Welcome to beginner's guide for project managers or team leaders who create projects, budgets and tasks, track their time and manage projects expenses in Allfred.
Below you can find basic steps with key functionalities and their purpose, helping you navigate and understand how each step contributes to the efficient management of your agency's projects.
Initial setup
Before you begin managing projects in Allfred, we recommend setting up a few key configurations to streamline your workflow. Workspace settings can be configured only by Admin roles. Other things like creating rate cards or Task templates can by done by users with roles such as Team Leader, Managing Director, or CFO:
1. Data Imports:
Import clients, brands, contact persons, contractors, and rate cards. If your agency hasn't utilized the import option with our support team, here are the guidelines to set them up manually. We strongly recommend setting up rate cards in advance to avoid manually inputting them into each new budget.
How to create client and brand?
How to create contractor?
How to create rate cards?
2. Task Statuses and Task Templates:
Customize your task statuses to reflect your team's workflow clearly. Properly defined statuses enable efficient task management and easy tracking of each project's progress. Also, you can use task templates - pre-made groups of tasks that can be applied simultaneously across multiple budget items, which is a significant streamlining the workflow.
Where to edit task statuses?
How to create Task template?
3. Notification Preferences:
Configure notifications to keep informed about important updates, changes, and deadlines related to your projects.
Where to set up notifications?
If your user role does not permit these settings adjustments, please contact your agency Admin or our support team at [email protected] for help.
Maybe you are wondering what permissions you have as a project manager or team leader. You can check it here.
Here is the recommended approach to getting started with Allfred:
Step 1: Create a project
A project in Allfred is a central place where you organize, track, and manage work, tasks, expenses, and invoicing. Allfred also provides a Project Dashboard, offering a comprehensive view of all your projects, real-time spending, invoicing status, or immediate visibility if budgets are exceeded.
Check the explainer video about Project dashboard👇
How to create project?
Projects can be created in two ways:
From scratch – Use this option when you don't have a budget yet and you need to assign tasks to your team members immediately. More info here.
From an approved budget – more details about creating the budget are provided in the following steps
Project settings
In Allfred, you can create two types of projects:
Fixed-price: can include monthly retainers, when clients pay fixed amount each month, or projects with define scope
Time and materials: when you don't any budget for the project and the agency charges clients based on the actual time and expenses spent on the project
Additionally, you have the option to designate a project as "Non-billable". This is appropriate in two scenarios:
when creating projects for nonprofit organizations that are done for free and you dont expect any invocing
when creating Internal project that refers to work on internal development or tracking overhead costs such as rent, office supplies, salaries etc.
Project detail
Once the project is created, you'll find the entered info such as dates, contact persons, project managers, and any notes you've added displayed in the project overview. If there are any discrepancies, simply make corrections effortlessly using the Edit Details button.
This video walks you through the Project Overview so you can manage everything effortlessly! 🎯
Work with not-budgeted item
If you have started from scratch, your project lacks initial data about planned costs, work etc. Allfred provides flexibility without any restrictions. From this point onward, you can dive right into working on the project, creating tasks, tracking time, and efficiently planning your team's schedule. Simply use the pre-created not-budgeted item, under which you can create the necessary tasks.
Step 2: Prepare a budget (cost estimate)
A budget in Allfred defines the project structure, which is automatically generated upon creating the budget. Budgets can either be created directly within an existing project or initially as budget proposals pending approval, from which projects are subsequently created.
Let's first explain four basic types of cost estimates in Allfred:
1️⃣ Proposal – Is a budget in proposal status that isn’t linked to a project yet. These are often used for tenders or pre-approval discussions with clients. You can find them in Budgets → Proposals, where you can convert them into projects with one click.
2️⃣ Budgets – These are detailed budgets linked to specific projects. They can either be assigned to a project (meaning they define its structure) or unassigned (e.g., drafts or past versions).
3️⃣ Quotes – A PDF version of a budget sent to a client for approval. Quotes allow you to define how the offer is displayed and structured. Once created, all quotes are stored in a dedicated list of Quotes and can be sent directly to the client from Allfred.
