Linked companies

In most project tools a client is a guest account inside your workspace. They get a login you made for them, they see what you let them see, and the day they want their own team, their own projects or their own tools, they have to start somewhere else and leave the history behind.

Projectous works the other way round. Every client you add is a company of its own from the moment you add it. At first nobody is in it, and you will not notice it is there. But it is real: you can put the client's people in it, hand it over so the client runs it themselves, and bring other companies onto the same projects. Each company keeps its own chat room, its own books and its own invoices, and the work you share stays shared, with the same history, on both sides.

That is what linked companies means: several companies working on the same projects, each from its own workspace, with Projectous keeping track of who sees what and who bills whom.

An example#

Northwind Studio builds websites. It adds Greenleaf Bakery as a client and starts a project, "Greenleaf website", under it.

1. Maya runs Greenleaf. Northwind adds her as a client user, so she gets a login inside Greenleaf's own company rather than inside Northwind's. She follows the project, answers questions in the task chats, and never sees Northwind's internal discussion.
2. A few months later Greenleaf wants to plan its own work in Projectous too. Northwind sends Maya an offer to run Greenleaf's workspace herself. She accepts, chooses a plan, and becomes the admin of Greenleaf. She invites her own staff and creates her own projects. The website project is still there, still shared, with every message and task it had.
3. Northwind brings in Cobalt Dev, a partner company it already works with in Projectous, to build the online shop. Cobalt's people are added to the project and work on its tasks. Cobalt's billable hours appear in Northwind's books as a cost, Cobalt invoices Northwind, and Northwind invoices Greenleaf at its own rate.

The sections below walk through each of those steps in the order you would do them.

The words used here#

• Your company is the workspace you sign in to.
• A client is a company you do work for. Every client has a company behind it, even when nobody is in that company yet.
• A guest is a person at a client who has a login inside your company, limited to the projects you invite them to.
• A client user is a person who has a login inside the client's own company.
• Running their own workspace means somebody at the client has accepted your offer to take the client's company over. From then on it is theirs.
• A partner company is another company working on your client's projects with you, such as a subcontractor.

How do I add a client?#

Open Clients and press Add Client. Only the name is required. The other fields (email, accounting email, default client rate, status, address, tax ID and so on) are about how you work with and invoice them. Press Create.

Projectous creates the client's company at the same moment, named after the client. You do not have to do anything with it. Clients created by importing from QuickBooks, by importing projects, or by converting a CRM lead get a company behind them in the same way.

A project you create under that client is filed under the client's company. That is what makes it reachable from the client's side later: whoever runs the client's company can open the projects you file under that client, and nothing else of yours.

Everything about the client's people lives on one tab: open the client from Clients and choose People. The tab is only shown to admins. From top to bottom it holds Add a client user, the list People on this client, the offer to run Their own workspace, and Guests on this client.

How do I give somebody at the client a login?#

There are two ways, and they put the person in different places.

As a guest of yours. Open the project and use the share button at the top of it (its label is Invite User). The Invite Guest window asks for the Guest Email; press Confirm. The guest is added to that project. Their login lives in your company, as a guest. This is the right choice for somebody who only needs to follow one or two projects. Guests are described in more detail under Client and guest access.

As a client user. Open the client, go to People, and press Add a client user. Give their Name and Email and press Send the invitation. They get an email saying that you have set up a workspace for the client and invited them into it, with an Accept invitation button. The invitation is valid for seven days. Nothing is created until they accept; when they do, they choose a password and land in the client's company, not yours. Once they have accepted they appear on the People tab under In the client's own company, which you open with Show the client's own people.

The form also asks What they can see: their invoices and what is waiting for them, working on the projects like a member of your team, or only what they are added to. Today the choice is recorded with the person but does not yet change what they can open. What they can open follows from their place in the client's company, described under "What does each side see?" below.

A few things stop an invitation:

• Somebody with that email address is already in the client's company, or already has a login in Projectous under that address. The form says so instead of sending a second invitation.
• The client already runs their own workspace. Then it is theirs to add people to, and the form says to ask them.

The first person to arrive in an empty client company becomes its admin and owner, whatever you chose for them, because a company with people and no owner has nobody who can act for it. So invite or move whoever should own it first.

How do I turn an existing guest into a client user?#

If you already have guests at a client, you do not have to invite them again. Open the client, go to People, and look at Guests on this client. Each guest has a Move to their company button, then As member or As admin.

