amount) is set, a second cost burn-down bar shows the value of time logged against the budget, the percentage consumed, and the amount remaining; once spend exceeds the budget the figures turn red and an Over budget badge appears showing how far over you are. Each time entry is valued the same way Ascent values it for invoicing — the entry's own rate when one is set, otherwise the client's default rate, otherwise zero — and, like the hours bar, the cost bar counts all time logged on the project's tickets and tasks (not billable-only). The first time logging time pushes a project's spend past its dollar budget, Ascent sends an over-budget notification to the project manager and your org admins (respecting each person's notification preferences) — the cost counterpart of the hours alert. The two budgets are tracked independently, so a project with both an hours and a dollar budget can alert on each separately; each alert is sent once per crossing and resets if spend later drops back under budget.

• Profitability — a profit-and-loss summary for the project, shown whenever it has any invoiced revenue or any logged-time cost (it does not require a budget to be set). It lists:

  • Revenue (invoiced) — the total of the project's invoices that represent real billings. Invoices still in Draft, or that are Cancelled or Void, are excluded; everything from Published/Sent through Paid counts.
  • Cost (logged time) — the monetary value of all time logged on the project's tickets and tasks, valued exactly like the cost burn-down above (each entry's own rate, otherwise the client's default rate, otherwise zero).
  • Profit — revenue minus cost, with the margin (profit as a percentage of revenue) beside it. When the project has cost but no revenue yet, the margin is omitted; when profit is negative the figure turns red and an Unprofitable badge appears so a losing engagement stands out at a glance.

• Details — client, project manager, start date, due date, and creation date

• Quick Actions — shortcuts to Add Task (opens the new-task form pre-linked to this project), Log Time (opens the same Add Time dialog described below), and Create Invoice (opens the new-invoice form with the project's client pre-selected and the invoice linked to this project; the project shows read-only on the form, and changing the client removes the link).

Logging time on a project

The Add Time button (on the Time Entries tab) and the Log Time quick action both open the Add Time dialog. Because time always belongs to a ticket or a task — so it stays a single source of truth and feeds billing — the dialog asks you to pick one of the project's tickets or tasks to log against, then enter minutes, an optional description, a date (tickets only), and whether the time is billable. Submitting records the entry on that ticket or task (the same as logging from the ticket/task itself) and the new time immediately rolls up into the project's hours total and burn-down.

The buttons appear only for users who can log time: you need create permission on Ticket Time to log against a ticket, or update permission on Tasks to log against a task. The dialog only offers the target types you're allowed to use, and every entry is recorded in the audit log.

Project milestones

The Milestones tab on the project detail page breaks a project into dated phases or checkpoints so you can track it to completion — for example Discovery complete, Build, and Go-live.

• Add a milestone by giving it a name, an optional description, an optional due date, and a starting status — Pending, In Progress, or Completed — then clicking Add Milestone.
• Each milestone shows a status badge, its description (if any), and, when set, its due date and the date it was completed.
• Change a milestone's status from the status dropdown on its row. Marking a milestone Completed stamps its completion date automatically; moving it back out of Completed clears that date.
• Edit a milestone's name, description, or due date with the Edit button, or Delete it with the trash icon.
• Milestones are ordered by their sequence, then due date, then when they were created.

Adding, editing, re-statusing, and deleting milestones requires update permission on Projects; users with only read access see the milestones read-only. Every create, update, and delete is recorded in the audit log. Deleting the project also removes its milestones.

Linking a milestone to billing (using a completed milestone as an invoice trigger) is a planned follow-up; today milestones are a tracking tool.

Task dependencies & timeline

Projects can express dependencies between tasks and view the resulting schedule on a Timeline.

Dependencies

Open a task and go to its Dependencies tab to say that one task can't start until another finishes — for example Deploy depends on QA sign-off.

• Add a dependency by picking another task in the same project from the dropdown and clicking Add. The picked task becomes a predecessor of the current task.
• The Depends on list shows each predecessor with its status; the Blocks list shows the tasks that depend on the current one.
• A task is shown as Blocked by N unfinished task(s) while any of its predecessors is not Done; the indicator clears automatically once every predecessor reaches Done.
• Remove a dependency with the trash icon next to a predecessor.

Ascent rejects dependencies that don't make sense: a task can't depend on itself, on a task in a different project, on a task it already depends on, or in a way that would create a cycle (A → B → A). Every add and remove is recorded in the audit log.

Timeline

The Timeline tab on the project detail page shows the project's tasks on a date axis — a lightweight Gantt view.

