Features Below Available To: ✅ Grow Plan ✅ Track Plan ❌ Free Plan

Time to explore Monograph projects! This article outlines the necessary work to get your projects correctly built out and allocated. Once your projects are complete, you can move onto advanced features such as time tracking.

📚 Monograph offers live Projects training 3x each week, you may join a session by registering here, be sure to scroll down to the ② Next Up: Build & Allocate your Projects and select a time and date!

Create a New Project

To begin, click on Projects on the side navigation bar, then click on the New Project button on the upper right-hand corner, this will open a pop-up prompt to begin building your project.

✅ Complete the Create a new project prompt

Enter a Project Name + Number
Select an optional color for coding, otherwise this will assign a color at random
Select your fee type, Billable or Non-Billable
Enter your Service and Consultant Fees
If you are using a previously saved template to create a New Project, please refer here for further instruction

Service Fee - The sum of all services for Fixed Fee phases, this amount should not include any Hourly Fee phases

Consultant Fee - The total amount that will be allocated towards consultants.

Together, these two fees make up the Total Project Fees, which is the 'working' budget for the project. This will be used later to allocate team and consultant hours.

Once you have completed the prompt, click the Create button to move into the next section, Budget.

Phases

After creating the new project, you will move into the Budget section. This is where the project's phases, budgets, roles, and rates will be built out.

To begin, click on the Search and select phase drop-down to add phases to your project. Alternatively, begin typing into the field to search for the phase to add.

✅ Add Phases

Click on the Search and select phase drop-down and scroll to add you phase, or type directly into the field to search for the phase you wish to add
Follow these steps to add all phases such as Schematic Design or Construction Development to the Budget

After adding all of your necessary phases, you cam move onto to setting phase specific details to each phase of your project.

✅ Add details to each phase

Set the date range for each individual phases
Select your phase fee type, Fixed or Hourly
Add the budget you plan to spend on each individual phase by entering the dollar amount in the Budget field or a percent amount in the Percent field
If applicable, link the phase to a succeeding phase that follows
Click the Save button when all information is complete

Linked Phase - Use linked phases to automatically update succeeding phase dates. When linking phases, if the ending date of the phase is adjusted, any succeeding linked phases will automatically adjust based on the number of days that the linked phase was adjusted.

Date Range - Select the starting and end dates for the specific phase. These can be adjusted at any time. All phases must have a date range. If a phase is ongoing, we recommend setting the ending date further into the future.

Fee Type - Select Fixed or Hourly, fixed phases will count towards your Service Fee, where Hourly phases do not.

Budget - Include the phase-specific budget as a dollar amount for the phase. This will automatically calculate and update the Percentage field based on the Budget compared to the Service Fee.

Percent - If preferred, include the phase-specific budget as a percentage of the Service Fee. This will automatically calculate the phase's Budget field as a dollar amount.

☝️ Be sure to click the Save button after entering your phase details, otherwise the information will not be stored

After the details have been added to each phase, you will proceed to add your assigned team members, the people who will be working on each individual phase. To continue, click on the Show Assigned Team link to expand the phase.

✅ Assign your team members

Click on the Assign Team Member drop-down and scroll to add your team member, or type directly into the field to search for the team member you wish to add
Once a team member is added, a new prompt will appear for you to assign their Role and Billable Rate for that phase - if you have already assigned a Default Role to your team via Directory, their assigned role and rate will automatically be set
If a team member will work on all phases of the project, click on the ••• icon select Assign to all phases to automatically add the team member to each phase with the same role and billable rate

When completing your Settings, you had the ability to create custom roles, with the ability to add multiple rates to one role. For example, your Principal role may have a Standard Rate, Discounted Rate, and Promo Rate. If a team member has a role assigned with multiple billable rates, it will impact how you view and work with the Budget. For further information on this, click here.

Planned Hours

After adding the necessary team members to a phase, the planned hours for each phase will evenly distributed to each person. For example, if you have 4 team members assigned to a phase, then each person will be assigned 25% of the phase budget in planned hours.

The number of hours assigned will range based on their specific rate. This is critical information needed in order to fully utilize Monograph, without this information you will be unable to access forecasting or reporting.

You also have the ability to override this automatic distribution if you prefer to reallocate the planned hours. For example, your Project Manager may work more hours than the Intern, so you may adjust the percent assigned as you desire.

✅ Confirm planned hours for each team member

Review planned hours automatically assigned to each team members, if necessary make any adjustments to the hours amount in the Hours field or a percent amount in the Percent field
Follow this step to add planned hours for each team member

Hours - Include the number of planned hours you expect the team member to work on that specific phase, this can be an assumption or estimate.

