The final video of the onboarding series shows you how to cleanly close a completed single project and transition the customer into an ongoing support project. This turns a one-time project engagement into a long-term customer relationship.
The first step is closing the project: you set the status to "Done," which archives the project. All data remains traceable – tickets, time entries, documents, tests. Important: subscriptions like hosting continue running even with Done status. They only stop when you explicitly deactivate subscription billing.
For ongoing collaboration, you create a new project of type "Ongoing" and assign it to the same organization. You configure relevant task types (bugs, feature requests, server issues) and work activities, assign teams, and have a clean new frame – separated from the historical single project but within the same organizational context.
The support workflow differs fundamentally from single projects: no offer phase, no project tree, no versioning. Instead, tickets come in, get handled, and are billed. The customer can create tickets directly as a guest user, your team logs hours, and closed tickets automatically move to the Invoice Review. For add-on tasks with clear scope, you use express offers. For predictable budgets, you set up retainers – with monthly hour packages, optional carryover, and automatic overtime billing.
You keep track of growing support projects through Sales Insights (customer lifetime value) and Project Insights (breakdown by task type or user). Saved presets on the dashboard give you key metrics every morning.
The video closes the circle of the entire 37-part onboarding series: from an empty system through organizations, employees, tickets, time tracking, pipeline, billing, single projects with component library, estimates, specifications, contracts, implementation, acceptance, and billing all the way to ongoing support. A continuous system where every step builds on the one before.
The project is billed—but the collaboration doesn't end with the invoice. Quite the opposite: this is where the part begins that makes the real long-term difference. In this video, I'll show you how to cleanly close a completed single project and transition the customer into an ongoing support project. You'll learn how to set up the support workflow, configure retainers, and use Insights to keep track of your long-term customer relationships. And at the end, we'll close the circle together—across the entire onboarding series.
Our Bakery Müller project is billed. The invoices are out, subscriptions for hosting and maintenance are running. Now it's time to close the project properly.
You open the project configuration, go to Settings → Basic Settings, and set the project status to Done. From that moment on, the project is archived. No new tickets are created, and the project team no longer works in it actively. But everything remains traceable: every ticket, every time entry, every document, every test.
Important: subscriptions you set up in the project keep running. The hosting package continues to bill automatically even when the project has Done status. Billing only stops when you explicitly deactivate subscription billing or close the project completely.
This clean separation brings order. The historical project stays as a reference. Everything that comes from now on gets its own frame.
And that's the frame you create next. You go to the project list and create a new project. This time you choose the type Ongoing instead of Single. External, because it's a customer project. You assign it to the same organization—Bakery Müller.
Give the project a clear name, for example Bakery Müller Support. Category Support, status Implementation, Value Group A, because it's directly value-creating work.
On the right, configure the task types that matter for support. These can be bugs, feature requests, server issues, or general inquiries. Add the matching work activities: Development, Testing, Consulting, Administration.
Then assign teams and members. They can be the same as in the single project, or you put together a dedicated support team.
After saving, the project appears in the project list. The customer now has a clean, new frame for ongoing collaboration—separated from the historical single project, but in the same organizational context.
In an ongoing project, day-to-day work works differently than in a single project. There's no offer phase, no project tree, no versioning. Instead, tickets come in, get handled, and get billed.
If you've invited your customer as a guest user, they can create tickets directly in the project. You remember video 18—that's where we set that up. The customer sees their project, creates a ticket, describes their issue, and your team gets it straight into the pipeline.
Your team works the ticket, logs hours, and as soon as the ticket is closed, it automatically moves to Invoice Review. At month-end you review all closed tickets, adjust hours if needed, and create the collective invoice. You know that from video 21.
For smaller add-on tasks with a clear scope, there are express offers. The customer gets a mini quote right from the ticket, confirms it, and the line item bills automatically. That was video 26.
And then there are retainers. For many support relationships, that's the ideal model. You define a monthly hour package at a flat rate—for example ten hours per month for €1,000. In the project's General Billing Settings you set up the retainer: title, flat rate, hours per month, internal reference hourly rate for overtime, and whether unused hours carry over to the following month.
At invoice review, Leadtime then automatically distinguishes three scenarios: if more hours were used than included, overtime bills at the standard rate. If fewer hours were used and carryover isn't enabled, the remaining volume expires. And if carryover is active, remaining hours move to the next month.
Retainers give both sides planning certainty. The customer knows what support costs. You know what revenue to expect.
The subscriptions from the completed single project keep running there—hosting, maintenance. You don't have to move anything as long as you leave billing active there.
But you can also create new subscriptions directly in the ongoing project—for example a support package or an SLA with a fixed monthly fee. Under Settings → Subscription Billing you set that up just like you learned in video 36: flat-rate for packages, variable for volume-based models.
This way you build stable recurring revenue step by step. Every completed single project that moves into support brings not only one-off revenue but an ongoing income stream.
Over time your support projects grow. Five customers, ten, twenty. Then you need the big picture.
In Sales Insights you see revenue per project over time. Put the ongoing support project next to the completed single project and you see full customer lifetime value: one-off project revenue plus ongoing support revenue plus subscriptions.
In Project Insights you analyze where the hours go. Breakdown by task type shows whether the customer mostly reports bugs or submits feature requests. Breakdown by user shows who on the team handles how much support work. Those are the levers you use to steer your support team.
Save your most important views as presets and put them on the dashboard. That way every morning you have the overview without diving into analysis first.
And with that we've reached the end—not only of this video, but of the entire onboarding series.
Think back to the beginning. You started with an empty system. You created organizations, set up employees, made the first settings. Then came tickets, time tracking, pipeline, Insights. You learned how billing works, how you send invoices, how dashboards give you the overview.
In the third block you completed the arc to the single project. From the component library through the project template, the estimate, the specification, the contract, implementation, acceptance, billing—all the way here, to ongoing support.
That's not coincidence. That's a system. Every step builds on the one before. Nothing is lost; everything is traceable. From first customer contact to a long-term partnership.
And when the customer says in six months, "We need an online store"—you go back to the component library, import the right template, and the cycle starts again. Only this time you already know everything about this customer. Every ticket, every decision, every time entry.
That's Leadtime. Not another tool you have to feed. A system that works with you. The more consistently you use it, the more it gives back.
That was the Leadtime onboarding series. Thirty-seven videos, from an empty system to a long-term customer relationship. You now have everything you need to run your company with Leadtime. Put it into practice. Step by step. And if you have questions—we're here.
