Function TimeTrack Help

Work Plans (planned income)

Forecast what a booking will pay before you work it — paint a span on the calendar, price it through the same pay engine as your actuals, then compare the forecast against what the show really paid.

Work Plans answer one question fast: "If I take this show, what will I make?" You sketch a span of dates, tell the app how you'd be paid, and it forecasts the gross — priced through the exact same pay engine that later prices your real timecards. When the show is over, the same plan shows you how close the forecast was.

A Work Plan is an estimate, not a paycheck. It shows what a booking is likely to pay so you can plan cash flow, compare offers, and decide whether to take a job. Actual pay depends on the hours you really work, the penalties that really fire, and how the production really runs.

What a Work Plan is

A plan is deliberately lightweight. At minimum it is a name and two dates — that is a complete, saveable thing, and a penciled hold rarely has more than that. Everything else is optional and can be added when it becomes true:

  • A show it attaches to (or none — a plan does not need a project).
  • How committed it isPencilled, Offered, or Confirmed.
  • A contract, which decides the shape of the rate question.
  • A rate — a day rate or an hourly rate, depending on that shape.
  • A schedule pattern — which weekdays are work days, and how long each call runs.

An unpriced plan forecasts $0, and says so. If you haven't decided the rate yet, the plan stays undecided and the forecast reports an acknowledged gap rather than inventing a figure. "Decide later" is a first-class answer.

Create a plan by painting a span

The fastest way to plan a job is to draw it.

  1. Open Work → Calendar and switch to Paint mode (the direct link is /work/calendar?mode=paint).
  2. Drag across the days you're being asked to hold.
  3. Release. A short dialog opens, pre-filled with the span you painted.
  4. Fill in what you know and save.

Painting makes a plan, not paperwork

Dragging a span creates a lightweight plan, not a full show with a server-allocated code and a contract assignment. A pencilled-in hold is not a production, and the gesture that sketches one should not file paperwork. When it really is a show, Add booked show on the Work hub is one click away.

The fields

FieldNotes
NameRequired.
Start / EndRequired. Inclusive of both days.
ShowOptional. Attach it to a real production, or leave it unattached.
How committed is this?Pencilled ("a hold — this could vanish tomorrow"), Offered ("an offer is on the table but not accepted"), or Confirmed ("I am contractually on this").
ContractOptional. Picking one makes its own rate type decide the shape below.
Paid byThe payment source, when you know it.
Day rate / Hourly rateThe field relabels itself to match the contract's rate type. With no contract, you're asked which shape applies — and Decide later is allowed.

Attaching a show is the one gesture that gives a plan a contract

A show already carries its default contract. Attaching one is the difference between a plan priced by multiplication and a plan priced by the engine — so if you have the show, attach it.

Reading the forecast

Open a plan from its own page (/work-plans/{'{id}'}) — reachable from the calendar chip, and from Open plan on a Confirmed row in the Work hub. The forecast panel shows:

  • Total gross — the whole plan's estimated income, labelled Estimate.
  • A per-week breakdown — weeks anchored to Monday, each with its gross.
  • A per-day table — every planned work day, editable in place.

Non-work days contribute $0 and are left out of the day lines. If the plan has no worked days at all, the panel says so rather than showing a zero.

How a planned day is priced

  • Hours up to the plan's OT-after threshold are straight time.
  • Hours beyond it are overtime, at the OT multiplier.
  • On a day-rate plan, the implied hourly is day rate ÷ OT-after hours, and that is what overtime prices against.

So a 12-hour call with OT after 10 carries 10 straight-time hours and 2 overtime hours, every day.

Default call and OT-after together are the biggest lever on accuracy. A 12-hour default with OT after 10 bakes two overtime hours into every single day of the run. Set the default call to match how long these days actually go.

The work-week pattern

A plan's work days come from a weekday pattern — Monday–Friday by default. Weekends are non-work days unless the pattern says otherwise, so a show that plays Saturdays will be understated until the pattern matches the schedule. Holidays that fall in range are ignored by default; a plan can instead be set to pay them at a premium.

Edit a plan

Click Edit plan on the plan's page. Everything is editable — the name, the dates, the show it attaches to, how committed it is, the contract, and the rate. Changing the schedule regenerates the day grid from the pattern, preserving any per-day edits still inside the new range.

You can also edit the per-day table directly in the forecast panel when a particular day runs differently from the pattern.

Forecast vs. actual

This is the loop that makes a plan worth keeping after the job is over.

  1. On the plan's page, use the link control to attach the plan to the show it became.
  2. Once the show accrues timesheets, the panel reconciles planned income against actual income — total and per week, in dollars and as a percentage.

Both sides are engine-truth: the planned side is the pay-engine forecast, the actual side is the show's own priced timesheets. Neither is re-derived for the comparison. Until the plan is linked, or until the show has accrued anything, the panel says so plainly instead of showing a variance of zero.

View variance on a Wrapped row in the Work hub is the same reconciliation.

Export

Download Work Plan PDF on the plan's page produces the forecast as a document — useful when somebody wants the number in writing before you commit.

Tips and gotchas

  • A plan is always an estimate. It assumes you work the pattern with no meal penalties, no turnaround penalties, no travel, no missed days, and no schedule changes. Real pay will differ; that is what the variance panel is for.
  • Undecided is honest. A plan with no rate elected forecasts $0 and flags it as unpriced — don't read that as "this job pays nothing."
  • Match the pattern to the schedule. Mon–Fri is the default, not a law. A weekend show needs the pattern changed.
  • Set the commitment level deliberately. Pencilled and Offered can both still vanish; only Confirmed means you're contractually on it. Keeping that honest is what stops speculative money reading like a booking.
  • Attach the show to get engine pricing and, later, the variance read-back.

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