Many Workamajig users overlook the process of closing a project in Workamajig. Oftentimes, they feel as if changing the status, or addressing all open transactions is enough to “close” a project from their system. This is not true! Your company needs to define a systematic process for closing Workamajig projects.
Closing Projects in Workamajig allows you to further sequester your inactive projects and retire them completely in your system. Closed Projects also have their own sets of security rights which can help govern their treatment, one step further than a traditional project status will allow.
Closing projects also forces a systematic approach to reviewing completed projects for unbilled items, to address adherence to budgets, or to measure overall performance. Think about it: if you were to run a Workamajig or Customized report to evaluate your projects, how would you isolate the projects that are ready to be measured? Running a report over a given date range wouldn’t give you much help. Even if you ran the report for a calendar year you would still have many projects that began before the time period you are running, or will end afterward. If you use a Project Status to filter your projects (using a status such as “Complete”), then you will be running a report that grows each time a project closes — you will constantly be measuring all of your historical data. Only by closing your projects in a timely, periodical fashion can you then measure your Project’s Performance. For example, this April, you would be filtering your projects so that they have a Project Status of “Complete”, but have a Closed value equal to “No”. This report would display all projects that were completed since your last closing procedure. Once the report has been run, simply close the project to insure that the next period’s data is lean and mean.
Closing your Projects will benefit your company, not just in a practical sense, but by forcing you to evaluate, measure, and record your performance — and isn’t that why you purchased Workamajig in the first place?