Plan project roles, budgets, and financial sources

Build the role plan

Open Org > Staffing > Projects, select a project, and use Team & Roles. Add a role from the catalog or create a new role. Assign team members by moving them into the appropriate role and setting weekly hours.

Manage the role catalog when the company needs consistent labels across projects. Avoid near-duplicates such as Senior Associate and Sr. Associate unless they represent different planning roles.

Configure a role budget

Edit a project role to define budgeted hours, time period, planned cost, and planned bill values. Budgeted hours describe the plan for the role; staffed hours describe the current people and allocations filling it.

The project and firm-wide Summary show unstaffed hours when the role budget exceeds the staffed allocation. Staffed percentages above 100% indicate allocated hours exceed the role budget.

Choose planned financial sources

For each project, choose:

Plan revenue from Role budget or Contract.
Plan expense from Role budget or Contracts.

Contract revenue uses recurring fixed contract terms when available. Contract expense uses staffed hours and contractual cost rates; the project can optionally include the role-budget cost of unstaffed hours.

If a contract is attached but has no usable recurring terms or a member lacks a resolvable cost rate, the dashboard explains the missing or partial plan.

Compare plan with actuals

The project dashboard's Historical Performance section appears once tracked time produces actuals. It can show hours, revenue, cost, and profit trends. Actual revenue resolves member billing rates from client contracts, while cost uses expense contracts. Entries without a resolvable rate can still count toward hours.

Planned margin is planned revenue minus planned cost. It is not the same as realized margin from completed or invoiced work.