Lesson 10-- Project Management

The Goldenseal project management software includes several transactions that help you to manage projects. Most of these transactions are also useful for general business management.

Appointments

Use Appointment records to keep track of meetings and deadlines. To enter an appointment, follow these steps:

Choose Appointments from the Income menu.
Click the New button.
Enter the account or prospect that you are meeting.
4Enter the date and time for the meeting.
Enter a meeting type. You can classify appointments any way you'd like.
If you'd like Goldenseal to remind you about this appointment, enter a reminder method.
Enter the employee who is acting on this appointment.

Appointment Reminders

If you'd like Goldenseal to remind you about appointments, choose Preferences from the Options menu, choose Interface from the submenu, and turn on the Show Reminder Alerts checkbox.

The reminder method determines how Goldenseal will alert you for this item. You can get an advance warning and/or an immediate warning.

For more about Appointments in the Reference manual, click here.

Change Orders

Use Change Orders to record changes in a project. The record acts as a 'paper trail' for the change, and it also allows you to do billing for any price difference caused by the change (full version only).

To create a change order, follow these steps:

Choose Change Orders from the Income menu.
Click the New button.
Enter the project where this change occurs.
Type in a brief description, and any further details about the change.
Choose a calculation method. You can charge for time and materials, or just for materials. You can also charge a fixed amount.
Enter a price for the change.
Click the More details button to enter job cost and billing info.

Goldenseal automatically adds change orders to job cost totals for the project. It does not add them to the project billing-- instead you bill for them separately. To do so, choose Billing from the Bank menu, then choose Change Orders from the submenu.

For more about Change Orders in the Reference manual, click here.

Chargebacks

Use Chargebacks to settle problems between subcontractors, suppliers or other parties involved with a project. A chargeback charges one party for damages or extra work, and pays it to a different party.

To enter a chargeback, follow these steps:

Choose Chargebacks from the Income menu.
Click the New button.
Enter the job where the chargeback occurs.
Enter the type of chargeback-- it can be a charge, a credit, or a transfer (a charge to one account and a credit to another).
Enter the account that is paying the charge.
Enter the account that is receiving a credit.
Enter any comments you have about the chargeback.

Once you have entered chargebacks, Goldenseal includes them in your normal payables, which you handle with the Pay Bills command. The chargeback reduces the amount owed by the 'credit to' account, and increase the amount owed by the 'charge against' account.

For more about Chargebacks in the Reference manual, click here.

Contact Log

Use the Contact Log to record calls, meetings, visits, and other interactions that you have with customers, prospects, suppliers and other accounts.

HINT: When you talk again with the same person, you can refer back to previous contact log records so you know more about previous discussions with them. Lesson 16 shows you how to use the Find command to quickly locate records in the contact log.

To create a new contact log record, follow these steps:

Choose Contact Log from the Income menu.
Click the New button.
Choose the type of account or prospect that you talked with.
Enter the specific account.
Enter the type of interaction into the Contact Type field. HINT: If you'd like to add other types, click on the popup button to the right of the Type field, and choose Edit Contact Types from the bottom of the menu.
Enter a short description of the contact into the Description field.
Enter the date and time of the contact into the Contact Date and Time fields.
If something was done about the call, enter an action into the Action Taken field, and enter the employee who took action.

For more about the Contact Log in the Reference manual, click here.

Document Log

The Document Log lets you log in paperwork and other 'transmittals', so you have a record of exactly when you sent or received any item.

To enter a Document Log record, follow these steps:

Choose Document Log from the Income menu.
Click the New button.
Enter information about the document that was sent or received.

Document Tracking

To use Document Log records to streamline your paper filing system, follow these steps:

When you receive a document, enter it into a Document Log record.
Mark the Document Log record number onto the paper document. HINT: No more struggling to figure out how to classify this item.
As soon as you are finished with the document, file it in numeric order with other paperwork. Mark the outside of the file cabinet or box with the range of Document Log record numbers that are inside. HINT: You can combine several documents in one record. Just staple them together when you file them, or put them in a manila folder.
If you need to retrieve the document, use the Find command to locate the Document Log record-- by account, date, document type, description, or any other criteria you remember about it.
Once you've found the Document Log number, go to the proper file cabinet or box, search by document number, and excavate the file. HINT: No more struggling to remember how you classified the item.

Problem Log

The Problem Log is a way to track errors and problems in your projects. Use it to create 'to do' lists for employees or subcontractors to fix (sometimes called 'bug lists' or 'punch lists').

To enter a problem, follow these steps:

Choose Problem Log from the Income menu.
Click the New button.
Enter information about the problem.

To find incomplete items for a project, follow these steps:

Choose Problem Log from the Income menu.
Choose Find from the Edit menu.
In the Find window, enter Entered into the Status popup menu.
Enter Project into the Job Class popup menu.
Enter the job name into the Job field, then click the Find button.
You'll see all items that have not yet been finished.

HINT: To see a compact list of problems and their status, choose Projects from the Reports menu, then choose Problem Log from the submenu.

As you complete work on problems, change the Status field. If you'd like, you can track problems through an entire sequence of notification, completion, inspection, and confirmation.

For more about the Problem Log in the Reference manual, click here.

Project Log

The Project Log is a simple record of anything that happens on your projects.

HINT: Having a record of events can be very helpful when you are billing, checking job costs or resolving disputes.

To enter a project log entry, follow these steps:

Choose Project Log from the Income menu.
Click the New button.
Enter information about the event being logged.

To look up events in the project log, use the Find command.

For more about the Project Log in the Reference manual, click here.

Other Project Management Aids

Some other parts of Goldenseal will also help you to manage projects:

Address Book-- The Address Book is a good place to keep address and phone information for anyone who is not an account. You can use it for government bodies, neighbors, organizations and anyone else that you interact with.
Contracts-- Goldenseal writes contracts, including a detailed 'scope of work' that describes project details.
Equipment and Labor Hours-- Equipment hours and labor hours records will keep track of all work done on each project you do. You can use the Find command to locate records for a project, and see exactly what happened when.
Purchases and Other Expenses-- Material purchases, subcontractor costs and other costs are a record of all goods and services that you buy for a project. You can use the Find command to locate anything that was entered there.
Info Log-- The Info Log window is a simple place to put any useful information that doesn't fit somewhere else in Goldenseal. Use it for company policies, 'how to' procedures, or any other interesting facts.
Job Costs-- The Job Cost command gives you an up-to-date picture of the financial status of each project. Use the job progress feature to get an extremely accurate prediction of final project costs.
Reports-- Choose Projects from the Reports menu to get material takeoff lists, schedules, tool lists, and various other management reports.
Schedules-- Goldenseal includes a simple schedule as part of every estimate.

Finishing Up

In this lesson you have seen how to use Goldenseal to manage projects.

This might be a good time to take a break. Is there a zoo in your town? Have you visited recently? If not, this might be a good time to go see the animals.

While you are there, let the zookeepers know about the special Flightless Seabird Management module that is available for Goldenseal. We have optimized it for financial management of penguins, but users can easily adapt it for other flightless birds.

And as you may already have guessed, with the help of enough duct tape, you can use a penguin as a chic, black-and-white hat that is just perfect for those formal black-tie affairs.

HINT: Plan to use an extra roll of tape-- penguin feathers are oily, and it's hard to stick to them.