How to Create a Project in Pulse

Projects in Pulse connect client work to milestones, files, collaborators, and billing. Creating one takes about a minute, and you can fill in more detail over time as the job progresses.

Open the create form

Go to Projects and choose New Project. The create panel opens as a full-screen slide-over. On mobile, the admin flow starts by selecting a client before showing the rest of the form.

Choosing a work type

If your organisation has set up more than one work type (for example Grants and Projects, or Jobs and Matters), a Work Type field appears first. Picking a type determines which statuses, custom fields, and modules (like Financials, Chat, or Tickets) are available on the project. Most organisations only have one type and will not see this field.

Required fields

Every project needs a name. The name is what appears on the project card, in notifications to clients, and in milestone references.

If you are creating the project as an admin or team member, you also need to choose a client — unless your organisation has configured a work type that does not require one. The client receives milestone update notifications and can log in to view the project, upload files, and send comments.

Optional fields

• Status — Pulse ships with Planning, In Progress, Awaiting Feedback, and Completed. Both admins and clients can set the first three; only admins can move a project to Completed. Your organisation may have renamed these or added its own stages under Settings → Work Types.
• Description — up to 2000 characters of context about the project scope, deliverables, or notes for the client.
• Custom fields — if your work type has any (for example a permit number or venue address), they appear here. Required ones must be filled in before you can save.
• Start date and due date — the due date must be on or after the start date. The due date appears on the calendar as a deadline event.

Applying standard milestones

If your work type has a set of standard starting milestones configured (under Settings → Work Types), an Apply standard milestones checkbox appears on the create form. Ticking it creates those milestones automatically on the new project, with due dates calculated from your start date — projects created without a start date get the milestones with no due date set.

Progress is automatic

You do not manually enter a progress percentage. Pulse calculates it from the milestone progress of the project. If a project has no milestones, it shows 0%. As milestones move through their stages, the project progress ring updates.

What the client sees on their project

A client opens the same project hub you do, minus the internal detail. Milestones, files, chat, quick links, the status, and the dates are all shared. What they never see is your Costs and Margin figures, the linked expense list, or any invoice or quote still sitting in draft.

Two further parts of the client view are configurable per work type under Settings → Work Types → Client visibility: whether the project budget is shown to clients, and whether the Financials tab and the Recent Activity panel appear for them at all. The activity feed clients do see is a curated one — the project being created, and changes to its status, name, description, dates, and progress — rather than internal churn such as collaborators being added or removed.

Who can create a project

Admins can always create projects. Team members need the projects.manage permission. Clients can create their own projects only if you switch that on for a work type. New work types have client creation off by default — turn it on under Settings → Work Types → (your type) → Clients can create. Work types you set up before this changed keep whatever they were already set to.

Clients also only ever see the work types they actually have work in. If you run Jobs, Matters and Events side by side, a client with only an Event sees just that — the rest of your setup stays private to your team, and their navigation is named after their own work rather than a generic label.

After creating the project

The new project appears in the Projects list with a progress ring, status badge, and due date. Click it to open the project hub, which includes an Overview (recent activity and key dates), Financials (linked invoices and quotes), Chat, Calendar, Milestones, Files, Collaborators, Quick Links, and — if your organisation uses it — Tickets.