Simple projects

A simple project is a project with no offer: somewhere to keep invoices, with nothing sent to your client.

Creating a simple project

Wherever you create a project, Billow asks which kind you want:

• Project with offer opens the offer wizard.

• Simple project opens a short form: name, account, contact, and an optional summary.

The summary is internal. Your client never sees it.

Converting a qualified lead offers the same choice. See Turning a lead into a project.

Statuses

A simple project starts Active. From there you can complete it or cancel it, and either one reopens to Active. That’s the whole lifecycle.

Draft, Offer Pending and Rejected only apply to a project with an offer, so they never come up here. See Projects and their statuses.

Invoicing

Invoice it like any other project. Nothing is drafted for you, so you write each invoice yourself.

With no offer to take tax settings or currency from, each invoice starts from your workspace defaults and stays editable, the same as an invoice with no project at all. See Taxes on your documents.

The account pins when the first invoice is created. Once the project has an invoice you can’t move it to a different account, though the main contact stays changeable. See Projects and their statuses.

Plan limits

A simple project takes an active-project slot the moment you create it, since it’s Active from the start. Completing or cancelling it gives the slot back. See Plans and limits.

Deleting

Admins can delete a simple project at any status, as long as it has no live invoices. There’s no accepted offer behind it to protect.

Invoices you’ve deleted don’t count; they stay in your trash and come off the project. A live one stops the delete.

Adding an offer later

An active simple project has a Turn into offer button on its overview. It opens the offer wizard at the essentials step, and nothing changes until you save that step. Billow confirms first:

Saving this step creates an offer and moves the project from Active to Draft. It becomes Active again once your client accepts the offer. The offer cannot be removed later.

From there the project behaves like any other offer-backed project. See Building and sending an offer.

Two conditions:

• The project has to be unbilled. A single invoice on it disables the button. Invoices you’ve deleted don’t block it. They come off the project on the way through and stay in your trash, restorable later on their own.

• The offer is permanent. Once it’s attached, it can’t be taken off again.