Creating a project

A project is the central record in FullClarity. Creating one sets up everything you need to start estimating, contracting, and billing — including the customer, a contact, and a sales opportunity, all in a single step.

Where to find it: FullClarity → Project Financials → Create Project

When to use this

Use this when you are onboarding a new construction job into FullClarity. Whether you're starting a relationship with a brand-new client or adding a new project for an existing one, this is your starting point before any estimating, contracting, or billing can begin.

Prerequisites

• Access to the FullClarity Project Financials menu
• The customer's company name (or the existing customer record if your administrator has disabled new customer creation)
• A contact person's name and email (for Company-type customers)
• The appropriate billing type and cost centre for the project (check with your administrator if unsure)

Walkthrough

New customer or existing customer

At the top of the form you'll see an Existing Customer checkbox. Whether you can create a new customer or must select an existing one depends on how your administrator has configured the system.

If new customer creation is enabled: The Existing Customer checkbox is interactive — you can choose.

When it's unchecked (the default), the form collects details to create a new customer record:

• Company / Individual — choose whether the customer is a business or a person:

  • Company — creates a customer record for a business. You'll enter a company name, and optionally a primary contact person's first name, last name, and email. A separate contact record is created as part of the project setup.
  • Individual — creates a customer record for a person. You'll enter their first and last name directly. No separate contact record is created.

• Company Name (required for Company type) — the customer's business name

• First Name and Last Name — for Company type, this is the primary contact person. For Individual type, this is the customer's own name.

• Email (required) — used for project correspondence

• Phone and Alt. Phone — contact numbers

When it's checked, all of the above fields are replaced with a single Customer dropdown where you select an existing customer from NetSuite. This is useful when you're adding a new project for a client you already work with — no duplicate customer records are created.

If new customer creation is disabled: The Existing Customer checkbox is automatically ticked and cannot be changed. You must select an existing customer from the dropdown.

Project details

The rest of the form configures how the project will operate. Your administrator sets the defaults for these fields in the Configuration record, so in most cases you'll only need to change what's specific to this project.

• Job Name — a descriptive name for the project (e.g. "CBD Office Fitout" or "Warehouse Construction - Dandenong")

• Billing Type — determines how you'll bill the customer. The two most common types are:

  • Progress Billing — you agree a Schedule of Values with the customer, then bill monthly based on percentage completion of each line item
  • Stage Billing — billing is tied to construction milestones (e.g. Deposit, Base, Frame, Lockup). Each stage has a fixed percentage of the contract value. This is common in Australian residential construction where stage percentages may be regulated. See "Stage billing projects" below for more detail.

• Cost Centre — selects which cost category structure applies to this project. This controls which budget categories are available when building estimates.

• Default Margin % — the target profit margin used as a default on estimate lines. Typically set to 25%.

• Start Date — defaults to today's date

• Subsidiary — the NetSuite subsidiary that owns the project

• Advanced Forecasting — when this checkbox appears on the form, it enables advanced forecast features on the project (extending the estimating workflow to include a separate Project Budget and Forecast). It defaults to checked, but you can uncheck it if you don't need advanced forecasting for this particular project. Note: if your administrator has disabled advanced forecasting in the system settings, this checkbox won't appear at all.

What gets created

When you save the form, FullClarity creates several linked records behind the scenes:

• A Customer record (or links to the existing one you selected)
• A Contact for the customer's primary contact person (Company customers only — not created for Individual customers)
• The Project itself (created as a child of the customer)
• An Opportunity for pipeline tracking

Which of these are created automatically is controlled by your administrator in the Configuration record. For example, contact creation can be disabled if your organisation manages contacts separately, and new customer creation can be disabled to ensure all projects are linked to pre-existing customer records.

Stage billing projects

If you select Stage Billing as the billing type, FullClarity automatically copies the default billing stages to the project when it's created. Typical default stages for Australian residential construction are:

• A. Deposit — 5%
• B. Base — 10%
• C. Frame — 20%
• D. Lockup — 35%
• E. Fix — 25%
• F. Completion — 5%

These stages always total 100% of the contract value. After the project is created, you can customise the stages on the project's Configuration > Billing Stage tab — adding, removing, or adjusting percentages to suit the specific contract, as long as the total remains 100%.

Your administrator manages the available stages and their defaults via FullClarity → Project Financials → Manage Stages.

What success looks like

You land on the newly created project record. The FullClarity subtab shows an overview of billing information and financial summary. The Estimating subtab is ready for you to create your first estimate. If you selected Stage Billing, the billing stages appear on the Configuration > Billing Stage tab.

After saving

Once the project is saved, you'll land on the project record. The key areas you'll use are:

• FullClarity subtab — an overview of billing information and financial summary
• Estimating subtab — where you create estimates, manage estimate collections, handle bid requests, and set up contracts. This is where you'll go next to create your first estimate.
• Configuration subtab — project-level settings including cost centre, margin, account assignments, and billing stages (for Stage Billing projects)

Other subtabs cover areas like addresses, relationships, resources, communication, retainage, and timeline — these become relevant as the project progresses through its lifecycle.

Gotchas

• Existing Customer checkbox is greyed out? Your administrator has disabled new customer creation. You must select an existing customer record from the dropdown.
• Advanced Forecasting checkbox not visible? It has been disabled system-wide by your administrator. The project will use standard (non-advanced) forecasting.
• Stage percentages must total exactly 100%. If you customise stages after creation, the system will prevent saving until the total is correct.
• Contact is not created for Individual customers. If you need a separate contact record for an individual, you'll need to create it manually in NetSuite.