Goals & pacing
Set an hours target and watch whether you're ahead or behind — for yourself, a team, a client, project, or engagement.
A goal is an hours target you pace against — "40 hours a week on Acme," "20 hours this month on internal." ProjectPacer tracks your logged time against it and tells you whether you're ahead or behind, not just how much you've done. Find them under Productivity → Goals.
The Goals screen appears when the feature is enabled for your workspace and role. You can also hide it from your own sidebar in preferences.
Create a goal
A client, project, engagement, or person — pick the scope the hours count toward. A person goal counts that one person's logged time across all their work (not one project) — a weekly hours or utilization target for them.
Whose hours add up toward the target — and, because a goal is shared with the same people, who can see it:
- Just me — only your time; private to you.
- My team — everyone on your team.
- Project team — everyone with access to the scoped project/client.
- Specific people — a set you pick.
- Entire workspace — everyone in the workspace.
Day or Week (rolling, with streaks and history) or a Custom fixed window (no recurrence or streak).
The number of hours to hit — or, for an engagement, let the goal follow the plan's pace instead of a fixed number (see below).
On a goal scoped to an engagement, turn on Follow the plan's pace and you don't enter a number — the target becomes that engagement's pace and keeps itself in sync as you re-pace. It scales to the period: a week gets a week of pace, a day gets a seventh of it, and a custom window gets the pace across its whole span. Choose which pace it tracks:
- Current plan — the hours actually planned for the period, including any re-pacing (a launch push, a quieter week). This is the default, and the point of the feature: hand the plan you've set straight to the team.
- Contract rate — the steady budget ÷ timeline rate, ignoring re-pacing.
It needs an engagement with a pace to follow, so it's offered only on engagement goals. Goals set this way carry a Follows plan tag, and their target moves on its own whenever the plan changes — nothing to maintain by hand.
A person goal has the same dynamic option: turn on Follow how much they're assigned and the target becomes that person's confirmed bookings for the period — so it moves on its own as you staff them more or less. A person goal created from the People tab has this on by default (set from what they're currently booked for); turn it off to pin a fixed number instead. These goals carry a Follows staffing tag.
Reading a goal
- The progress bar fills as you log — accent when ahead, amber when behind — with an on-pace marker showing where you should be by now.
- Pace tells you how many hours ahead or behind you are.
- Day and week goals show a streak flame (consecutive periods hit) and history mini-bars.
- The clock icon opens the matching Hours report, pre-filtered to the goal's scope and period.
A Project team goal on work that has external collaborators shows an Include external collaborators checkbox. Turn it on to count their time and let them see the goal from their own workspace — a lightweight way to share a target without sharing the whole engagement. It's off by default: collaborators are outside your workspace. A collaborator only ever sees their own contribution toward the goal, never your team's other hours.
Your rounding setting affects goal math, since it changes how much time each entry contributes.
Archive a goal when it's done (reversible), or edit and delete from the goal card.
On the Engagement tab, the Add Goal button (beside Staff and Adjust Pace) turns an engagement's planned pace straight into a goal — it opens this same editor pre-filled with that engagement as the scope, the project team as the audience, and Follow the plan's pace already on, so the target tracks whatever you pace the engagement to. It's the quickest way to hand the pace you've set down to the people doing the work; pick an engagement that already has one to update it.
The People tab's Add Goal (and the Add goal action under an expanded person) does the mirror: it opens the editor scoped to a person, pre-filled with a weekly target from what they're currently booked for — so you can set a per-person hours goal right where you plan their capacity.