Manage projects and jobs in SamBooks

In SamBooks a job brings together the client, description, pricing and budget of a project-based engagement. On that basis SamBooks compares in real time what you planned against what you actually delivered, and turns the work into an invoice. You can do everything from the module (forms and buttons) or, alternatively, by asking Sam in chat: the two paths are always equivalent.

What it's for

If you work on projects — consulting, agency, software house, IT services, maintenance — the job is the container that holds who works (the resources), for which client, with which pricing logic (the rate cards) and with which budget. It's the starting point for everything else in the module: timesheets are logged against a job, and the invoice is generated from a job.

The module lives in a single page, Projects, organised into tabs, in the order you'll use them:

1. Jobs — the project engagements.
2. Rate cards — the price lists (visible to Manager and Administrative roles).
3. Resources — the people who work on them.
4. Timesheets — the logged hours and their approval.
5. Integrations — import from external tools (Manager and Administrative roles).

This guide covers Jobs, Rate cards and Resources, plus reading the budget-vs-actual comparison. For the hours flow and invoicing (time & materials or fixed-fee/progress billing), and for importing from external tools, see the related guides at the bottom.

One key point: rates, prices and costs live only in SamBooks. They are administrative data you set here, not in an external project-management tool. So even when you import hours from outside, the rate is decided by the SamBooks rate card.

Prerequisites

• Access to the Projects page (the module rolls out progressively; if you don't see it among the sections, it isn't active yet for your company).
• To view and set monetary values — internal cost, rate, budget, margin — and to manage Rate cards you need the Manager or Administrative role. Other roles use the module but don't see the amounts or the Rate cards tab.
• To invoice a job you need an associated client: a job without a client is internal and cannot be invoiced.

Step-by-step

1. Open the Projects page

Go to Projects. The page opens on the Jobs tab. At the top you'll find summary cards (KPIs): Total jobs and In progress are visible to everyone; Current cost and Job value appear only to Manager and Administrative roles.

2. Create a job

1. On the Jobs tab, press New job.
2. The New job window opens. Fill in:
   • Description (required) — e.g. "Acme client portal development".
   • Code — your own identifier, optional (e.g. "ACME-2026").
   • Client — choose the recipient; leave Internal if there's no client to invoice.
   • Pricing — see step 3.
   • Status — In progress, Closed, On hold or Cancelled. New jobs start In progress.
   • Budget (€) — the job's reference amount (optional), used as the basis for the variance.
   • Start date / End date — optional; the end date can't precede the start date.
3. Press Create job. The job appears in the list with a Native origin badge.

3. Choose the pricing

In the Pricing field choose how the value of the work is calculated:

• Time & materials (T&M) — billed on actual hours times the rate. This is the default.
• Fixed fee — a single agreed price for the whole job. Selecting it reveals the Fixed price (€) field: enter the agreed price.
• Mixed — a combination of the two (a fixed part plus overtime billed on consumption). The Fixed price (€) field appears here too.

For T&M or mixed jobs you can set a default rate card: the price list SamBooks uses to resolve the hourly rate of logged hours. If you don't have one yet, leave None and associate it later (see step 4). A job can have several rate cards: in the timesheet you pick which price-list line freezes the rate.

4. Create and assign rate cards

A rate card is a price list by role (e.g. "Senior developer") or by activity type. Each line carries an hourly price and/or a fixed fee. It's what SamBooks uses to freeze an hour's rate when it's logged. The Rate cards tab is visible to Manager and Administrative roles.

Create a rate card.

1. Open the Rate cards tab and press New rate card.
2. Give the list a description (e.g. "Standard rate card 2026").
3. Add the lines with Add line: for each, choose the type (by role or by activity type), the key (the role name or activity type) and the hourly price (or the fixed fee).
4. In the Jobs to apply it to box, tick the jobs you want to link this rate card to (the assignment is two-way, see below).
5. Press Create rate card. The list appears as a card with its lines.

Edit or delete a rate card. On the card, use the pencil icon to reopen the window and edit it (description, lines and linked jobs), or the trash icon to delete it. Deleting a rate card removes it from the jobs it was linked to; hours already logged don't change (their rate is already frozen).

Two-way, synchronised rate-card ↔ job assignment. You can link a rate card to a job from either side, and the change is reflected everywhere:

• From the job: open the job's edit window (see step 5) and choose the rate cards in the dedicated field.
• From the rate card: in the rate card window, Jobs to apply it to section, tick the jobs.

If you assign a rate card to a job from one side, you'll find it already ticked on the other: it's the same relationship seen from both ends.

