Building Project Timelines

Published on April 30, 2026 QuoteX

Project Timeline

The PSC Timeline is the visual engine of a quote, where project effort is mapped against a calendar and resource roles are assigned specific work periods. Use it to define phases, assign roles and effort, add costs, and review the financial impact on your quote.

Project timeline overview

Adding Timelines

Once you have created a Quote, you can begin to build your project timeline.

1. From your quote header Navigation Menu, click New Timeline.
2. When adding a timeline to your quote, you can search and select a timeline if you have created a template and saved it to your template library. Alternatively, you can create a new timeline.

Selecting New Timeline from the quote header

Choosing between a template timeline and a new timeline

Creating a New Timeline

1. Select Create New Timeline.
2. Give the timeline a name.
3. Select the Frequency for the timeline from the dropdown. Options are Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly.
4. Based on the frequency selected, enter a Start Date and Number of Periods and the End Date will auto calculate. Or enter a Start Date and End Date and the Number of Periods will auto calculate.
5. Indicate if you want Cost and T&E, or both, to impact ASM.
6. Upon creating a new timeline, you can retrieve details for specific time periods by hovering over them. In this instance, the hovered time period encompasses 0x/0x/20xx through 0y/y0/y02y. For monthly timeline frequencies, each period is represented by the first three characters of the month and the last two digits of the year (e.g., Jan '20). If the timeline frequency is quarterly, each period is displayed as Qx and the last two digits of the year (e.g., Q4 '20). This gives you a quick overview of the time span for easier timeline management.

Create New Timeline form

Adding Phases to a New Timeline

The application will build a generic timeline based on the number of periods you specified. Your generic timeline will look something like the one below. Begin adding details to the new timeline.

1. Click in the cells on the Phase row under each week to designate the phase. Select a phase from the pop-up options. The available choice with a fresh installation is Define. Add more values to the Phases global picklist, such as Plan, Design, Dev, QA, Release Support, or your own organisation-specific phase values.
2. If you select the same phase for consecutive cells, the application will merge the cells into one phase. Or, select multiple cells and then click to select the phase. Again, the application will merge all of the cells.

Selecting phases on the Phase row

Adding Resources and Efforts to a Timeline

1. To add resources to your timeline, scroll down and click an empty cell under Total Hours Per Week. All roles on your rate cards are available to add to the timeline. Start typing in the cell and roles will appear in a popup. Select the role you want, then move down one row and repeat until all roles are added.

Adding roles from your rate cards

2. If a role will have the same effort across all phases of the project, click the % icon to the right of the role. Use this field to automatically calculate effort for a resource based on a percentage of project involvement.

Setting effort as a percentage of project involvement

For example, by clicking the '%' icon and assigning 50 percent to a specific resource, the system will automatically compute only 50% of the effort for that resource during each time period. The percentage is calculated in relation to the designated time frequency, whether it is hours, days, weeks, months, or quarters. This is a quick way to distribute consistent effort across the entire project timeline for each role.

3. To customise the effort per role for each phase, click directly in each cell and edit the effort.
4. Drag and drop any role to reorganise the roles in the timeline.

Reordering roles by drag and drop

5. Scroll to the right of all hours for all roles. The resource rates will display in black, green, or red. Green and red indicate that the rate is either within or beyond the maximum discount that can be offered to a customer on a resource. By default, the resource rate shows black.
6. You will see the total effort, total cost, and total price for the project. You can click in the rate cells or effort per role to make quick adjustments. Keep in mind, the total price on the timeline does not reflect any discounts. You can also click the capacity icon in the quote header row to see the effort needed versus actual effort by role, and use the dashboard to quickly see where you may need to make adjustments.
7. Use the Billable column to include or exclude a resource cost in the total project cost.

Using the Billable column

8. Once a resource has been added to the timeline, you can adjust the List Price and Adjusted Price, and designate the resource as Billable or Non-billable.

Adjusting List Price, Adjusted Price and billable status

Timeline resource view

Timeline totals and resource rates

Capacity and dashboard view

Making quick adjustments on the timeline

Managing Rate Cards from the Timeline

1. You can manage your rate cards right from the timeline. Click the Manage Ratecard button.
2. If a rate card has expired, it will display in red. A resource with an expired rate card will also display in red in the timeline.

