Closing a Project

⏱️ 6 minute read

Closing a project serves as the formal end of the project. Typically, this happens once the project has reached completion, all deliverables have been met and stakeholders have signed off.  In Forecast, there are a few best practices to consider when closing a project. 

This article covers:

• Closing a Project
• Budget/Financials
• Allocated Project Time
• Linked Integrations

Closing a Project

A project in Forecast is considered closed once it reaches the Done stage. At this point, the project’s status is locked, meaning no further changes can be made. The project's data is preserved exactly as it was when it was moved to the Done stage.

While there are no specific requirements for setting a project to Done, it is recommended to review the following key items to ensure that all aspects of the project are finalized before it is closed.

• Budget/Financials
• Allocated Project Time
• Linked Integrations

To close a project in Forecast

1. Click Projects in the navigation ribbon.
2. Select All Projects from the dropdown.
3. Open the project.
4. In the left side panel, expand Settings.
5. Click Status.
6. In the Project Stage dropdown, select Done.
7. If there are any unfinished tasks within the project, you will be prompted to select how to handle them. (See Unfinished Tasks below for more information).
8. The project is now considered closed and is no longer available to edit. 

Budget/Financials

While there is no functional requirement to confirm a project’s budget before closing, it’s recommended to review the budget to ensure no final adjustments are needed before locking the project in the Done stage.

How you choose to manage your projects in Forecast will determine which budget items you want to review. Key budget details may include:

• Unfinished Tasks
• Revenue Recognition
• Retainer Periods

Unfinished Tasks

When closing a project, it is recommended to move all unfinished tasks to a Done column. This ensures that:

• Tasks are properly marked as complete.
• Any remaining work or time no longer appears in the project.
• Your team member utilization is accurately reflected.

While recommended, moving tasks is not required when closing a project. You may choose to leave tasks in their current status if that better suits your workflow. If you prefer not to bulk update all tasks to Done, you can manually update task statuses from Task Board or Scoping.

Revenue Recognition

If you use Revenue Recognition in your projects, you’re likely familiar with locking months as they pass. Each month, you can:

• Enter manual revenue values, or
• Use system-suggested values, which are based on the project’s budget type and may fluctuate throughout the project's lifecycle.

Before closing a project, it is recommended to lock all open Revenue Recognition months to preserve the financial integrity of the project's budget and data. Doing so ensures that no further changes can be made and that the recognized revenue accurately reflects the completed work.

Locking revenue helps maintain clean financial records and prevents discrepancies in reporting after the project is marked as Done.

• How to lock periods is defined in Understanding and using Revenue Recognition.

Retainer Periods

When closing a Retainer budget project, it’s best practice to review and lock each period to ensure accuracy. If a period conflict arises, review and resolve it to maintain the integrity of the project's data.

Locking Retainer Periods

If you’re working with Retainers, you likely lock past periods on a regular basis. When closing a project, review Retainer Tracking and ensure all open periods are locked. This helps preserve historical data and prevents unintended changes.

Handling Retainer Period Conflicts

Occasionally, Retainer Period Conflicts may occur. Conflicts happen when time entries are logged after a period has already been locked. Keeping retainer periods up to date and conflict-free ensures accurate tracking and reporting across your project.

If your project has conflicts, a warning will appear at the top of Retainer Tracking, alerting you to the conflict. Review each conflict and determine how to resolve. 

• How to lock retainer periods and handle period conflicts is available in Managing Retainer Periods. 

Allocated Project Time

When closing a project, it’s important to review project allocations to ensure accurate team member utilization and project data.

Project Allocations

Allocations extending beyond the project's close date will still be reflected in team member utilization. Therefore, it may be beneficial to update the end dates for any allocations that extend past the close date of the project in order to accurately reflect resource utilization.

Placeholders

Once the project is closed, there’s typically no need to retain allocated time for placeholders. Keeping them may artificially inflate demand for resources. Therefore, removing placeholder allocations before closing a project is recommended.

If you’ve used placeholders for allocations that were later filled by actual team members, make sure to convert those allocations to the actual resource who completed the work. Doing so ensures accuracy in resource tracking and utilization.

• For more information on working with placeholders, refer to Working with Placeholders.

Linked Integrations

Some of your projects may be linked to integrated systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, or Jira. While it is not required to remove integrations linked to a closed project, there are several reasons for both unlinking and maintaining these connections. The choice of how to handle linked integrations depends on your specific needs and workflows.

For example, integrations like Salesforce have sync rules specific to projects in the Done stage. When a project is set to Done, all Forecast project data within linked Opportunities is locked (or frozen) as of that date, ensuring the project's data integrity.

Additionally, unlinking a project from synced integrations does not impact or improve platform performance.

Unlinking Integrations

There are some reasons why you may choose to unlink integrations when closing projects. 

• Prevent Further Changes After Completion: Unlinking the project ensures that no further modifications can be made once it has been closed. While most integrations are restricted from modifying projects in the Done stage, unlinking guarantees the project remains unchanged.
• Redundant Integrations: If your project is connected to Slack channels or GitHub repositories, you may choose to remove these links since they are no longer needed and won’t be utilized. There is no risk or adverse impact of unlinking, and you can always re-link the project in the future if necessary.

Maintaining Linked Integrations

There are several reasons why you may choose to keep integration links in closed projects.

• Future Project Re-activation: If there’s a chance the project will be restarted, unlinking and re-linking the integration may result in duplicated data. For this reason, maintaining the link is recommended to preserve data consistency.
• Syncing Data Changes: Keeping the integration active allows you to sync any updates or changes in the external system (e.g., Salesforce, Jira) back into Forecast, ensuring that your project data remains up-to-date. If you need to update project data from a linked integration, update the project status to Running.
• Reference to Linked Data: Unlinking integrations like Jira removes references to linked issues within the project's tasks, which could lead to missing context or incomplete task records. Users will no longer be able to access the linked Jira issue from within Forecast.

If you’re concerned about how unlinking integrations may affect your project, please reach out to your Forecast Account Manager or Forecast Support for further assistance.