Project templates help you to quickly add projects for your clients without duplicating data entry. Project templates contain key project information, such as date calculations, recurrence patterns, project tasks, budget information, and assignments. You can add a new blank project template and modify it, or create a copy of an existing template. You can also copy information from a tab on one template to the same tab on another template.

When you add a project to a client, you select a project template and project information such as date calculations and future project generation is filled in from that template.

To open the Project Templates screen, choose Setup > Templates > Projects, or click the Project Templates action icon in the Clients navigation pane.

Adding or copying a project template

To create a new project template, do one of the following:

• To create a new template, click the Add button.
• To create a copy of an existing template that you can modify, right-click in the Project Templates list and choose Copy Project Template from the context menu.

After you create a new template, add (or modify) template information as described below.

Adding template information

In the Project Templates screen, click the Main tab and complete the fields as necessary.

1. Identification:
   • In the ID field, enter a unique alphanumeric ID, up to 11 characters.

     Note: This is a required field. The ID will be saved in upper case letters regardless of how it is entered.

   • In the Description field, enter a brief description of the project that will be easily recognizable to your staff.
   • In the Invoice description field, enter a description of the project as you want it to appear on client invoices.
2. Project information:
   • Engagement: Select the engagement to be used for the project. This is a required field. If you have security privileges, you can right-click to add or edit an engagement in the drop-down list.
   • Priority: Select Low, Medium, or High as the priority for the project.
   • Tracking: Select a tracking description for the project. If you have security privileges, you can right-click to add or edit tracking descriptions in the drop-down list.
3. Groupings: Groupings let you categorize project templates for filtering the list of projects and for creating reports. You can group projects by the staff responsible and by department. Click the down arrow Down arrow button and select a staff role (for example, Client’s Manager) to have the application complete this information using the client’s assignments.
4. Entities: Click the More button to select the client entities to assign to the project. When you assign an entity to the project, the application can automatically create this project for new clients that are assigned this entity. The Associated Entities field shows all of the entities that have been assigned to the project template.
5. Budget information: Mark the Base on tasks checkbox if you want to base budget information on the information set up on the project’s tasks. Mark the Calculate amount automatically checkbox to calculate budget information based on staff rates. Leave the checkboxes unmarked if you would like to enter the budget information yourself in the Hours and/or Amount fields.
6. Assigned: Click the More button next to the Staff field to select a staff member to assign to the project, or click the Down arrow button to assign a staff member dynamically based on their role (for example, Client’s Partner, or Engagement’s Biller).
   
   If you are licensed for the Staff Management module, you can also:
   • manually assign staff to the project based on their qualifications. Click the More button next to the Staff qualifications field and create a filter to specify which qualifications the assigned staff member must possess to work on the project.
   • automatically assign staff to the project based on a work queue. When you mark the Work queue option, the project will be placed in a queue that appears in the Work Queue portlet of the Staff Dashboard only for those staff who meet the qualifications.
7. Generation: Click the Recurrence button to open the Recurrence dialog, where you can specify the project frequency, dates, and generation options for future projects.
8. Solution:
   • Select solution: Select a solution you will use to work on the project from the drop-down list.
   • Solution path or File path: If you select Other for the solution, click the More button to navigate to the solution’s shortcut or application file.
   • Completion event: This field is available when you select UltraTax CS in the Select solution field. Select the status event that marks the task’s completion from the drop-down list.
   • Extension event: This field is available when you select UltraTax CS in the Select solution field. Select the status event that will extend the project. You must have at least one extension set up on the project template to extend a project via a status event from UltraTax CS.
9. Extensions: If you want to be able to extend a project’s due date, enter the number of months and/or days from the original due date for each extension. The maximum number of extensions allowed is four.

   Note: If you do not set up extensions on the project template, extensions will not be available when you use it to create a project. Also, extensions that you add to a project template are not added to projects that have already been created. However, you can still extend an existing project by right-clicking and choosing Add Entry from the context menu in the Project dialog. See Extending a project due date for details.

This tab shows selected task information associated with the current project template, including the activity, staff, target completion month and day, and tracking description.

To add a task to the project template, click the Add button and complete the information in the Task Template setup dialog. You can also double-click a row in the grid to open the Task Template dialog. Click on any column heading to sort the tasks grid by items in that column. See Adding a task template for more information.

The Links tab enables you to add links to any items that you want to associate with the project template. You can link to files, websites, or documents outside of Practice CS, including documents stored in FileCabinet CS or GoFileRoom. You can also link to interaction items within Practice CS.

The links you add to a project template will be added by default to all new projects generated from that template.

To add a link to the project template, right-click within the Links tab and choose the command from the context menu that pertains to the type of link you want to add. Navigate to that item and click OK.

The Custom Fields tab provides fields in which you can enter additional information for the project template. Custom fields can be checkboxes, dates, lists, numeric fields, staff lists, or text-entry fields. Custom fields for dates have a drop-down calendar. Numeric custom fields have a drop-down calculator. See Custom fields overview for more information on custom fields.

Modifying a project template

1. From the Project Templates list, click the template you want to modify.
2. Click the Edit button.
3. Make the necessary changes to the project template information.
4. Click the Enter button to save the changes.

Copying selected information to another project template

Practice CS enables you to copy all of the values from a tab of one project template to the same tab of another project template.

To copy values from one project template to another, follow these steps.

1. Right-click the source template in the Project Templates list and choose the appropriate command from the context menu:
   • Copy Main Values To...
   • Copy Dates To...
   • Copy Tasks To...
   • Copy Links To...
   • Copy Custom Field Values To...
2. In the Copy <Items> To dialog, select the destination template from the Copy To field.
3. Mark the I understand this will replace any existing data checkbox and click the Copy Now button.
4. Click Enter to save your changes to the destination template.

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