5. Edit or delete a job

On the Jobs tab, in each row's Actions column:

• the pencil icon (Edit job) reopens the job window: change description, client, pricing, prices, budget, status and the linked rate cards, then press Save;
• the trash icon (Delete) deletes the job after a confirmation.

Clicking the row (not the icons) opens the detail view with budget vs actual (step 7).

6. Create, edit and delete resources

Resources are the people who work on jobs. Create them before timesheets: every logged hour refers to a resource.

1. Open the Resources tab and press New resource.
2. In the New resource window fill in:
   • Name (required) — e.g. "Mario Rossi".
   • Role / seniority — e.g. "Senior developer" (used to match the rate-card line by role).
   • Internal hourly cost (€) and Default hourly rate (€) — visible and editable only to Manager and Administrative roles. The internal cost is the confidential figure SamBooks uses for the margin; the rate is the reference hourly selling price.
   • Active resource — keep the toggle on for working collaborators.
3. Press Create resource.

Edit a resource: click the resource's row — the window reopens with its data; edit and press Save. To deactivate it (without deleting) turn off Active resource and save: it stays in the archive but won't appear among the active ones. Delete a resource: use the trash icon in the Actions column, after a confirmation.

Resources created here are External: collaborators without platform access. They appear with the External type. Internal resources are linked to a platform user. You can filter the list by Type (internal/external) and Status (active/inactive).

7. Read a job's budget vs actual

1. On the Jobs tab, click a row to open the detail.
2. The window shows the job name, its status, the client and the pricing.
3. The Budget vs actual tab shows the indicators — revenue figures to all roles, cost figures only to privileged roles:
   • Manual budget — the budget you set in the record.
   • Expected value — planned revenue: estimated hours × rate (for fixed-fee/mixed it's the fixed price).
   • Actual revenue — value of billable hours at rate (plus any reimbursable expenses). Not cash received.
   • Invoiced and To invoice — how much already reached an invoice and how much remains.
   • Estimated hours, Total hours, Billable hours.
   • Variance — budget minus actual, in value and percentage (red if negative).
   • Cost budget, Current cost and Gross margin — Manager/Administrative only: planned cost, actual cost (hours × internal cost) and margin.
4. The Activities tab lists the job's activities (development, analysis, meeting, documentation, travel, maintenance).
5. Generate invoice also starts here, enabled only if the job has a client. The button adapts to the pricing (T&M, fixed fee or mixed): the full flow is in the related guide.

Tips

• Assign a rate card to the job from the start: logged hours inherit the right rate without restating it. You can do it from the job or from the rate card, either way.
• The resource's internal cost is only used to compute the margin: it never reaches an invoice and is encrypted. It's worth filling in to read the job's real margin.
• Deactivate rather than delete resources that no longer work: you keep the history of hours already logged.
• Use the Status to keep the list tidy: move finished jobs to Closed or On hold.
• All of this also works by voice with Sam: in chat you can say "create a rate card with senior developer €80/h", "link the standard rate card to the Acme job" or "show me the budget vs actual of the Acme job". Form and chat are equivalent paths.

Common mistakes

• "Description is required." — Fill in the Description field before saving the job.
• I don't see the Rate cards tab (or the amounts). — That's expected: rate cards and monetary values are reserved for Manager and Administrative roles.
• The "Generate invoice" button is disabled. — The job is internal: without a client there's no one to invoice. Open it for editing and assign a client.
• I set the fixed price but the field disappeared. — The Fixed price (€) field appears only with Fixed fee or Mixed pricing. If you switch back to Time & materials the fixed price isn't used.
• I assigned a rate card from the job but I don't see it in the rate card. — It's there: the assignment is two-way. Reopen the rate card window: the job is already ticked under Jobs to apply it to.

FAQ

Can I create a job without a client? Yes, by leaving the client as Internal. An internal job tracks hours and budget for non-billable work, but you can't generate an invoice from it.

Can a job have more than one rate card? Yes. You can link several price lists to the same job; when logging an hour you pick which line to apply. A default rate card still works as a suggestion.

What's the difference between internal cost and rate? The internal hourly cost is what an hour of the resource costs you (used for the margin, confidential). The hourly rate is the price at which you sell that hour to the client.

Do I set the rate in my project-management tool? No. Rates, prices and costs live only in SamBooks: you set them in the rate card and on the resource. Even for hours imported from an external tool, the rate is governed by the SamBooks rate card.

Does an hour's rate change if I update the rate card? No, not for hours already logged: each hour freezes its rate at logging time, so a later price-list update doesn't alter past hours.

Related features

• Timesheets and project invoicing — logging hours, the approval flow and generating the invoice (time & materials or fixed-fee/progress billing).
• ClickUp integration — connect a project-management tool and import tracked hours into SamBooks.