This video gives you the complete overview of single projects in Leadtime – the full arc from planning to the offer to billing. Unlike ongoing projects (support contracts, retainers), single projects have a defined scope, a clear beginning, and a clear end. They start with an offer and conclude with billing based on that offer.
A single project goes through eight phases, each covered in detail in the following videos: designing the project template (video 29), using the template (video 30), the project offer (video 31), the specification document (video 32), the project contract (video 33), project implementation (video 34), project acceptance (video 35), and project billing (video 36). Every step builds on the previous one.
The key difference from ongoing projects is the Configuration tab, which only single projects have. It consists of four sub-areas: Overview for the complete calculation with discounts and totals, Products for assigned catalog products, Project Tree for the operational structure with epics, work packages, questionnaires, and test suites, and Implementation Overview for tracking progress.
A particularly important concept is versioning: every change in the Configuration tab creates a new project version. Offers always reference a specific version, so there's a binding record of exactly which scope and prices were agreed upon. Customer change requests create new versions – everything remains traceable and audit-proof.
In the last video, you learned about the sales area: opportunities, pipeline, offers. But what happens when the customer actually says yes? That's when the sales opportunity turns into an implementation project.
In this video, I'll show you how single projects work in Leadtime. The complete arc: from planning to the offer to billing. The following videos will go step by step into the details. Here you get the overview first.
You already know ongoing projects from earlier videos. Those are your support contracts, retainers, the daily collaboration with existing customers. They have no defined end. Tickets come in, get handled, and are billed monthly.
Single projects are the opposite. A single project has a defined scope, a clear beginning, and a clear end. It starts with an offer: you plan ahead which services will be delivered and present a calculation. The customer accepts, implementation starts, and at the end, billing is based on the offer.
Typical examples: a website project, an app development, an IT migration, an onboarding process.
The advantage of single projects: planning certainty. You know ahead of time what will be delivered, what it costs, and when it should be finished. And so does the customer.
Before we go into the system, I want to show you the overall process. A single project in Leadtime goes through several phases, and each phase gets its own video in the coming episodes.
First phase: designing the project template. In the component library, you create reusable building blocks with work packages, questionnaires, and effort estimates. Build once, use again and again. That's video 29.
Second phase: using the project template. You import components into a specific customer project, clarify requirements together with the customer, and dynamically adjust the structure. Video 30.
Third phase: the project offer. From the configuration, you create a formal offer with products, discounts, and different versions. Video 31.
Fourth phase: the specification document. Leadtime automatically generates a requirements document from the project tree, with everything that was discussed and configured. Video 32.
Fifth phase: the project contract. You create contract documents from templates, with variables, conditions, and dynamic sections. Video 33.
Sixth phase: project implementation. Work packages become tickets, your team works through them, and progress becomes visible in the project tree. Video 34.
Seventh phase: project acceptance. With test suites, you systematically verify that everything was delivered as agreed. Video 35.
Eighth phase: project billing. At the end, billing is based on the offer and the services delivered. Video 36.
That's the complete arc. Every step builds on the previous one. Nothing gets lost, everything is traceable. And you don't need to memorize this. Each video covers one phase in detail.
Let me show you how to create a single project. I go to Projects and click Create.
In the dialog, I select the type: Single. This is crucial, because only single projects get the Configuration tab, which enables the entire planning and calculation process.
Then: External, because it's a customer project. I assign it to an organization, give it a name, choose a category, and set the status to Sales, since we're still in the offer phase. Value Group A, because it's directly value-creating work.
On the right side, I select the task types and work activities that are relevant for this project. I add tags and assign teams and members.
After saving, the project appears in the project list. The basic data I enter here determines how the project shows up in reports, insights, and billing. So it's worth getting this right from the start.
I open the project. At the top, I see the tabs, and this is where the first big difference from ongoing projects becomes visible.
Overview shows the project status, key figures like total tracked time and total estimate, and a time chart across calendar weeks. That's the quick summary for everyone involved.
Configuration, and this is the decisive tab. It only exists for single projects. This is where all the planning happens: project tree, products, calculation, versions. This is the heart of it all.
Tasks shows all tickets that were generated from the project tree. You know these from the ticketing videos.
Documents contains offers, the specification document, and contracts. Everything that gets generated from the configuration.
Time Tracking shows time entries for the project. Big Picture and Pools you know from video 19 for prioritization. Journal documents activities. Documentation is the knowledge base. And Uploads stores files.
The Configuration tab is what makes single projects special. Everything else is shared with ongoing projects. So let's take a closer look at this tab.
I open the Configuration tab. It has four sub-areas.
Overview shows the entire calculation. Here I see all price-relevant parts of the project: products from the catalog, efforts from the project tree, manual items. For each category, I can apply discounts, either as a fixed amount or a percentage. At the bottom, the totals are split into one-time costs, recurring fees, and hourly efforts.
Products lists all products assigned to the project. You remember the product catalog from video 25. This is where you put those products to use. Hosting packages, licenses, workshops, anything that's offered in a standardized way.
Project Tree: this is the operational structure. Here you import components from the library and build the project tree. Epics as large thematic blocks, below them work packages with descriptions, questionnaires, and effort estimates. Plus checklists for customer contributions and test suites for acceptance. The project tree reacts dynamically to answers: when the customer has certain requirements, additional packages get activated, the effort adjusts, new products become necessary.
Implementation Overview shows the progress: how many questionnaires have been answered? Which work packages have started? How does tracked time compare to the plan?
Together, this is the control center for single projects. This is where planning, calculation, and versioning happen. Everything that later appears in offers, specification documents, and invoices comes from here.
One last point that's important for everything that follows: versioning.
Every change you make in the Configuration tab, a new product, a changed discount, an additional work package, creates a new project version.
Why does this matter? Because offers always reference a specific version. The customer doesn't just accept "the project." They accept version 3 with exactly this scope and these prices. That's binding.
If the customer later wants changes, an additional feature, a different scope, that creates a new version. Version 4 with the expanded scope. You can show the customer what changed, create a new offer based on the new version, and everything stays traceable.
This eliminates any discussion about what was agreed. Everything is documented, everything is versioned, everything is audit-proof.
Single projects in Leadtime cover the complete lifecycle. From the template to the configuration, the offer, the specification document, the contract, the implementation, the acceptance, all the way to billing. One seamless process in one system.
In the following videos, we'll go through each of these areas step by step. Starting with the component library: how you create project templates that you can use again and again.
