Test a scenario
Stack moves — win a pitch, lose your biggest client, add a contractor, change someone's hours — and see what they do to your plan before any of it is real. Nothing is saved.
Test a scenario is the Engagement tab's way to answer the weekly questions: can we take this on, can we afford to bring someone in, what happens if our biggest client walks. You stack a few moves, read the impact, and overlay the result on the live plan.
It's a scratchpad, not a plan of record. Nothing you do here is saved.
Build a scenario
On the Engagement tab, click Test a scenario in the top bar.
Choose a kind: Add, End, or Change engagement; Add, Remove, or Change capacity. Fill in its details.
Real situations rarely come one at a time. Losing a client usually means also asking whether to let a contractor go.
Impact · this window updates as you add moves, and each move shows Booked after it, so the stack reads as a sequence.
Apply scenario closes the modal and overlays the result on the live view. Still nothing is saved.
The six kinds of move
| Move | Use it for | You set |
|---|---|---|
| Add engagement | New work, like a pitch you might win | A name, hours a week, an optional bill rate, a start date, and a duration |
| End engagement | Losing or winding down work | An existing engagement and an end date |
| Change engagement | Work changing shape: ten more hours a week, a rate going up | An existing engagement, a new pace and/or bill rate, and a from date |
| Add capacity | A contractor or a hire | A name, hours a week, an optional cost rate, a from and optional until |
| Remove capacity | Someone leaving the board | Who, and a from date |
| Change capacity | Someone's hours, cost, or rate changing | Who, new hours a week, cost and/or bill rate, and a from date |
- End and Change work on engagements you already have. Nothing is deleted; the scenario truncates or reshapes the booking from the date you choose. A fixed fee keeps its fee, so adding hours thins its margin.
- Add capacity is a new lane of hours with nothing booked on it. Remove capacity takes a person's hours and their cost off the plan. Change capacity moves a real person's line, cost, and the value of their booked hours.
One move tells you a number; a stack tells you whether the plan holds. Add engagement for the pitch plus Add capacity for a contractor shows whether you can staff it, and what it leaves you.
Read the impact
Four headline numbers for the window the plan is showing.
- Booked % — how much of your capacity is spoken for.
- On the bench — capacity with nothing booked against it.
- Top client — who your largest client becomes.
- Margin — how the moves shift profitability. This is where the bill and cost rates on your moves come in.
Margin needs See costs & profit. With See billing only it becomes a Forecast of billable, and without either the panel shows three tiles. Rate fields on moves appear only with See billing, cost fields only with See costs & profit.
Owners, admins and managers can open it. A manager's scenario covers their people and the engagements they can see.
What you see after you apply it
- The ribbons. An added engagement is a dashed ghost lane. An ended one truncates at its date. A changed one thickens or thins, with a dashed edge and a note by its name.
- The chart. Each bar the scenario touches gets a hatched delta: added work stacks on top, removed work shortens the bar and leaves a dashed ghost. A Scenario swatch joins the legend.
- The tiles. Booked, On the bench, and Top client are framed in accent with a scenario mark. Estimate drift and Avg client lifetime look backward, so they don't change.
- The People tab. Add capacity drops a dashed scenario lane; Remove capacity takes a lane off the board; Change capacity moves a person's line. The footer's Capacity and Available shift with them.
Clear it
While a scenario is active the button becomes a Scenario · N badge with a Clear control. Reloading the page clears it too, and there's no way to bring it back.
Teammates opening the Engagement tab see the real plan, not yours. If you need a particular result for later, capture it before you clear or reload.
When the scenario becomes real
If you win the pitch, create the engagement the normal way. If work is ending, change the engagement itself. Then Clear the scenario so you're not looking at the same change twice.
Change a real engagement's pace, with a dated note.
How cost and bill rates turn hours into profit, which feeds the Margin tile.