Lesson 4.5: Setting Up and Tracking Projects

While your Chart of Accounts and Cost Centers track your organization’s permanent financial structure, you often need to track revenue and expenses for short-term activities, such as a specific fundraising event, a theater production, or a temporary grant. FastFund Online provides a Project Tracking feature to handle these scenarios without cluttering your main chart of accounts. This lesson covers enabling project tracking, creating project codes, and understanding the reporting limitations.

What is Project Tracking?

Project codes are used to create a subsidiary ledger of transactions outside of the regular postings to your general ledger chart of accounts. They act as “tags” that can be attached to transactions across the Accounting, Fundraising, and Payroll modules.

When to use Projects vs. Cost Centers:

• Cost Centers: Use for permanent, long-standing programs or departments (e.g., “Administration,” “Youth Program”).

• Projects: Use for short-term or finite activities (e.g., “2023 Gala,” “Winter Play,” “Renovation Grant”).

Important Reporting Limitation: Because projects are only posted to one side of a transaction (revenue or expense) and do not employ double-entry accounting (they do not track cash or liability balances specifically by project), you cannot generate a full Balance Sheet by Project. You can only generate Revenue and Expense reports.

Step 1: Enabling Project Tracking

Before you can use projects, you must ensure the feature is enabled in your company preferences.

1. Navigate to Administration > Company Setup > Preferences.

2. Under Accounting Preferences, locate the Project Tracking checkbox.

3. Check the box to turn on Project Tracking in transaction entry screens.

Step 2: Creating a New Project

Once enabled, you can build your list of active projects.

1. Navigate to Lists > Data > Projects.

2. Click the New (+) icon.

3. Project Name: Enter a name (up to 50 characters).

4. Details: You can optionally enter a Description, assign a Manager or Contact, and track specific dates (Submit Date, Start Date, End Date).

5. Approval: If your internal controls require it, you can mark a project as Approved and enter an approval date.

Managing Projects

• Editing: You can edit project details at any time by clicking the Project Name in the list.

• Inactivating: If a project has ended (e.g., the “2023 Gala” is over), you cannot delete it if it has transaction history. Instead, check the Inactive box. This prevents the project from appearing in data entry screens but preserves historical reports.

• Deleting: You can only delete a project if it has no posted transactions. If the Delete button is grayed out, you must inactivate it.