Features Below Available To: ✅ Grow Plan ✅ Track Plan ❌ Free Plan
Once you're familiar with the basis of creating your project, you can use this cheat sheet to easily identify the most critical items that should be included in your build out. For more detailed instruction on how to create a new project, please refer to How to Create a Project guide as your first step.
🏆 Best Practice! Default Roles allow Monograph to understand what a team member's standard role and rate are when creating projects and logging time. By assigning Default Roles when first setting up your account, you'll guarantee a smoother process building out projects. Move faster, save time!
Follow the instructions outlined here to learn more and set your Default Roles!
➀ Know your Project Fees
When creating a project in Monograph, you'll need to identify which fees are related to your direct workload and which ones will be outsourced to consultants. As part of the setup process, you’ll enter basic project information such as the Project Name, Number, and Fee Type.
In addition to this, you’ll provide detailed fee information for the project. The Service Fee should cover all services provided during the Fixed Fee phases, but it does not include any Hourly phases. The Consultants Fee should represent the total sum of all consultant services for the project. You’ll be able to allocate these fees to specific types of consultants later. You can learn more about adding consultants to your project here.
The total project budget is the combined sum of both your Architectural Fees and the Consultant Fees. This budget will serve as the foundation for allocating phase budgets and applying consultant fees at either the project or phase level.
➁ Set Specific Budgets for Each Phase
Add phases and specific phase budgets to fully allocate your projects and enhance your forecasting power. Phases are a critical component of a project that will allow Timesheets, Staffing, and Reports to work accurately. Allocating a budget to each phase will allow you to use the full power of forecasting in Monograph.
Allocating a phase budget may be done by either adding in a specific dollar amount or allocating a percentage amount of the overall from your Service Fee. Once you've allocated your budget, be sure to click the Save button to continue your progress and save your information.
➂ Assign Team Members to Every Phase
Add your Team Members to each phase to define their specific roles within every phase of your project. After adding phases with a phase budget, specify which team members will be working on this project.
Once you select the team member to assign to each phase, you will be prompted to choose their Role and Billable rate. If you've already set Default Roles, then the role and rate will automatically populate when you select that team member.
➃ Allocate Planned Hours for Your Team
When planned hours are assigned to individual team members within a phase, several features are unlocked within Monograph including Staffing and the Profit Report, Team Forecast Report, and Project Progress. This will also allow you to compare the planned hours for each team member vs. the actual hours they log towards each phase.
Without assigning planned hours, Monograph will not know the expectation for each team member to work on each phase. This means we cannot advise if someone is working too much or too little against your plan.
When assigning planned hours, you may enter a specific number of hours or use a % of the phase budget. You can learn more about allocating planned hours here. These hours are an estimate of what you expect each team member to work, these hours do not need to be concrete and may be adjusted later on.
🏆 Best Practice! Unsure of how many planned hours your team will work? Use the % option to equally distribute hours to everyone. For example, if you have 4 team members working on a phase, assign each person 25% of the budget to work, this will total to 100% of the phase budget assigned and your initial plan is set.
Never leave planned hours unassigned and you will maximize the power of Monograph!
➄ Save Your Finished Project as a Template
Project templates are a vital tool that allows you to move quicker when building out new projects in Monograph. Once you fully build out your project, you can save it as a template for future use. Explore more on Project Templates. This comes in handy if you have similar projects based on scope, client, or budget.