How to set up your first project in HireOrSell

A project in HireOrSell brings together the client, the team, the budget and the milestones for one piece of work. You can set all of these up in one form, and you can add or change most of them later. This guide walks through the form step by step, based on how the product works in October 2026. Screens may change over time, so treat the labels below as a guide.

Before you start

A few things make the form quicker to fill in:

• Your clients. The form lets you pick from clients you have already added. If the client is not in your list yet, add them first. The client onboarding checklist covers what to collect on day one.
• Your team. Team members are picked from the people already in your organization.
• A project code. Decide on a short code, such as WEB-001. You will use it to tell projects apart.
• Your budget and milestones. Know the total budget and how you plan to split it.

The pricing page lists limits by plan. For example, the Free plan allows up to 3 projects and up to 2 team members. Check the pricing page for current limits.

Step 1: Open Projects and press New Project

Open Projects from the left menu. If you have no projects yet, you will see "No projects yet" and the line "Create your first project to organize clients and track work." Press New Project. A window titled Create New Project opens.

Step 2: Fill in the basic information

• Project Name is required and can be up to 255 characters.
• Project Code is required. Use only capital letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores, up to 50 characters. The form shows PROJECT-001 as an example. The code must be unique in your organization. If you reuse one, the project is not created and you see the message "A project with this code already exists."
• Description is optional and can be up to 2,000 characters.

Step 3: Set the timeline and the budget

• Start Date and End Date are optional. Pick each one from the calendar.
• Estimated Budget is a number from 0 to 10,000,000. Leave it empty if you do not want to set one yet.
• Currency is a three-letter code and starts as USD.

Setting a budget now gives you something to compare your hours and costs against later. Our guide on when to warn a client that a project is running over budget shows how to use it.

Step 4: Assign clients and team members

Use Assign Clients and Assign Team Members to choose people from your lists. Both have a search box, and you can choose more than one in each. You can leave both empty and add people later from the project page.

Step 5: Add milestones

Press Add Milestone for each milestone. Every milestone has these fields:

• Milestone Name (required).
• Budget Amount, the part of the project budget for this milestone.
• Description (optional).
• Start Date (optional) and Due Date (required).
• Expected Payment Date (optional).

Each milestone also has the option Create invoice for this milestone. If you switch it on, you must enter an Invoice Number and an Invoice Due Date. You can add an invoice description too. The project then creates a draft invoice for the milestone amount and links it to the project's clients. A draft is not sent to anyone.

Step 6: Press Create Project

Press Create Project. You see "Project created successfully" and the project starts with the status Active. If you want to stop, press Cancel instead, and nothing is saved.

Worked example: a made-up project

Say a three-person agency creates a project called "Website redesign" with the code WEB-001 and an estimated budget of $12,000. It adds three milestones of $4,000 each.

Check the split yourself: $12,000 / 3 = $4,000, and 3 x $4,000 = $12,000. The form does not compare the milestone amounts with the project budget, so add them up before you press Create Project. If you added a fourth milestone of $4,000 by mistake, the milestones would total $16,000, which is $4,000 more than the budget.

What the project page shows

Open the project and you see these tabs: Overview, Transactions, Milestones, Files, Timeline, Calendar, Clients, Team and Timesheets. On the Milestones tab you can press Add Milestone. On the Clients tab you can press Add Client. On the Team tab you can press Add Member. This means you can create a simple project now and fill in the rest later.

Next step

Create one real project today, even a small one. Use a code you can repeat across projects, set a budget, and add at least one milestone with a due date. Then open the project and look at the tabs, so you know where to add clients, files and time.