Cost-reimbursement contracts Managing Service Contracts

231 • Pending: task is waiting for response of someone else e.g. customer information. A task can be assigned to a user, who then becomes responsible for closing it. But you could also leave it unassigned so that nobody specific will be responsible: various team members instead are made jointly responsible for working on tasks they have the skills for. Figure 19.1: Tasks in Project Management Each user manages his or her own task using the various menus available. To open the list of unclosed tasks that have been specifically assigned to you, go to the menu Project → Project → Tasks. Or to open the unassigned tasks, go to Project → Project → Tasks and then click Clearbutton and then Unassigned button. Tip: Shortcuts Every user should create a link in their own shortcuts to the Tasks menu, because they will have to consult this menu several times a day. The Delegations tab allows you to define links between your tasks. From Parent Tasks set the tasks that are related to this task. Use this feature to define the order in which tasks need to be accomplished, i.e. task 2 may not be executed before task 1.

19.1.3 Invoicing Tasks

Several methods of invoicing have already been described: • invoicing from a sales order, • invoicing on the basis of analytic costs service times, expenses, • invoicing on the basis of deliveries, • manual invoicing. Although invoicing tasks might appear useful, in certain situations it is best to invoice from the service or purchase orders instead. These methods of invoicing are more flexible, with various pricing levels set out in the pricelist, and different products that can be invoiced. And it is helpful to limit the number of invoicing methods in your company by extending the use of an invoicing method that you already have. If you want to connect your Sales Order with Project tasks you should create products such as Consultant and Senior Developer. These products should be configured with Product Type Service, a Procurement Method of Make to Order , and a Supply Method of Produce. Once you have set this up, OpenERP automatically creates a task in project management when the order is approved. You can even take this further by adding a default project to your product. In the Product form, on the Procurement Locations tab, enter the default project to which the automatically created task from the sales order should be linked. You can also change some of the order parameters, which affects the invoice: 232 • Shipping Policy : Invoice on Order After Deliverywhen the task is closed, • Invoice On : Shipped Quantities actual hours in the task. Create the Sales Order using the product Consultant with the above configuration and confirm it. You can find the task created from this sale order using the menu Project → Project → Tasks. Once you find that task, click on the Start Task button in order to start it. You have to manually assign the project for this task, unless you specified a default project in the Product form. When you complete the task enter the information in the Task Work field. Then click the Done button in order to indicate to OpenERP that this task is finished. As for example the new task SO008:Create SRS generated from sales order SO0008 as shown in following figure. Figure 19.2: Task created from Sales Order Tip: You need to carefully configure the analytic account related to this project. If you use the Billing tab of the project to do this, the analytic account linked to the project will automatically get the related settings. After finishing this task go to the menu Project → Invoicing → Invoice Tasks Work in order to find the list of uninvoiced task works. Click the action Invoice analytic lines when you want to create an invoice for this task work. Figure 19.3: Form to Create Invoice from Tasks Work

19.1.4 Priority Management

Several methods can be used for ordering tasks by their respective priorities. OpenERP orders tasks based on a function of the following fields: Sequence, Priority, and Deadline. Use the Sequence field on the second tab, Extra Info, to plan a project made up of several tasks. In the case of an IT project, for example, where development tasks are done in a given order, the first task to do will be sequence number 1, then numbers 2, 3, 4 and so on. When you first open the list of project tasks, they are listed in their sequence order. You can simply drag and drop tasks to change their sequence. You can use one of these three ordering methods, or combine several of them, depending on the project.