# How to organize client accounts with tags and projects > How to organize client accounts with tags: the client goes in a project, the state in a tag. Owners rarely change; states change weekly. Source: https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/projects-owners-tags-state ## Projects say who owns it, tags say what state it's in How to organize client accounts with tags: the client goes in a project, the state in a tag. Owners rarely change; states change weekly. ![The owner is a project. The state is a tag., beside a screenshot: mosaic projects: one library split into Client work, Etsy shops and Social team](https://mosaicbrowser.com/covers/projects-owners-tags-state.webp) To organize client accounts with tags, give tags one job: what state an account is in this week. Who the account belongs to goes somewhere else. In Mosaic that somewhere is a project, one per client, and the test for which is which is simple: will it change before the contract ends? The owner won't. The state will, often. ## How to organize client accounts with tags: owners are projects, states are tags A project is a folder of profiles with a name, a colour and an icon. Switch to it and the profile list shows that client and nobody else. A tag is a short word on a profile, such as `warming`, `live`, `paused`, `needs-2fa` or the name of the colleague looking after it, and you filter the list by it. The two answer different questions. "Everything for Acme" is a question about ownership, and it should take one click, which is what switching project does. "Everything that is paused" is a question about state, and the answer moves every week, which is what a tag filter is for. People get into trouble when they use one for the other. A tag called `acme` works until somebody forgets to add it to the fortieth profile, and then "everything for Acme" quietly has thirty-nine rows. A project called "Paused" works until a profile wakes up, and then moving it back is a decision about where it lives, made because of something that happened to it on Tuesday. So the rule we use: - the client, or whoever is paying for the work, is the project - status, owner on your side, campaign and anything temporary are tags - the client code still goes in the profile's name, because the name is what you see when the profile turns up outside its project, in an export or a search The name part is in [naming 300 browser profiles](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/naming-hundreds-of-profiles), which uses the same "does it change?" test. ![Mosaic's project switcher with Client work, Etsy shops and Social team](https://mosaicbrowser.com/shots/projects.png) *One library, split into projects* Mosaic is a desktop app Email yourself the link and open it on your computer. How it works: Bulk actions ## Why a tag's colour belongs to a project Here is the part that surprises people. A profile does not store a tag. It stores the tag's name, as a plain word. The colour lives on a separate tag record, and that record belongs to one project. That design is deliberate. Two clients can both use `paused` without agreeing on a colour, and a project's tags are its own to rename, recolour or delete without touching anyone else's. When you type a new tag onto a profile in a project that has never seen it, Mosaic registers it in that project and deals it a colour from the palette. The consequence is that a word and its colour can come apart. If a profile leaves one project for another, it brings its words with it, and the colour has to come from the destination. When the destination already has a tag with that name, the profile takes that tag's colour. When it has none, there is nothing to colour the word with until one is registered there. That is why a move between projects has to register the profile's tags in the destination, the same way creating a profile there does. Otherwise the profile arrives with grey words and nothing in the list says why. We learned what "the record and the word drift apart" costs on renames first. Profiles store tags by name, so renaming the tag record and stopping there left every profile carrying the old word. Measured against the running app before the fix: `PATCH /tags/` answered `200` with the new name, `GET /tags` listed the new name, and `GET /profiles/` still said the old one. A rename now rewrites the word on every profile that carries it. ## A project with no colour was a project described twice Projects have their own version of this story. A project created through the API could come out with no colour at all, and the problem was never that it looked plain. Other parts of the app had to pick a colour for it anyway, so one screen painted it with a hex value typed into the code while the project switcher painted nothing. Two descriptions of one project, disagreeing. Three versions of that fault were reachable, and all three are refused now, at the store method every surface writes through: 1. A project created with no colour gets one dealt from the palette, but an empty colour is refused by name, because "no colour" is not a colour. 2. A colour the browser understands and our contrast maths does not, like the word `green`, is refused. It used to half-work: the switcher painted it and the icon did not. 3. A misspelt field is refused. `PATCH /projects/:id` with `{"colour": "#2f9e79"}`, our own prose's spelling, used to answer `200`, store a key called `colour` and leave the colour alone. The palette was also written down twice: eight values in the store and sixteen in the dialog, so a project made through the API could never be one of the other eight. There is one list now. ## Setting it up for a new client 1. Create a project for the client and give it a colour you will recognise at a glance. 2. Create the client's profiles inside it, named by the client code, platform and role. 3. Tag each one with its state, starting with `warming` for anything new. 4. When a state changes, select the rows and add or remove the tag in one bulk edit rather than editing profiles one by one. The first day with a new client, in this order, is written out in [the first hour in the browser with a new client](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/client-onboarding-first-hour), and the last day is in [what to do with a client's profiles when the work ends](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/client-offboarding-browser-profiles). Mosaic is for accounts you are entitled to run, such as access a client has given your agency, and tidy projects do not change what a platform allows. ## Questions ### Should each client get its own project or its own tag? Its own project. A client is who a profile belongs to, and that almost never changes while the work lasts. Tags are for things that do change, such as warming, live or paused, which you add and remove in bulk. ### Why does the same tag show a different colour in another project? Because in Mosaic a tag's colour is stored on a tag record that belongs to one project. The profile itself only stores the tag's name, so the word 'paused' in two projects is two records and can wear two colours. ### Can I rename a tag after it is on hundreds of profiles? Yes. A rename in Mosaic rewrites the name on every profile that carries it. Renaming onto a name the project already has is refused rather than merged, so two tags never end up sharing one name. ### Where does a profile go if I create it without choosing a project? Into the system project, which every install has and which cannot be deleted. An API call that names no project lands there too, never in whatever project the window happens to have open. ## Related [Naming 300 browser profiles so you can still find one](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/naming-hundreds-of-profiles): Name each profile client code, platform, role, in that order, so one search finds a client and one sort groups them. Status goes in a tag, not the name. [The first hour in the browser with a new client](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/client-onboarding-first-hour): A social media client onboarding checklist for the browser: ask for partner access, not passwords, then a project, a proxy in their market and their 2FA. [What to do with a client's browser profile when the contract ends](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/client-offboarding-browser-profiles): Agency client offboarding goes wrong when access is revoked before the client can sign in. Confirm the handover, export, then trash the profile by id. [Introducing Mosaic, an anti-detect browser that lives on your machine](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/introducing-mosaic): Mosaic runs its own Chromium, draws each profile from a real machine and matches it to the proxy exit. Profiles stay on disk. One plan, no per-profile fees.     ## Mosaic, on your own computer The browser this blog is about: its own Chromium, fingerprints from real machines and a proxy exit per profile. Free holds 3 profiles. Pro is $49 a month for any number. Mosaic is a desktop app Email yourself the link and open it on your computer.