Validate Needs

You can validate the timeline resource hours against scopes using the Validate Needs button.

Validating resource hours against scopes

Adding Third-Party Services and Vendors to Your Timeline

1. From the timeline, click the Other Costs tab and then begin typing in an empty resource cell.
2. Select an item from the Other Cost section in the popup menu.
3. Add the cost amount in the associated timeline period cell. When adding third-party costs to the timeline, the list and cost price are both editable and you can select whether the cost is billable.

The project total cost for the third-party service or vendor will populate in the Total Costs and Total Fees cells. If you would like to add a margin fee to the total for this specific other cost, put your total charge amount in the Total Fees cell. If you need to add more costs for this service or vendor in another time period cell, the Total Costs and Total Fees amounts will update automatically and the Total Fees cell will retain the added margin cost.

If your Cost Impact ASM flag is turned on, you can go to the overview section of the timeline and scroll over Net Fees to see the breakdown of all fees included.

Creating a Timeline from the Library

1. Go to your quote header Navigation Menu and click New Timeline on the quote header row.
2. Select Add from Timeline Library.
3. Use the search and filter boxes at the top to find a specific timeline. Click the radio button next to the timeline you would like to add to the quote.
4. Click Save.
5. The timeline you selected will appear and you can begin customising it for your new project.

Adding Costs to the Timeline

1. When creating a new timeline, if you turn on the T&E and Other Costs flags, you can add T&E and Other Costs to the timeline.
2. Click the T&E tab to enter expenses. Add the T&E costs in the appropriate cell for a resource in the resource section. For example, you could enter $100 in the First Phase cell for the Manager - Principle.
3. Click the Other Costs tab, then go to the resource section of the timeline. Place the cursor in the cell and start typing. A list of all QuoteX Other Costs will appear so you can easily select and add other costs to your timeline.

Enabling the T&E and Other Costs flags

After costs are added to the timeline, you can roll over Total Costs in the summary at the top of the timeline to see all of the costs that are included.

Managing Timeline Overview Totals

Timeline overview section

1. Once the roles and effort have been added to your timeline, the quote summary totals will populate in the overview section of the timeline, including totals for Nearshore, Offshore, and Blended Rates. If needed, click in the Travel & Expenses box and add all anticipated expenses; they will be automatically added to the Total Fee amount.
2. You can add a discount to the quote. Roll over the Discount information icon to see the discount thresholds. Enter a discount percentage in the Disc % field and you will see the impact on the ASM immediately.

Understanding the Calculations at a High Level

For Fixed Fee:

For T&M:

If you need to change the quote from time and materials to fixed fee, click the dropdown on 'T&M' and select 'Fixed Fee.' Once you select Fixed Fee, you can enter other settings such as the fixed fee buffer.

Search for the fields appended with Summary in the label and API name. These fields contain the data of all the active timelines in the quote. Find these fields on the Quote object and use them to highlight key figures in the quote header.

Summary fields on the Quote object

Highlighting summary fields in the quote header

Quote header showing timeline summary data

Timeline Presentation Mode

Use Timeline Presentation Mode to hide sensitive data from the timeline. This mode can be used to share timelines with your client.

1. Click the down arrow in the timeline header buttons and select Presentation Mode.
2. The timeline will display without showing costs.

Discount Settings

The discount settings for your contract type impact how the Adjusted Rate displays in the timeline. The Adjusted Rate will display in the Rate column, and the displayed rate will be shown in black font.

The discount displays based on the org setting configured by your admin:

1. If the discount setting is Resource Discount only, the line item discount is displayed.
2. If the discount setting is Quote Level Only, the timeline discount is displayed.
3. If the discount setting is Allow Resource and Quote Discounts, both discounts are displayed.

See More

• Custom Branding Sets
• Staffing Plan Review
• Revenue Scheduling
• Dynamic Timeline Builder
• Automated Promotions
• Historical Quote Templating
• Regional Resource Filtering
• Amendments & Change Orders

Knowledge Article Number: KA-00023