Short Projects: Small Jobs from Bid to Paid

Contents

1. 1What Short Projects is
2. 2The jobs page
3. AProcedure A: start a job and bid it
4. BProcedure B: money in and money out
5. CProcedure C: hours
6. 3Finishing, copying and archiving a job
7. 4Reports: who owes me, costs with no job
8. 5Settings, permissions, backups and copies
9. 6Check your understanding

Projects (Chapters 7.1 to 7.3) is built for contracts with funding, contract lines and cost reports. A plumber, a painter or a handyman needs four answers about any job, quickly and on a phone: what did I get paid, what did I spend, what did I make, and was it worth my time. Short Projects gives those four answers without an accounting word.

It keeps no second set of figures. Every button that moves money writes the ordinary documents of the books (an invoice, a payment, an expense, a check) tagged with the job, so the Profit and Loss and the job agree. Your own hours are recorded but are never a cost.

Short Projects has its own entry in the left menu. It shows where the books' plan includes it and Settings → Menus and words (Chapter 15.2) shows it; books set up as a small business or a service or repair shop show it from the start.

Click Short Projects in the left menu. On the first visit, before there is a job, the page says Start a job with just its name. Add the customer and the bid when you know them. with one button, Start your first job. Once there are jobs, the page looks like Figure 1.

Good to know folds open to a few tips and a link, Change your pay rate and where job money goes (Section 5). An open job never shows a percent: it shows what was spent so far and, when a price is known, what it is on track to make. Click a card to open the job's page: its next-step button at the top, the four money buttons, its numbers, Bid and extras, Helpers on this job and What happened, the job's own time line of money, hours and extras.

1. 1

   Click New job and type the Job name

   The name is all a job needs. Add the Customer, Job address, Start date and Bid now or later.

2. 2

   Tick This is still a bid if the customer has not said yes

   The job then starts as a Bid; otherwise it starts In progress.

3. 3

   Optionally, Build a bid

   Enter what you expect the job to cost (Materials, Helpers, Other costs), My hours and Pay myself, per hour, and how much to add on top. The builder works out a bid to the nearest dollar and shows what you would keep, per hour and after paying yourself, if the job goes as bid. Use this bid copies it into the job; the builder itself writes nothing to the books.

Stages

The button at the top of a job's page is always the next step: Won it moves a bid to In progress, Mark done moves it to Done, and Reopen takes a done, lost or cancelled job back. More holds Edit, Copy job, Archive, and, for an open job, Lost and Cancel job, then Delete. A lost bid has no effect on the books. Every move is kept in the job's history.

Bid and extras

The Bid and extras part of the job page shows the Bid, the Extras and the Price, their sum. When the customer asks for more, click Add an extra and give a date, What is the extra work? and an amount; to take money off the price, enter a minus amount, like -100. Write an estimate for the customer opens a new estimate (Chapter 2.2) for the job.

Example: the deck was bid at $4,000. The customer adds a railing for $300, so the price is $4,000 + $300 = $4,300.

Four buttons on the job's page move money: Bill the customer, Got paid, Spent money and Paid a helper. Each one checks first that the date is not in a closed period (Your books are closed through ... Pick a later date.), and each needs your right to make the document it writes. A button pressed twice saves once.

A few details save time:

• Split across jobs puts one receipt on several jobs, one row each; a personal or shop part can go on Not for a job.
• Work it out from miles turns miles driven into an amount at your mileage rate.
• A receipt that looks like one already entered asks Looks like one you already entered -- save anyway? Saved anyway, it counts twice.
• Receipts are photos or PDFs of at most 10 MB each, kept on the entry.
• A helper on payroll is warned off: Is this person on your payroll? Pay them through Payroll instead.
• Where checks need a second person's approval, Paid a helper says Saved. The check waits for a second person to approve it. If a helper's check is later voided, those hours are owed again.
• One check that pays for two jobs: enter a Got paid on each job for its part. Card or app fees taken out of a payment are a cost: enter them under Spent money as Other.

A cost typed on the ordinary expense, check or bill pages (Chapters 3.1 and 3.2) lands on the job too when you choose the job in the form's project field. A refund to a customer is an ordinary check or expense to them, with the job chosen and Job income as what it was for: it comes off what you were paid.

