In brief: Performance measures every Deliverable on effort against plan and days against the due date; drift requires real evidence, never proximity to a threshold.

Applies to: Everyone in the workspace. The same two signals sit behind every Performance surface.

See also: Baselines: Why Net Net Never Rewrites the Plan explains the plan these signals measure against, and Responding to Drift: What You Can Actually Do covers what to do once you see it.

Net Net's Performance layer measures every Deliverable on two signals at the same time: Effort, the hours actually logged against the plan, and Timeline, the days elapsed against the due date. Neither is money. A meter turns the percentage into a color, green under 85%, yellow from 85% to 100%, red past 100%, and Net Net only calls something drift when there is real evidence behind it, never just because a number is close to a line.

You'll find these two signals everywhere Performance shows up: the meter on a Deliverable, the Job Performance tab, and the Reports covered in their own articles. This article is the mental model behind all of them. For the wider argument about why measurement that lives outside the work tends to arrive too late to use, see Why Agencies Lose Time Switching Between Tools and How to Stop It.

Effort and Timeline, not money

Most agencies find out how a piece of work went after it is over, when the hours are tallied and it is too late to do anything but write the number down. Net Net is built to answer the question while the work is still happening.

It does that with two numbers, watched together:

• Effort (hrs), how much time the team has actually logged against the baseline set when the Deliverable was planned
• Timeline (days), how long delivery is taking against the baseline schedule

Rates and cost exist elsewhere in Net Net, but Performance stays in hours and days on purpose. That is the language a team actually uses when they are talking about the work itself, and it is the language Net Net's Cardinal Rule about money holds to everywhere in the product.

Drift and Flow

Work rarely fails all at once. It drifts. Effort creeps a little ahead of the calendar, a due date slides a few days, and by the time anyone says it out loud in a meeting, the good options are already gone.

Flow is the opposite of that. It is what happens when a shift gets noticed early enough that adjusting is still cheap, a due date moves on purpose instead of by accident, a task gets reassigned before it is a fire drill.

Performance exists to turn drift into flow, by showing the pattern early rather than confirming the damage late. What you can actually do once you see it is covered in Responding to Drift: What You Can Actually Do.

What actually counts as drift

Drift is not a badge and it is not a mood. It only shows up where there is evidence:

• The Deliverable is overdue, past its due date and not Completed
• Effort has passed 100% of the current plan
• The due date is close and effort is running well ahead of it (pace drift)
• Progress Confidence has been set to Low

The meter and its colors

Wherever Net Net shows a percentage against a plan, on a Deliverable, a Job, or a report, the color means the same thing everywhere:

• Green, 0 to 85%. On track. Nothing to look at.
• Yellow, 85 to 100%. The check-in zone. Worth a look, not a problem by itself.
• Red, over 100%. Past plan. This is where a decision usually needs to happen.

Color in Net Net means attention level, never pass or fail. Yellow does not mean something went wrong, and red does not mean the work is a failure. They mean, in order, "look here when you have a minute" and "look here before it gets more expensive to fix."

The 85% check-in zone

When a Deliverable's meter crosses 85%, it is in the check-in zone. Net Net does not interrupt anyone or force a decision at that point. What changes is the color, a quiet signal that this is a good moment for whoever is leading the work to look at it and set Progress Confidence honestly, High, Medium, or Low, based on what they actually know about the client, the team, and what is left to do.

The 85% line is fixed. It does not move based on the size of the Deliverable or how the Job is going elsewhere.

What Net Net never does with this

A few boundaries are worth stating plainly, because they shape how Performance feels to use day to day.

It never forces a corrective action. Ignoring a yellow or red meter is always a valid choice. It never hides history or lets a number rewrite the past. It never ranks team members against each other, and it never presents a Deliverable as failing just because it is close to a line. Performance exists to support a calm decision, not to generate a sense of alarm.

Frequently Asked Questions

What two things does Net Net actually measure in Performance?

Effort, the hours logged against the plan, and Timeline, the days elapsed against the due date. Both are tracked together on every Deliverable. Neither is a dollar figure. Net Net is deliberately not accounting or billing software in this part of the product.

What is the difference between Drift and Flow?

Drift is work going off course quietly, before anyone has said so out loud. Flow is catching that same shift early enough to make a calm adjustment while it is still cheap. Net Net's Performance layer exists to turn the first into the second.

Does being close to 100% mean a Deliverable is drifting?

No. Proximity alone is never drift. A Deliverable at 92% of plan with time left on the clock is simply in the yellow check-in zone. Drift requires real evidence, being overdue, being past 100%, or having Low Progress Confidence set on it.

What do the meter colors mean?

Green is 0 to 85% and on track. Yellow is 85 to 100%, the check-in zone, worth a look. Red is over 100%, past plan and usually worth a decision. The colors mean attention level, never pass or fail, and they use the same thresholds everywhere in the product.

Why doesn't Net Net show profit or cost here?

Because Performance is an operational surface, not a financial one. It measures effort and timeline so a team can act on what is happening now. Rates, budgets, and profitability live elsewhere in Net Net; Performance speaks in hours and days on purpose, the language a team actually uses while the work is underway.

Where do I see this for a workspace as a whole, not just one Deliverable?

Dashboards are covered separately. This article and the Job Performance tab it feeds are about a single Deliverable and a single Job. A workspace-wide view across every Job is a different set of screens, documented on its own once they ship.

Related articles

If you want to see these two signals on a real Job, Reading the Job Performance Tab: Plan, Actual, Drift is the screen where they live, and the honesty check behind the yellow zone is described in Deliverables: Status, Due Dates, and Confidence Explained. The plan those signals measure against is frozen the moment you activate, which Activating a Job: What Happens When the Plan Locks walks through. To look across every Job at once rather than one at a time, Jobs Report: Look Up Any Job's Plan vs Actual History is the workspace-wide lookup, and Performance Dashboards: Five Tabs Coming August 2026 is a preview of the dashboards coming in August 2026.

Updated on: 08/04/2026