Getting Started

Project Accounting: Your First Week

Accept your invitation, find your work, and learn the four things Project Accounting does differently: handoffs, waiting-on, decisions, and project-scoped access.

Updated September 15, 20267 min read2 labsOwner / FounderAccountantEmployee

Project Accounting is where the work around the books lives: the tasks, the questions waiting on an answer, the handoffs between the person who prepared something and the person who reviews it, and the decisions everyone needs to remember three months later. It sits beside the ledger rather than inside it, so you can work on a project without touching the chart of accounts.

If you arrived here from an invitation email, you already have everything you need. This page covers the first week: where your work is, what the four project concepts mean, and what your role lets you do.

Accepting your invitation

An invitation is addressed to one person at one email address. It works once, it expires, and it only admits the address it was sent to, so sign up with exactly the address the email arrived at, even if you have another account elsewhere.

From link to workspace

Open the link
The page shows which workspace you are joining, what role you would hold, and when the link expires. Nothing is committed until you finish.
Create your account
Use the address the invitation was sent to. If you already have an account at that address, sign in instead and the invitation is applied to it.
Confirm your email
Click the confirmation link. You land in the workspace with your role and your projects already attached.

The four things this does differently

Most project tools give you tasks and a board. Project Accounting adds three concepts that exist because finance work stalls in specific, repeatable ways.

Concept	The problem it solves	When to use it
Task	Work that one person owns and can finish.	Anything with a clear "done".
Handoff	Work that changes hands. The moment of transfer is where things get dropped: the preparer thinks it is with the reviewer, the reviewer never saw it.	When you finish your part and somebody else starts theirs.
Waiting on	Work blocked by somebody outside the project: a client who has not sent a statement, a bank that has not replied. It is not stalled because anyone is slow; it is stalled because it is waiting.	When you cannot proceed and the reason is external.
Decision	The reasoning behind a choice. Three months later the number is in the ledger and the reason is in somebody’s memory.	When you choose between defensible options.

What each concept is for

Where things live

Screen	What it answers
My Work	What should I do next, across every project I am on?
Inbox	What has changed that I need to know about?
Projects	What projects exist and how are they going?
Project home	Everything about one project in one place.
Board / List / Gantt / Calendar	The same tasks, arranged four ways. Pick the one that matches how you think.
Workload	Who has too much, and who has room.
Decisions	What we chose, when, and why.
Portfolio	How several projects are doing at once.

The Project Accounting screens

What your role allows

Two separate things decide what you can do: your company role, and your role on each project. They are deliberately not the same: being added to a project does not hand you the company’s books.

Company role	What it means	Accounting access
Owner / Admin	Runs the workspace, manages the team, changes company settings.	Full
Accountant	Works in the books: journals, reconciliation, reporting.	Full, but no team management or company settings
User	Collaborates on projects: tasks, comments, handoffs, decisions, files.	None. Project membership does not grant accounting administration.
Viewer	Reads.	None

Company role vs. project role

Hands-on labs

Practice against a realistic scenario. Each lab lists the steps, what you should see, and the checkpoints that confirm you got the same result.

Lab 1

Move a piece of work through a handoff

Scenario

You are on the Q3 close project. You have finished reconciling the operating account and Dhruv reviews reconciliations. Instead of messaging him and hoping, you hand it over inside the project so the transfer is recorded.

Steps

1
Open My Work and find your reconciliation task.
Expected: The task appears with its project name and due date.
2
Open the task and choose Hand off.
Expected: You are asked who is receiving it and what they need to know.
3
Name the receiver and write one sentence about what you did and what is left.
Expected: The task now shows as handed off, and it leaves your My Work.
4
Ask the receiver to check their Inbox.
Expected: The handoff is waiting there with your note attached.

Checkpoints: you got it right if…

The task is no longer in your My Work.
The receiver sees it in their Inbox with your note.
The project timeline records who handed what to whom, and when.

Lab 2

Record a decision you will forget

Scenario

The team agrees to treat assembly labour as cost of goods sold rather than operating expense. It is a defensible choice with a real alternative, which is exactly the kind of thing nobody remembers the reasoning for later.

Steps

1
Open the project and go to Decisions.
Expected: A list of decisions already recorded, newest first.
2
Add a decision. State what was chosen, and what was chosen against.
Expected: Both the choice and the rejected alternative are captured.
3
Write why, in one or two sentences a stranger could follow.
Expected: The decision reads as an explanation, not a note-to-self.

Checkpoints: you got it right if…

The decision names the alternative that was not taken.
The reasoning is legible to somebody who was not in the room.
It is attached to the project, so it is found by whoever opens that project next.

Frequently asked questions

I accepted my invitation but I cannot see the accounting screens. Is something broken?

Almost certainly not. If your company role is User, you have project access but no accounting access: that separation is deliberate, so that adding somebody to a project never hands them the chart of accounts. An admin can tell you which role you hold.

My invitation link says it cannot be used.

Invitation links expire and each one works only once. Ask whoever invited you to send a new one from Team settings. The original cannot be recovered or resent: only a fingerprint of the link is stored, never the link itself.

Can I sign up with a different email than the invitation was sent to?

No. An invitation is addressed to one person, and a link that admitted whoever opened it would be a public door. Use the address the email arrived at. If you already have an account at that address, sign in and the invitation is applied to it.

What is the difference between a handoff and just reassigning a task?

Reassigning changes who owns the task. A handoff records the transfer: who gave it, who received it, what state it was in, and what the receiver needs to know. The moment of transfer is where work gets dropped, so it is worth recording rather than inferring from an ownership change.

Does being on a project let me see the whole company’s books?

No. Project membership decides project access. Your company role decides accounting access. They are evaluated separately, so a collaborator added to a finance project still sees no journals, no chart of accounts, and no reports.

Where do I see everything assigned to me across projects?

My Work. It is the only screen that spans every project you belong to and orders by what needs attention, rather than by project.

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