Projects · Daily operations · 7 min read

Create a project from a template

Start a new project with phases, tasks, milestones, a billing plan and a draft budget already in place.

Before you begin

You need project.create. Have the customer, the contract value and the dates ready. If your company requires a Customer PO, contract number, location or description, have those too: Administration > Applications > Project Management > Fields decides what is required.

Steps

1. Open Projects > Projects > All Projects and press Create Project.
2. Enter the Project name.
3. Choose a Template, or leave Blank project. A template also sets the Project type and Billing method.
4. Choose the Customer. You need one before you can invoice.
5. Enter the Start date and the Planned finish. The finish cannot be before the start.
6. Enter the Contract value in AED.
7. Enter the Project manager name. The system adds this person to the team with the role Project Manager.
8. Fill Location, Contract number, Customer PO, Commercial tags and Description where they are shown.
9. Press Create Project. Project 360 opens.

You can also create many projects at once: press Import on All Projects and choose a CSV with a header row. Columns are name, code, start_date, end_date, contract_value, manager, location and description. The result log tells you per row whether it was created.

What happens next

• The project gets a code such as PRJ-2026-001 (prefix, start year, next free number) and the status Planning.
• With a template, phases, tasks, milestones, billing steps and documents are created. If you gave a planned finish, the template is stretched or shrunk to fit your dates.
• The template also creates a draft budget named Original budget at 85% of the contract value, split across cost codes.
• A blank project has a planned finish of start plus 90 days when you leave it empty.
• A dimension value with the project code is created, so invoices, bills, purchase orders and journals can carry the project.

Worked example

Template Construction Project, start 1 Oct 2026, planned finish 29 Mar 2027, contract value AED 1,000,000. The template is 300 days long and your dates give 180, so every duration is multiplied by 0.6. The draft budget is AED 850,000: Labor 297,500, Material 255,000, Subcontract 170,000, Expenses 85,000 and Overhead 42,500. Five billing steps are planned at 10%, 10%, 30%, 20% and 10%.

Good to know

• A project name is required. A planned finish earlier than the start is refused: 'The finish cannot be before the start.'
• A project code must be unique in the company: 'That project code is taken.'
• Duplicate an existing project from its card menu: phases, tasks (reset to Not started), milestones (pending) and team are copied. Timesheets, expenses, invoices, budgets and documents are not.
• Favourite, archive and restore are on the card menu. Archived projects leave the lists and totals until restored.
• The status moves only along the allowed path. See Close a project.