The list has three views, and each answers a different question.
The three
| View | Answers |
|---|---|
| List | “Show me everything, sorted by what I care about.” |
| Kanban | “What is at which stage?” Columns by status. |
| Pivot | “How much, cut by customer, owner or type?” |
Pivot is the underused one. Budget by customer tells you who your business actually depends on — which is rarely the answer people expect.
The summary line
Above the table: how many projects, the total budget, and the total spent. It obeys your filters, so filtering to one customer gives you that customer’s totals without building a report.
Importing
Import CSV brings existing jobs in. Worth doing if you are moving mid-year and have live projects elsewhere.
- Import your customers first. A project matches to one, and one without a customer cannot be invoiced.
- Bring in the live projects. Do not import five years of finished ones — they will sit in every list for ever.
- Include name, customer, status, dates and budget at minimum.
- Import five rows first and open one before running the rest.
Historic time and tasks do not come with a project import. If you need last quarter’s hours, keep them where they are and start clean here — a half-imported history is worse than an honest starting point.
What pivot is actually for
The least used view and the most revealing. It totals the list cut by whatever you choose.
| Cut by | Tells you |
|---|---|
| Customer | Who your business actually depends on. Rarely who you think. |
| Owner | Who is carrying how much delivery. |
| Type | Which kind of work you do most of, and whether it is the profitable kind. |
| Status | How much is sitting on hold. |
Budget by customer is worth running once a quarter. If one client is half your committed work, that is a risk whether or not they are pleasant to work with.
Filters and the summary
The count, the total budget and the total spend above the table all obey the current filter. So a filter is also a report: one customer, one owner, one quarter.
Where to go next
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.