4️⃣ Templates – Predefined budget templates saved under the "Templates" brand. These can be used to quickly generate new budgets for different projects.
a) Creating a Budget within an existing project
Allfred will alert you if no budget is assigned to the project. Assigning a budget (in case of fixed-price projects) is crucial for effectively monitoring hours, expenses, invoicing, and costs incurred. You can easily create a budget either through the Budgets subsection in Project detail or directly via the warning button.
Follow these steps to create a new budget or watch the video how to master your first budget!
In the Budgets tab within the project, you can see all versions of the budget, with the information about it’s approval status. The assignment status is showing the current budget version that is synchronised to the project.
⚠️ Note: Once a budget is assigned to the project, its structure is automatically created. If any tasks were previously managed under a non-budgeted budget item, this item will be labeled as "DELETED," as it is not part of the currently assigned budget but still contains tracked tasks or hours.
b) Creating a budget from scratch (budget proposal)
If your project doesn't exist yet because it's dependent on budget approval and no preliminary work is being done, we recommend creating a Proposal—a budget without an associated project. Once the proposal is approved, you can easily create a project from it with just one click.
How to send budget to client for approval?
For these situations, we have Quotes. A Quote is a financial offer sent to a client for approval before work begins. It serves as a formal cost estimate detailing the project scope, pricing, and terms. Each quote is assigned a unique ID, making it easy to reference in purchase orders.
Quotes include all necessary details, such as:
✅ The agency’s billing details (IBAN, legal entity)
✅ The client’s billing information
✅ The total amount (with or without VAT)
✅ Optional disclaimers and terms
Step 3: Start working with Tasks
A task in Allfred represents an individual assignment or brief where communication within the team occurs, attachments are uploaded, and statuses, deadlines, and priorities are defined.
Task is necessary for tracking the time spent on your projects. Without creating a task, you won't be able to accurately track your team's working hours. Once somebody tracks time to task or subtask, you as a project manager will see the spending of the work budget immediately.
Tasks can be created by anyone and assigned to any team member. When creating a task, positions and individuals working on the task must be specified. Allfred automatically applies the hourly rate for tracking time based on the defined position. Positions assigned to tasks must be previously defined within the project's budget.
Subtasks allow you to break down larger tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces while still maintaining a connection to the parent task.
In the Tasks section, you can find a list of all tasks. You can switch between "My tasks" or "All tasks" view and filter them by client or brand, team, status, priority, assigned people or positions, creator of the task, or task deadline.
You can sort tasks by their status, task ID, name, Project, budget item or deadline. Done tasks are hidden by default, but you can choose to display them by using the "Show Done tasks" option.
Step 4: Plan your and teams capacities
To execute and deliver individual tasks, you can plan your and teams capabilities in the Planning section.
Planning section is the initial destination for creatives, copywriters, social media managers, or other team members with role User upon logging into Allfred. They can find here all planned assignments, deadlines, and tasks, whether originating from project managers, traffic managers, or the creatives themselves.
Planning gives you an overview how busy individual users are, what they're working on, whether they have capacity for other tasks, or whether they need to be rescheduled.
Step 5: Track your time
We know Tracking time is a critical part of agency work, and everyone has their own preferred method for doing it. That's why Allfred offers 6 different and easy ways to track your time - just with one click! No need to fill out task details unnecessarily. Allfred does it for you.
Everything in Allfred is interconnected - once time is tracked anywhere in the system, the information instantly updates across project details, dashboards, and reports. Based on these real-time updates, Allfred sends timely notifications about budget spending. Admins can customize these notifications in Workspace settings → Notifications.
Step 6: Manage your project cost
As a project manager, you're typically responsible for assigning incoming expenses to projects and sending them for approval, and preparing requests for invoicing. In Allfred, you can easily assign these external costs directly to projects and manage invoicing by creating and sending invoices directly from the platform. If an invoice remains unpaid, Allfred can automatically send payment reminders to clients.
Learn how to stay on top of your project finances 👇
Discover smart and easy expense management in this video:
For detailed insight into how assigned expenses and invoicing are reflected directly within project details, please refer to the Project detail guide.
Step 7: Finishing the project
When all expenses have been recorded and all invoices related to the project have been issued, you can close the project in Allfred. Once closed, Allfred automatically calculates and provides clear statistics and profitability reports based on received expenses, tracked hours, and each team member's internal hourly rate, allowing you to effectively evaluate project success and overall performance.