Engagements overview
What an engagement is, the shapes it can take, and the scorecard that shows how it's doing.
An engagement is how you bill a project: a budget to burn down, a retainer that refreshes, a fixed fee, or time-and-materials as you go. Once set, ProjectPacer paces your tracked time against the plan and shows profitability as you go.
The Engagements screen appears when the feature is enabled for your workspace. The profitability figures on it only show if your role grants billing/cost visibility — otherwise you'll see the engagement and its pacing, just not the money.
The shape of the work
The Type you choose sets how revenue is recognized — see billing models:
- Retainer — a block of hours or budget, drawn down (optionally recurring).
- Time & materials — bill time as you work, with an optional cap.
- Fixed fee — one price for a defined scope, optionally split into milestones.
Each can be ongoing (no end date — usage against a budget, no ahead/behind) or bounded by a timeline (with pacing).
Baseline and caps
- Already used at start — a baseline that counts toward utilization from day one, for work done before you created the engagement.
- Not-to-exceed cap — recognized revenue never exceeds the budget. Hours past the cap still track (so you see the true cost), they just don't add to what you can bill.
The scorecard
Open an engagement and the detail page shows how it's doing:
| Tile | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Budget · Used · Remaining | How much of the plan is spent |
| Pace / Runway | Ahead or behind (pacing), or how long the budget lasts |
| Effective $/hr | What you're actually realizing per hour |
| Realization | Recognized revenue ÷ the standard-rate value of the hours worked (see below) |
| Revenue · Cost · Profit · Margin | The money, when your role can see it — margin is color-coded, and reads "partial" when some hours lack a cost rate |
Realization is what you recognized against what the hours were worth at your standard rates. On an hourly engagement it drops below 100% when you've discounted the rate. On a fixed fee or retainer it drops when you've over-serviced — a $10k fee where the team burned $13k of standard-rate hours reads 77%, so the quietly-unprofitable retainers surface before renewal. It measures rate-card value, not invoiced cash. Early in a fixed-fee engagement it shows muted and labelled "so far" — the fee is recognized by time while the hours accrue on their own clock, so the number only firms up as the work progresses.
From here you can also Edit, Share a client-facing report, generate an Invoice, jump to Hours, and open Expenses.
Walk through the five-step wizard.
Add expenses that bill on top or draw from the budget.