1. 1

   On the job, click Log hours

2. 2

   Choose Whose hours: Me or A helper

   Then the date, the Hours and, for a helper, the Rate. A helper's rate is filled in from the last one used and stored on the row, so a later rate never re-prices old work. For your own hours the sheet reminds you: Your own time is not a cost. It shows what the job paid you per hour.

A job therefore reads three ways: You made (paid minus spent), per hour of your time (made divided by your hours), and, once you set a pay-yourself rate in the settings, what is left after paying yourself. Helper hours not yet paid count as spent at once, under Owed to helpers, so a job never looks better than it is. Helpers on this job lists each helper's earned, paid and owed amounts, with Pay what is owed.

Example: the deck has been paid $1,500 and has spent $1,120, so it made $1,500 − $1,120 = $380. With 10 of your own hours logged, that is $380 ÷ 10 = $38 per hour of your time.

Mark done asks Mark this job done? If money is still open it adds Some money on this job is still open. You can mark it done anyway; late money still lands on it. A done job shows You kept as a percent; a job priced at nothing with costs reads Done at no charge rather than a loss percent. A late receipt or payment still lands on the done job, and its figures follow.

Dates never cut a job: its figures are the whole job, whatever tax year the money fell in. The year reports cut by the money's own date and say so.

• Copy job starts next season's job with the same customer, address, description and rate, and the bid if you keep it (Keep the bid). Money, hours, extras and history are never copied.
• Archive hides a job from the open list; it stays under Archived (and Unarchive brings it back), and a payment after archiving still counts.
• Delete works only for a job with no history. A job with money or hours on it is archived instead.

Reports has a Short Projects group, What each job paid you, what it cost and what you made., with seven reports. Each has Print, PDF and Spreadsheet. The Still owed to you tile of the jobs page opens Who owes me.

Put a cost on a job

1. 1

   Run Costs with no job for the month

   It lists, newest first, the money you spent in those dates that is not on any job, and totals it. Payroll costs are never listed line by line; the report gives their total.

2. 2

   Pick the job on a line and click Put on a job

   Nothing new is written: the cost lines of the expense, check, bill or return are simply tagged with the job. A line that says Part of this is on a job already. is a split cost: another of its lines is on a job, and only the part with no job is listed.

3. 3

   Deal with the lines that cannot be moved here

   A cost dated in a closed period says Your books are closed for this date. A cost on any other kind of document, such as a journal entry, offers Open it to add the job: open it and choose the job there.

There is no setup step: the first job sets the module up, choosing or making its accounts. Settings → Short Projects says These settings apply to every job in these books. and holds:

Permissions. The Short projects row of Users and permissions (Chapter 15.7) decides who may list, view, start, change and delete jobs. Its presets: Viewer, Auditor and External auditor may read; Bookkeeper and Accountant may also start, change and delete jobs; Payroll, Employee and Stakeholder get none. The Short Project Reports row follows the same pattern for reading the reports. The money buttons also need the right of the document they write.

Backups and copies. A backup (Chapter 14.3) and a copy (Chapter 15.6) carry the jobs with their bids, extras, hours, stage history, the settings and each helper's last rate. A copy of a date range keeps every job still open (a bid, or a job in progress, not archived), even one not invoiced yet, with its customer, extras, hours and stage history, so the pipeline comes along.

The Assistant. Where the Assistant is on and the owner has agreed to the November 14, 2026 data notice (version 3), it can answer questions about jobs for the people allowed to see them on the Short Projects pages, such as "Who still owes me on my jobs?", and link each job to its page (Chapter 14.4). Money on a job is still entered on the job's page.

• [x] Started with a name the customer would recognize, and a bid if there was one.
• [x] Every extra the customer agreed to added with Add an extra.
• [x] Every receipt entered with Spent money, with its photo.
• [x] Every payment entered with Got paid.
• [x] Your hours and your helpers' hours logged, and helpers paid with Paid a helper.
• [x] Costs with no job run at month-end and emptied.
• [x] Who owes me read every week.