What is a Contract in a PSOhub Project?

Published: 1 June 2026

Audience

Admin
Controller
Project Manager

Objective

Understand what a contract is in PSOhub, how it connects to your project, and how its structure controls the way work is scoped, tracked, and invoiced.

Introduction

In PSOhub, a contract is the financial and commercial backbone of a project. It defines what has been agreed with your customer — the scope of work, how it is priced, and how it will be invoiced.

Every project in PSOhub has a contract. While the project tracks delivery, the contract tracks the money: what was agreed, what has been used, and what has been invoiced.

Understanding how a contract is structured helps you manage budgets, control costs, and ensure that invoicing accurately reflects the work delivered.

How a Contract Fits Into a Project

When you create a project in PSOhub, a contract can be created alongside it.

The project handles the operational side: tasks, plans, resources, and time tracking. The contract handles the financial side: billing types, budgets, and invoicing.

As your team logs time and expenses against the project, the contract automatically tracks what has been used versus what was agreed. This gives you a real-time view of budget consumption and remaining value at all times.

Contract Structure: Groups and Lines

A contract in PSOhub is organized into two levels: Contract Groups and Contract Lines.

Contract Groups are the top-level categories within a contract. They group related work, for example, a group for professional services hours and a separate group for expenses. Groups give you a high-level view of budget usage across different areas of the project.

Contract Lines sit inside a Contract Group. Each line represents a specific scope of work, deliverable, or expense type. For example, a group called Professional Services might contain lines for Consulting, Training, and Project Management.

Each contract line defines:

The billing type — how the work on that line will be charged (see below)
The budget — the planned value or hours for that line
The amount — the agreed commercial value of the line
The invoice method — when and how the line is invoiced

This two-level structure gives you control at both a high and granular level, and feeds directly into your invoices.

Billing Types

Each contract line is assigned a billing type, which determines how work on that line is measured and invoiced.

PSOhub supports five billing types:

Fixed Fee A fixed amount is agreed upfront, regardless of hours spent. This type is used for deliverables where the price is set in advance.
Time & Materials Work is charged based on actual hours logged, multiplied by the applicable billing rate. This type is used when the scope is variable or effort-based.
Expenses Actual costs incurred — such as travel, accommodation, or third-party purchases — are captured and billed to the customer. Expense lines can be billable or non-billable.
Retainer A recurring fixed amount is charged on a defined schedule — for example, monthly or quarterly. This type is used when your customer pays a regular fee for ongoing services or availability.
Product A specific product from your price list is added to the contract line, with a defined unit price and quantity. This type is used when delivering or reselling products alongside your services.

A single contract can contain multiple lines with different billing types, giving you the flexibility to reflect how your engagement is actually structured.

Budgets and Financial Tracking

Each contract line has a budget — the planned value or hours allocated to that scope of work. As time is logged and expenses are submitted against a line, PSOhub tracks how much of the budget has been used.

You can configure budget alerts at both the contract group and contract line levels. These alerts notify you when usage reaches a defined threshold, helping you identify risk before a budget is exceeded.

The contract also tracks:

Amount used — the total value consumed to date
Amount invoiced — the total value already billed to the customer
Profit and margin — estimated and actual, calculated from billing and cost rates

This financial data flows directly into PSOhub's reporting and dashboards, giving controllers and project managers a complete view of project health.

Contract Templates

If your organization delivers similar types of engagements repeatedly, you can use contract templates to standardize how contracts are structured.

A contract template pre-defines the contract groups, contract lines, billing types, and default amounts that apply to a particular type of project. When a new project is created from a template, the contract structure is applied automatically — saving setup time and ensuring consistency.

Templates are managed by administrators and can be linked to project types.

How Contracts Connect to Invoicing

The contract is the source of truth for invoicing in PSOhub. When you create an invoice for a project, PSOhub pulls the relevant data directly from the contract lines — hours logged, expenses incurred, or fixed amounts due.

Depending on the billing type and invoice method configured on each line, invoices can be generated manually, on a recurring schedule, or based on installments and retainers.

This direct connection between the contract and the invoice ensures that what you agreed with your customer is accurately reflected in what you bill — with no manual reconciliation required.

Next Steps

✅ Create your first project
Put this into practice by creating a project and setting up its contract structure.
How to Create a Project in PSOhub

✅ Set up a contract template
Standardize your contract structure for repeatable project types to save setup time.
How to Create a Contract Template in PSOhub