The Project Grid is a document similar to the Payroll Grid, in that it is used on an ongoing basis. In other words, it’s a living spreadsheet that is continually being updated.
Where the Payroll Grid focuses on the team, the Project Grid focuses on past, present and future projects along with their planned (estimated) hours from each of your agency’s unique task categories.
It is used in both the Predict and Optimize phases of Parakeeto’s process and is one of the 4 key inputs to the Parakeeto reporting framework and the Optimize reporting system.
The purpose of the Project Grid is to model the amount of revenue and planned work for a given period of time, broken down by the various clients, service lines, products, or task categories for your agency.
It contains information about projects such as the client, project name, service line, product, Agency Gross Income (AGI), Pass-Through Expenses and Estimated Hours (usually broken down by task category).
The Project Grid should be kept up to date with new projects (recurring and non-recurring) and changes to timelines or scope of ongoing projects.
Note: In most cases, the project names you choose in the Project Grid should align with the name of said project in your Time Tracking tool, so the data can easily be matched up. There are specific nuance cases where this may not be the case, but in the simplest terms, they should match up.
For example, if a project was titled “Big Brand Website Design” in the Project Grid but was titled “Big Brand - Website” in the time tracking data, there would be a misalignment that would need to be reconciled.
The easiest way to avoid complicated data transformation processes is to ensure these names are an exact match in both the time tracking tool and the Project Grid so they match up without any additional cleanup or transformation.
**ℹ️** If you have any other questions on the topic, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your Parakeeto Account Manager so they’re able to give you the clarity you need!