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Clients and projects

Organise your work so entries land in the right place, and see how the grouping makes invoicing painless.

Clients and projects are how Cadence knows whose work is whose. Get these in good shape and your time sorts itself into the right buckets, which is what makes the end-of-month invoice quick rather than painful.

The two levels

Cadence organises work on two levels. A client is who you bill, usually a company or account. A project sits under a client and is the piece of work you are tracking against, such as a retainer, a campaign, or a specific job. Every time entry belongs to a project, and through it to a client.

  • Client: who the work is for, and who the invoice goes to.
  • Project: the specific piece of work under that client.
  • Time entry: a block of recorded time that sits under a project.

Setting it up so entries land right

Cadence sorts your day into the clients and projects you have set up. The clearer that list, the more of your time lands in the right place on its own, and the less you have to move around when you review.

  1. Add the clients you actually bill
    Set up a client for each company or account you invoice. Keep the names recognisable, as they are what you will see when you review and what helps when it is time to bill.
  2. Break clients into sensible projects
    Under each client, create projects that match how you think about the work and how you invoice for it. A retainer, a one-off campaign, and an internal job are usually separate projects.
  3. Keep it lean
    You do not need a project for every tiny task. Enough structure to invoice cleanly is the goal: too many projects just makes reviewing harder.
Match it to your invoice
The easiest structure is the one that mirrors how you bill. If a client gets one line per project on their invoice, set your projects up the same way and your reports will line up with what you charge.

How the grouping helps invoicing

Because every entry rolls up to a project and a client, Cadence can show you exactly how much time went to each. When you come to invoice, you are reading totals that are already sorted the way you bill, rather than sifting a flat list of hours. That is the whole point of organising clients and projects up front.

With your work organised, the day’s records become clean time entries, and those roll up into reports and exports.