A project has three kinds of people on it, and they are not interchangeable.
Members
The people doing the work. Adding someone to a project is what makes the project appear in their desktop app and lets them track against it. Remove them and it disappears from their picker, but the hours they already recorded stay exactly where they are, on the project and in every report.
Add members from the project page, or when you first create the project. You can also attach someone to projects at the moment you invite them, which saves a second pass.
The owner
One member is the project owner, the person accountable for it. Ownership matters when someone leaves: you cannot remove a member who still owns projects until those projects are handed to somebody else. StaffVertex will stop you and tell you which projects need transferring.
Transfer ownership from the project page, or from the member's own page during removal.
Clients
A client is read-only and sees only the projects they are attached to. This is how you give a client visibility without giving them an account that can change anything.
A client can see the project, its tasks, the tracked time and the screenshots for it, and their own invoices. They cannot see other projects, other clients, member pay rates, or anything about your organization's finances. The one thing they can change anywhere in the product is marking their own invoice as paid.
Clients do not consume a member seat, so adding a client does not cost you a licence.
Practical advice
- Add a member to a project before their first day, not on it. An empty project list is the most common cause of "I cannot start the timer".
- Do not use a member account for a client. The Client role exists so you do not have to.
- Transfer ownership before someone's last day, while they are still there to tell you who should take it.