Contracts

A project can carry contracts, and a contract is what decides how work turns into money. The kinds are hourly, at cost, retainer, fixed price, and milestone.

At cost bills the worker's own rate, plus any markup set on the contract. Fixed price is a single agreed amount for the whole piece of work. A milestone contract is several rows sharing a group, each closable and billable on its own.

Projects show how much of a contract has been used, so it is visible before the budget is gone rather than after.

How does tracked time count against a budget?#

A contract can have a budget in hours, per week, per month or for its whole life, or a weekly hours limit. Billable time linked to the contract uses it up: the billed time where one is set, otherwise the time worked, within the contract's dates. Non-billable time does not count. Weeks run Monday to Sunday.

Timer cards, Edit Timer and Review Timers show a bar of how much is used. When there is nothing to measure, the bar says why: the project has no contract, no default contract, or a contract with no budget.

Going over. Starting, resuming or adding time against a contract that is already over budget shows a warning with how much is used, and asks whether to continue. Continue and the time is logged; cancel and it is not. You can always keep tracking past a budget.

Who is told. When somebody logs time on a contract that is over budget, the admins of the company that owns the project get a message in the project's chat that only admins can see, saying who logged time on which contract. Each admin hears about a contract at most once a day.

Which contract a timer counts against, and the rate it brings, is explained in Rates.