Onboarding a Project ​

From "we've signed a new client" to "the team is logging time." All Owner steps unless noted.

Project setup happens in the web console. Creating projects, setting deadlines, assigning a PM, enabling tasks and distributing hours are all console operations — they are not things you ask VERA for in Slack. Slack is where the team logs and reviews their own time once the project exists.

Step 1: Create the project ​

In the console, open Projects and choose New project.

  • Name — what the team will call it.
  • Client — required. A new client is created automatically if the name is new. Choosing the Internal client locks the type to Internal.
  • Type — T&M, Fixed Price, Pro Bono or Internal. (Retainer and Agile are frozen: existing ones keep working and reporting, but new ones can't be created.)
  • Contract value — required for Fixed Price.
  • Hours budget — required for T&M, Fixed Price and Pro Bono; optional for Internal.
  • Deadline — required for T&M, Fixed Price and Pro Bono; optional for Internal.

The form will not submit until the fields your chosen type requires are filled, so there is no back-and-forth about missing values.

Sizing a Fixed Price project. Enter a contract value and a billing rate and the form shows the hours that implies, with one click to fill the hours budget. It works in reverse too — a contract value plus an hours budget shows the implied billing rate. If that rate is at or below what your team costs to deliver, the readout turns red. The warning is advisory, not a gate.

Step 2: Confirm the deadline ​

The deadline is set on the create form. To change it later, open the project and edit it on the configuration card.

Deadlines are visible to Owners and Managers. They are never shown to Users.

Internal and time-off projects don't need deadlines — they're ongoing.

Step 3: Assign a project manager ​

On the project's page, use PM Assignment.

This sets the project's PM and promotes them to Manager if they are currently a User. The person does not need to have messaged VERA in Slack first — the console identifies people by their record.

Step 4: Enable tasks ​

Tasks define what kinds of work can be logged on this project. Enable the ones that apply from the project's page.

Every new project starts with Project Management already enabled, so it can receive an envelope immediately.

A project with no enabled tasks cannot receive an allocation envelope, which is the usual reason an envelope form appears with no Task dropdown.

Step 5: Create envelopes for the team (Manager or Owner) ​

An envelope is one person's hours on one task on one project. Add them from the project's Allocations card, or from Envelopes in the left nav.

Each envelope needs a person, a task from the project's enabled set, and an hours figure. Optionally it can carry a window (the dates its hours are expected to land between) and, once it has a window, a shape — how those hours are distributed across the weeks.

The allocation bar on the project page shows the total allocated against the hours budget, and flags over- and under-allocation. On a Fixed Price project an Owner also sees the people budget — the contract divided by the target efficiency ratio — and how much of it the current envelopes commit.

Step 6: The team starts logging ​

Team members can now log time, in Slack or in the console:

"3 hours on Nike Rebrand for design"

VERA confirms with an entry ID. The entry flows immediately into every report and financial calculation — there is no approval step and no month-end reconciliation.

Time logged with no envelope, or that pushes an envelope past its allocated hours, is surfaced to managers as an exception in the unresolved queue rather than being blocked.

Retainer and Agile projects ​

Both types are frozen for creation — new ones cannot be made on either surface. Existing retainers and agile projects continue to work, and every status check, dashboard and report behaves as it always did.

For an existing retainer, hours and contract value live on the active period child rather than the parent, and the retainer status view is the right place to read them. For an existing agile project, the same is true of the active sprint.