Once you have created a project, you will be able to add jobs using the link at the top of any project screen. Only users that have been given suitable permission in the project settings will be able to add new jobs. Give the job a title, a manager and start/finish dates.

Once you have created a job you may wish to allocate a team. As the creator of the job you will have already been added as a user, but to allow other staff members or subcontractors to add time to the job they will also need to be job users. If you wish the client to log in and see the progress on this job, you should also add them as a user.

Add contacts to a job using the “Contacts” tab in the job edit screen.

If you wish to limit the time spent on a job, then you can set the time budget in the “Project” tab of the job edit screen. Once time has gone over budget, the progress bar will show in red on the project jobsheet.

You can add time to a job in a number of ways:

1. Open the project job sheet and click the “Add time” link
2. Open the project sidepanel and click the clock at the top
3. Open the call manager (the call manager icon against a contact in CRM) and assign the call to the job

The job timer will open. You can either use the timer (click the “copy” button to copy the elapsed time into the time box), or you can enter a period of time manually. Add notes and save. If you wish to add further time to another job, or another block of time to the same job, click “save and stay here”.

All new jobs are created with a status as set in your Setup->Company Defaults screen. You can change the status of jobs at any point, and a note will be added to the notes trail automatically. Typical Job statuses would be “Not started”, “In progress” and “Completed”. Pearl will automatically progress a job to the completed status when you close it. Each status has a colour coding, which is configurable on the Projects->Job Statuses screen

Adding notes to a job

Only the job owner or creator can set the job as complete. There are a number of ways to complete a job:

1. Open the job and select the "completed" status, then save the job
   
2. Visit the Job list screen, or the project Job sheet, select the job(s) and click the button to complete

A note will be added to the notes trail for the job and each user will receive appropriate email/SMS alerts automatically.

Each time a job is changed or updated, Pearl can send out automated alert emails. Choose who receives alerts in the “Contacts” tab of the job edit screen. To receive SMS alerts the contacts will need to have a mobile number defined and your company will need to have SMS credits.

Pearl will use the default event update email template, but you can define each job to have it’s own custom email template; select this in the “Contacts” tab of the job edit screen. To create a new template, visit Documents->Mailmerge Templates and create a new document. Make sure the document is active otherwise it won’t appear in the drop down lists.

You can create tasks for yourself or other staff and set the task parent to the job in question. These tasks will then show up in the “Tasks” tab on the job edit screen. You will not be able to complete a job until the tasks are all completed (or deleted). You can only delete a task if you created it. To create a task, click Home->New Task from the main menu, and set the parent in the “Project” tab.

You can create tasks for a job (effectively daughter jobs), which must be set as completed before the parent job can be completed. Currently the daughter jobs do not automatically update when the dates are changed for the parent, and vice versa. This is something that will be introduced in a future upgrade.

A Job is simply a Pearl event. This means that you can easily include a helpdesk ticket or a personal task in a project simply by setting the Project, since tickets and tasks are events as well.

Pearl will allow you to raise orders for products (time or materials) and allocate these orders to projects. An order can only be tied to a single project, but a single project may have multiple orders. This allows you to create a Purchase/Sale history for a project in addition to the overall project purchase and sale history.

The revenue from sales and the expenditure from Purchase Orders is carried through to the Project costing on the summary screen.

In a scenario where you are nearing the end of a project, perhaps the release of a new software version, you may wish to reschedule a number of the jobs onto another project. Simply view the jobsheet, select the jobs and choose to move them to another project.