Forecasting

Two levels, one picture#

Forecasting reads at two levels. The Portfolio level is the whole firm: a KPI strip, the firm revenue curve, and a project list you can filter and group. Click any project to drill into the Project level: its own curve, its phase table, and its timeline, in a slide-out panel that keeps the portfolio live behind it.

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1. 1ControlsRange, grain, Basis (Billed or Earned), Status, Group, and the shared Filter menu with saved presets. Every tab reads through the same filters.
2. 2The four stopsTotal contract, Earned, Invoiced, and Paid for everything currently shown. The colors carry through the curve and every progress bar.
3. 3Firm revenue curveThe four stops climbing cumulatively toward the planned S-curve. Where the lines spread is where money is stuck between stops.
4. 4Project listEvery Main Project with Type, Progress, Contract, and Remaining. Group it by client, PM, or principal; click a row to drill in.

Three tabs share the same filters: Overview (curve plus project list), Timeline (a billed-vs-earned grid with a Gantt per project), and What-if (forward revenue against your target). Forecasting only reads; planning still happens on the Staffing board.

The four stops: Contract, Earned, Invoiced, Paid#

Every dollar of fee moves through the same four stops, and the KPI strip, curve, and progress bars all speak this vocabulary:

• Contract: the fee you signed. The ceiling every other number is measured against.
• Earned: the value of work actually delivered, the % complete reported in CORE times the fee (not hours logged). This is progress in dollars.
• Invoiced: what you have billed clients so far.
• Paid: what has actually landed in the bank.

Billed vs earned, in plain English

Invoiced and Earned rarely match, and the gap is the story. Invoiced ahead of earned means clients have paid for work the team still owes: good for cash, but the labor is outstanding. Earned ahead of invoiced means you have delivered work you have not billed yet: revenue is sitting on the table. Hover a project's Remaining chip for its own plain-English read of the gap.

The firm revenue curve#

The Firm revenue curve stacks the four stops cumulatively, month by month: the planned S-curve out front, with Earned, Invoiced, and Paid climbing toward it. Where the lines spread apart is where money is stuck between stops.

• Firms that keep a Scorecard get a baselines toggle above the curve: it overlays your monthly break-even (operating expenses from the monthly check-in) and profit target (the revenue that leaves your target margin), so you can see whether Paid revenue is clearing the bar.
• Hover any month for the exact figures; the same amber, blue, and green accents carry through the KPI strip and every progress bar, so the series read as one system.

Controls, filters, and presets#

• Range windows the curve and totals: 12 mo, 24 mo, YTD, or All.
• By switches the grain between Month and Quarter.
• Basis picks the progress yardstick: Billed (revenue you have invoiced) or Earned (contract value delivered). It drives the Progress and Remaining columns and the Timeline grid. What-if ignores it, since it measures confirmed forward revenue.
• Status shows Active projects only, or All including closed and inactive.
• Group reshapes the project list by Client, Project Manager, Principal, or Billable.

The Filter menu is the same one Staffing uses, with the same dimensions, and it keeps its own saved presets for Forecasting. Build a view once (one studio, one client, one PM), save it as a preset, and it is waiting next visit.

The project list and the project drill-down#

The project list shows every Main Project with its Type, Progress, Contract, and Remaining (contract minus earned, or minus billed, per the basis toggle). Non-billable projects render grey and stay out of contract totals.

Click a row to open the project drill-down, a right slide-out you can drag wider:

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1. 1Four-stop progress barEarned, Invoiced, and Paid nested against the contract ceiling, so you see delivery, billing, and cash on one bar.
2. 2Billing vs progressA plain-English read scoped to this project: what's left to invoice, the work still ahead, and whether invoicing is running ahead of or behind reported progress.
3. 3AI Advisor, project-scopedThe Advisor's read of just this project, with its sharpest findings flagged first. Scroll the panel for the project curve, phase table, and phase Gantt below.
4. 4The portfolio stays liveThe Overview keeps running behind the panel, so you can click another project row to switch without closing.

• The project's four-stop progress bar: Earned, Invoiced, and Paid nested against the contract ceiling.
• Its own revenue curve, the same S-curve read scoped to one project.
• The phase table, every phase in the contract in CORE's structure order, with each phase's fee and schedule.
• The phase Gantt, the project's phases laid out on the calendar.
• An earned value card where the data supports it: CPI and SPI, projected completion cost, and over/under fee, measured against the Contract or the CORE Budget.

The panel is not a pop-up dialog: the overview stays interactive behind it, and clicking another row swaps the project in place. Esc closes it.

The Timeline tab#

Timeline is the billing-vs-progress grid: every project and phase against the months, showing how invoicing tracks the fee over time, with the same Range, By, and Basis controls. It answers "are we billing this project on pace?" at a glance, and the firm-level header calls out how far invoicing runs ahead of (or behind) work done across everything shown.

What-if: forward revenue vs your target#

What-if prices the months ahead. Each bar is confirmed forward revenue: the staffing plan priced at bill rates and capped at each project's remaining contract, the same engine as the dashboard Forecast KPI, so the numbers agree everywhere.

• The dashed target line is your Scorecard's Invoiced (total) annual target divided by 12, when your firm keeps one.
• Toggle tentative pursuits on and they ride each bar as a sketched ghost segment: solid is confirmed, dashed is maybe. The toggles share their state with the Staffing board's Capacity lens, so the mix you test there is the mix priced here.

The sentences above the chart are the point: which months confirmed work covers, where the gaps are, and how much of the gap the pursuits would close if they land.