• Each task that has a start date and/or due date is drawn as a bar spanning that range, positioned across the project's overall date range and coloured by status (To Do, In Progress, Blocked, Done). A legend maps colours to statuses.
• A blocked task (one waiting on an unfinished predecessor) is highlighted with a ring so at-risk work stands out.
• Tasks with neither a start nor a due date are listed below the chart as unscheduled — give them a date to place them on the timeline.

The timeline is read-only: reschedule a task by editing its start/due date on the task's edit form. Drag-to-reschedule and dependency arrows are planned follow-ups.

Project documents

The Documents tab on the project detail page attaches existing documents from the Documents module — statements of work, network diagrams, quotes, runbooks — to the project they relate to, so the paperwork lives alongside the work.

• Attach a document by picking one of your organization's documents from the Select a document to attach… dropdown and clicking Attach. Documents already attached to the project are not offered again.
• Each attached document shows its title (a link through to the document in the Documents module), the folder and client it belongs to (when set), a Client-visible badge when applicable, and when it was last updated.
• Detach a document with the trash icon. This only removes the link to the project — the document itself is not deleted and stays in the Documents module.

Attaching and detaching documents requires update permission on Projects; users with only read access see the attached documents read-only. Every attach and detach is recorded in the audit log. Deleting the project removes its document links (not the documents); deleting a document removes it from any projects it was attached to.

Project comments

The Comments tab on the project detail page is a discussion thread for the project — a place for the team to talk through the work itself, ask and answer questions, and keep a running conversation that isn't tied to a single ticket or task.

• Post a comment by typing into the composer and clicking Post Comment. Each comment shows its author and when it was posted.
• @-mention a teammate by typing @ and their name in a comment. Each person you mention gets a notification and a Mentioned item in their inbox that links back to the project — the same way mentions work in ticket replies. You're never notified for mentioning yourself.
• Edit your own comment with the Edit action; an edited comment is marked (edited).
• Delete a comment with the trash icon. You can delete your own (with project update permission); deleting someone else's comment requires delete permission on Projects (a moderator capability).

Posting and editing comments requires update permission on Projects; users with only read access see the thread read-only. Every create, edit, and delete is recorded in the audit log. Deleting the project removes its comments.

Comments vs. Notes: Comments are a free-form discussion thread for back-and-forth conversation, while Notes are structured collaboration notes that can carry an importance badge (General / Important / Warning / Alert). Use Comments for discussion and Notes for durable context and decisions.

Project notes

The Notes tab on the project detail page records collaboration notes for the project — kickoff context, scope decisions, risks, or running status updates that apply to the whole project rather than an individual ticket or task.

• Add a note by typing into the composer, choosing an importance — General, Important, Warning, or Alert — and clicking Add Note. Non-general notes show a coloured badge so the important ones stand out.
• Notes are listed newest first and show who wrote each one and when.
• Delete a note with the trash icon on the note.

Adding and deleting project notes requires update permission on Projects; users without it see the notes read-only. Every create, update, and delete is recorded in the audit log. Deleting the project also removes its notes.

Editing and deleting a project

• Click Edit on the detail page to change any field, including moving the project to Completed or Cancelled.
• Click Delete to remove the project. This also deletes the project's associated tasks and time entries, so the action requires confirmation and cannot be undone.

Project templates

Ascent supports project templates that bundle a set of task templates and linked ticket templates, along with a default budget in hours. A project can be created from a template to spin up its tasks and tickets automatically.

Project templates are currently managed through the API rather than a dedicated screen in the projects interface.

Client portal visibility

Clients can follow their projects in the Client Portal — a read-only list and detail view showing each project's status, key dates, and task-completion progress. The portal never exposes internal financials (budgets, cost, profitability) or the project manager; client-facing progress is based on task completion only. Portal access follows the contact-type visibility matrix (Primary, Billing, and Technical contacts can see projects).

Best Practices

1. Set a budget — entering budget hours or a budget amount lets the list and detail views surface where each project stands financially.
2. Assign a project manager — every project supports a single manager, making ownership clear.
3. Break work into tasks — tasks carry their own status, priority, assignee, and due date, and roll up into the project's task count.
4. Link related tickets — associate support tickets with the project so all related work is visible in one place. Link them when creating a ticket (the New Ticket form has a Project picker), from the project's Tickets tab via New Ticket, or after the fact from a ticket's Edit form.
5. Keep status current — move projects to On Hold, Completed, or Cancelled as work changes so filters and reporting stay accurate.