Percent - If preferred, set the number of planned hours as a percentage of the Phase budget. This will automatically calculate the planned hours based the billable rate assigned to that team member, this can be be an assumption or estimate.

Below you will find added context to assigning planned hours to each team member for every phase of your project. Here's an example of how planned hours are calculated.

Phase budget - $1,000

Team Member, George - $100 billable rate

Team Member, Maria - $250 billable rate

If you enter 50% for each team member in the Percent field, this means George will have 5 planned hours (5 x $100 = $500) and Maria will have 2 planned hours (2 x $250 = $500).

Each team member is working $500 worth of planned hours (50% each), which equals the total Phase budget of $1,000.

Once you have completed these steps, you may proceed to the next section, Consultants.

Consultant Fees

After the project's information has been completed in the Planner, it's time to move onto Consultants where you can add different consultant types at a project level or phase level. This is also where Consultant Markups can be added per consultant.

You will see Total Project Fees amount, along with Markup, Consultant fee, Unallocated, and Allocated at the top of the screen.

Consultant fee refers to the consultant fee you entered in the Create a new project prompt at the beginning of this process. As you begin to add budgets, the Unallocated and Allocated amounts will change.

✅ Allocate consultant fees

Decide whether you will allocate budget to Phase consultants, Project consultants, or a combination of both - this decision will impact how consultants will appear on your project invoice
Click on the Select a consultant drop-down and scroll to add a consultant type, or type directly into the field to search for the consultant type you wish to add
Select the contact or company from the drop-down, be sure this information is first added via Directory
If applicable, enter the markup percent
For Phase consultants, select the phase you would like to assign the consultant to
Click on the Save button once all information is added

Phase Consultants - If a Consultant won't be involved in the whole project, they can be added at the phase level to only be associated with specific phases. This is also the spot to enter in consultants who may be billing in phases with your firm. For example, the Structural Engineer may be billing at the completion of certain phases.

Project Consultants - If a Consultant will be involved throughout a project rather than only in specific phases, they can be added at the project level.

☝️ The way you allocate consultant fees, either as Phase consultants or Projects consultants will impact how consultants appear on your project's invoice. Once a consultant is added to an invoice, it can no longer be edited or deleted within your project.

It's important for you to understand this when deciding how to allocate your consultant fees. For more information, please click here.

Once you have completed allocating your consultant fees, you can click the Next button on the upper right corner to move onto the next section, Details.

Details

The Details section will store important details about the project, such project address, category, and notes.

✅ Enter general information for your project

Tag your project with a custom category
Assign the project's client or add a new client for your project
Add the project address
Include any important notes
If applicable, add project square footage
Enable the shareable link to use with clients
Set expense markeups
If needed, edit project name, number, color, and fee type

Square Feet - Enter the project's Gross Square Feet and Construction Costs that can be used for reporting purposes within the Projects Report.

Share Link - Enable to create a free project overview that can be shared with anyone outside of your Monograph team such as clients or consultants, this can be turned off at any time. The link will include an overview of the project's schedule, including phases and milestones. No financial data, including the Money Gantt will be shared.

Expense Markup - Control the markup for each expense for each particular project. Expense markups will default to the percentages set in Settings, but they can be overridden as needed based on the contract.

Once you have completed entering your general information, you can click the Done button on the upper right corner to finish with your project. Congratulations! 🎉

Milestones & Tasks

Once you have finished creating your project, you can choose to assign applicable tasks and milestones related to that project. To do so, click on Projects on the side navigation bar, then select the specific project you would like to use. Now you will see the project-specific overview, click on Milestones & Tasks from the options available

Under the All Phases column, click on the phase you would like to add a milestone for, then click the + New Milestone button.

✅ Add your milestones

Add your milestone name
Link the milestone to your phase
Set a due date
If applicable, add a description
Once all the information has been added, click the Create button to finish

Once you have added your milestones, you can proceed to create and assign tasks. Click on the + New Task button on the upper-right corner and the Create task prompt will appear.

✅ Create your tasks

Add your task name
Link the task to a specific phase
If applicable, link the task to a specific milestone
Set a due date
Assign a team member to complete the task
If applicable, add a description
Once all the information has been added, click the Create button to finish

Pass your Knowledge Check

Projects are the foundation of Monograph, fueling detailed information to forecasting, reports, and more. Knowing how to fully build out a project is a critical step to managing and sustaining your account.

Be sure to follow the instructions outlined when creating a project, doing so will confirm your understanding of this process and allow you to continue learning more advanced features.

Not ready to build out your own projects? No problem! Use one of the samples below to test your knowledge and become an expert on project build out. Use this information to create a mock project in your own Demo Account.