The move happens straight away, with no email and no acceptance, because the guest record is yours. The person keeps the same identity, so their tasks, timers, assignments and history come with them, and they stay on the projects they were already on. They stop being your guest and appear under the client's own people instead.

One thing does not move: messages they wrote in your chat rooms stay where they are. They still show as theirs, and you can still read them, but the person will not see them from the client's side. The confirmation tells you how many messages stayed in your room.

A guest cannot be moved when:

• the client has no company behind it (only very old client records lack one);
• they are a guest on more than one of your clients, because which company they belong to is not yours to decide;
• they already have an account in the client's company.

The reason shows under their name.

When the client already runs their own workspace, the button becomes Ask them to take followed by the guest's first name. Every admin of the client's company gets an email asking whether the person should join, suggesting they join as a member. Nothing changes until one of them agrees. While you wait the row says when you asked; Ask again sends a reminder once a day at most, and Take it back withdraws the request.

On the client's side, the request appears at the top of Users under Asked to join your company, with how many tasks come with the person. Their admin answers As member, As admin or No. Agreeing moves the person exactly as above. Saying no leaves them where they are, as your guest.

How do I let a client run their own workspace?#

This is what turns a client from somebody you serve into a company that uses Projectous alongside you.

Open the client, go to People, and find Their own workspace. Type the email address of the person who should run it and press Send invite. They get an email titled "Take control of" followed by the client's name. The link works for 30 days. Only one offer is open at a time: sending a new one cancels the previous link. While it is open the section shows who it went to and when it expires, with Withdraw to cancel it at once.

The link opens a page headed Run followed by the client's name. It explains that you have been running the company inside your account, and that taking it over gives them their own workspace, their own people and their own projects, while everything already shared with you stays shared, with the same history. They choose a plan and press Take it over.

• If they do not have a Projectous account under that email yet, the page asks them to create one first, with a Create that account button, and then to open the link again.
• When it is done the page says the company is theirs and that they are an admin of it. They become its admin and owner, and the plan they chose is switched on straight away, for a month, or a year on an annual plan.
• If the link has expired or been withdrawn, the page says the invitation is closed and to ask for a new one.

If they already use Projectous for another company, the client's company becomes one more entry in the company switcher at the top of the app.

After they take it over, your People tab says The client runs their own company. From then on:

• you cannot add client users or move guests into their company yourself; you ask, and they decide (see above);
• they invite their own colleagues from Users, like any company;
• they can create their own projects and clients.

Send the offer before you add anybody to the client's company. The Their own workspace section only offers to send an invitation while the client's company is empty. Once a client user has accepted or a guest has been moved in, it reads as though the client already runs the company and the Send invite box is no longer shown.

What does each side see?#

Your company sees everything it owns: its projects, tasks, chats, timers, contracts, rates and invoices. You see the people of a client's company on the client's People tab and on the projects they take part in.

Admins of the client's company can open every project you file under that client, with its tasks. People in the client's company who are not admins see the projects they have been added to. Neither sees your other clients or your internal chat.

Guests see the projects they were invited to and nothing else, and no money anywhere. Their menu holds Planner and Projects.

A partner company's people work on the projects they have been added to and see the task chats meant for them (below). Their own Clients list, reports and invoices stay in their own workspace.

Only your company's admins change your project. Its name, settings, people, statuses, contracts and rates are yours. A partner's admins and the client's admins open the project and work in it, but cannot change it, and they do not see your contracts or what you pay each person. They see their own contracts on it.

The chat rooms on a task#

Every task chat is split into rooms, one per company, and each room's tab is named after the company it belongs to. A room is private to the company it belongs to and to whoever is allowed in from the outside:

• Your room is your company's internal discussion. Your people read it, and so does a partner company working on the project with you.
• The client's room is the conversation with the client. You read it, and so do the client's guests and the people in the client's company. Its tab appears once the client has people on the work or once something has been written there.
• A partner company's room is theirs. Their people read it; you do not.

Guests and the client's own people see only the client's room. So a client can talk to you on a task while your team discusses the same task next door, and a partner can discuss it with its own staff without either of you reading along.

The project chat is split into the same rooms, by the same rules. What somebody cannot read never reaches their device at all: not in the chat, the chat list, search, notifications or unread counts.

How do I work with a partner company on a client's projects?#

When another company works on your client's projects with you, its people are added to the project like anybody else. As an admin, open the project's details and use the row of people at the top to add them, or assign one of them to a task: if they are not on the project yet, you are asked whether to Add to project or assign them for Only this task.

The people offered in those pickers are your own company's people and the people of the companies yours is already linked to. There is no screen yet for starting a link with a company you have not worked with before, and adding a client that already uses Projectous on its own creates a new, empty company for it rather than linking to theirs.

Once a partner company is on the project:

• You can assign its people to tasks. Its people can assign yours when your people are on the same project.
• In the partner's own Clients list, two records appear by themselves: one named after your company, which is who they invoice, and one named after your client, marked as billing to you. Opening that second record shows a Billable Client field explaining that it is a linked client and asking which client should receive invoices for its work.
• Their billable time on your client's projects reaches your books, as described next.

How do time and invoices move between linked companies?#

In short:

• When a partner company logs billable time on your client's project, a copy of the entry appears in your books, attributed to the partner company and valued at the default rate the partner has set for that client. That is your cost.
• The copy appears in your Invoiceable report under your client. It carries no client rate of its own, so you bill your client at your own rate. Your client gets your invoice, not the partner's timers.
• The partner invoices you. In their Invoiceable report, projects for your client are listed as your client's name, an arrow, and your company's name, and invoices for them are addressed to your company.
• Only billable time is copied, and only time logged once the link exists. Earlier time is not copied.
• When the partner changes the hours or notes on the original entry, the copy follows, until you have reviewed it or put it on an invoice. After that it stays as it was.
• An invoice between companies reaches the other company by email, with a link to view it. There is no inbox of received invoices inside Projectous.

What the copy carries, and what it leaves behind#

• The copy is filed under the partner company's name, not the individual who worked the hours, against your own client and on the same project.
• Its hours are the partner's billed time: the invoice duration on the original if they set one, otherwise the time worked. When the partner writes time down for you, you see the written down figure.
• Its notes are the original's Invoice Notes when there are any, and its ordinary notes otherwise. So you read what the partner would put in front of a client, and the partner can keep its own working notes private by writing the version for you in Invoice Notes.
• Admin Notes, the partner's people's pay rates, and whether the partner has invoiced or paid for the time are never copied.
• Once you have reviewed or invoiced the copy, the partner can no longer delete the original.
• If your company in turn works for another company on that client, your billable time on the project is copied up to it the same way, one level further up.

How hours, rates and reviewing work in detail is in Time tracking and Invoicing.

How do I take a company off the work, or end a link?#

Take a partner company off a project from the project's details: as an admin, remove the company or its people from the row of people at the top. The project chat records that they were removed. The project leaves the partner company's project list and its people stop seeing the task chats. A person who was added to the project individually keeps that membership until you remove them too.

Stop working with a client or a partner by setting the client record's Status to Inactive or Archived in Edit Client. When that would close projects for somebody, Projectous warns you first, in a window titled This takes access away, listing the projects and how many admins reach them only through this client. People who are members of a project themselves keep it. Messages, timers and invoices already made stay where they are.

On the client's or partner's side, the record that stands for their own company (named after their company, or "Our work") is how they reach the work shared with them. If they try to mark it inactive, the warning says so: it looks like a stray, and it is not.

Moving a person between companies keeps their history, as described above, but never their messages: what they wrote in a company's room stays in that room.

Why this matters#

• The client keeps their history. When a client starts using Projectous for themselves, nothing is exported or rebuilt. The projects, tasks and conversations you already share stay shared, and the people you moved across keep their tasks and timers.
• Each side has a private room. Your team, the client and a partner each get their own room on every task, so nobody has to choose between talking openly and keeping the client in the loop.
• Money follows the work. A partner's hours become your cost without anybody retyping them, and each company bills only the company above it.
• A client can grow into it. A client who only needs to follow along can stay a guest of yours. A client who wants more takes over a company that already holds their work.

Common questions#

Does the client see my internal discussion? No. On every task the client sees only the client's room. Your room is for your company and any partner company working with you.

I added a client user but the offer to run their own workspace disappeared. Why? The Their own workspace section only offers an invitation while the client's company is empty. Send that offer first, then add client users or move guests.

Who owns the client's company if I move two people in? The first person to arrive. They become its admin and owner whatever role you chose, so start with whoever should own it.

What happens to a guest's messages when I move them into the client's company? They stay in your room, still under their name. You can read them; they no longer can.

Does the client need a plan? To take over their workspace they choose a plan. A company without a plan still has Planner and Projects in its menu, which is where the work shared with it is.

A partner logged hours before we were linked. Will they appear in my books? No. Copies start from when the link exists. Earlier time stays in the partner's books only.

Can I link to a company that already uses Projectous? Not from a screen yet. Adding them as a client creates a new company for them rather than connecting to the one they already run.