Projects vs Retainers: Choosing the Right Job Type

In brief: A Project is finite work with a Timeline and total hours; a Retainer is ongoing work in monthly cycles with no Timeline.

Applies to: Everyone in the workspace. The type is chosen on the Summary step while the Job is still Pending.

See also: Plan Stepper: How to Build a Job Plan Step by Step covers building the plan for either type, and Running Retainers: Monthly Cycles, Tasks, and Actuals covers how monthly cycles behave.

Every Job you build is either a Project or a Retainer, and that one choice shapes everything that follows. A Project is finite: it gets a Timeline, and the hours you plan are totals for the whole engagement. A Retainer is ongoing: no Timeline at all, and the hours describe one typical month. Either way, the Job is the container that holds your Deliverables, your effort budgets, your tasks, your conversations, and your performance. Work that is not inside a Job does not roll up anywhere.

You'll find it under Jobs.

What a Job actually is

A Job is a real piece of work you are delivering. A website redesign for a client. A brand strategy engagement. An internal push to rebuild your own onboarding.

Every Job carries the same anatomy:

A type. Project or Retainer. You choose this on the Summary step.
Deliverables. The major chunks of work inside the Job. Discovery, Design, Development, Launch. How each one is tracked is covered in Deliverables: Status, Due Dates, and Confidence Explained.
Effort budgets by service type. Each Deliverable holds a pool of estimated hours per service type, so 40 hours of Design and 60 hours of Development stay visible as separate numbers instead of collapsing into one total. The service types themselves are defined in Service Types and Service Groups: What Each One Does.
Tasks. Created after the Job is activated, either under a Deliverable or in General Job Tasks. The detail is in Job Tasks: Assignees, Allocations, and Statuses.
A status. Pending, Active, Completed, or Archived, each explained in Job Lifecycle: Pending, Active, Completed, Archived.
Chat. At the Job level, the Deliverable level, and the Task level.

This is what makes a Job the answer to "how is that project going?" The answer comes from the Job, not from a chat thread and not from a spreadsheet someone last touched two weeks ago.

What a Job is NOT

Worth saying plainly, because it saves confusion later.

A Job is not an estimate or a proposal. Net Net has no Estimate Builder. You create the Job directly, and the Net Net step of the Plan Stepper shows you the expected budget based on your base rates. What you quote the client is your call.

A Job is not a task list. Tasks live inside Jobs, but the Job is the plan and the Deliverable is the unit that performance is measured on. A bare list of to-dos with no Deliverable structure will not tell you anything useful later.

A Job is not a CRM record. Contacts and companies live in Contacts, covered in Companies, People, and Individuals: Contact Records. A Job points at a company and a person, but it does not manage the relationship.

If a piece of work is not defined well enough to plan against, it is not ready to be a Job yet. Keep it in My Lists or as a Quick Task until it is.

Projects vs Retainers

Net Net treats these two as genuinely different shapes of work, on purpose. If you want the business case behind keeping them separate, we wrote about it in streamlined project and retainer management.

Projects

Projects have a beginning and an end. Build a website, launch a campaign, rebuild an identity system.

Planned in four steps using the Plan Stepper: Summary, Deliverables + LOE, Timeline, Net Net
Deliverables sit on a Gantt-style Timeline with dependencies between them
The plan is a total: the hours you enter are the hours for the whole engagement
A Project can carry an end date

The question a Project answers: are we on track to deliver this thing on time and on budget?

Retainers

Retainers are ongoing. You are selling capacity month after month rather than a finished artifact.

Planned in three steps: Summary, Deliverables + LOE, Net Net
There is no Timeline step. Not disabled, not grayed out, simply not there. There is no sequence to draw.
The plan is monthly: the hours you enter describe what a typical month looks like, not a total
Work is viewed one cycle at a time using the month selector, as described in Running Retainers: Monthly Cycles, Tasks, and Actuals
A Retainer cannot carry an end date

The question a Retainer answers: are we using this client's monthly capacity the way we planned?

The simplest way to hold the difference in your head: Projects are timeline-based, Retainers are cycle-based. Everywhere the two behave differently, that is why.

Job Numbers

Every Job gets a human-readable number, the same way an accounting system gives every invoice one. The first Job in a workspace is 1001, then 1002, 1003, and so on.

Numbers are numeric only, no letters or prefixes
They are unique within your workspace, so two Jobs can never share one
You can edit a Job Number while the Job is Pending, Active, or Completed
You cannot edit it while the Job is Archived. Reactivate the Job first, then change it. Archiving and reactivating are covered in Job Lifecycle: Pending, Active, Completed, Archived.
Net Net will not hand out a number that is already in use

If you are moving over from another tool and want your Job Numbers to match your existing books, set them early. Editing is easy at any point before archiving, but the number is what your team will say out loud, so it is worth getting right the first week.

The Job Name follows the same rules and is edited in the same place, on Jobs → your Job → Settings.

Client or Internal

Every Job is designated either Client or Internal on the Summary step.

Client means the Job points at a company, and optionally a specific person at that company, from your Contacts. Those records are managed in Companies, People, and Individuals: Contact Records.

Internal means the work is yours. Rebuilding your own site, running a hiring push, cleaning up your process. Choosing Internal clears the company and person from the Job, because there is no client attached to it.

The designation matters beyond labeling. It is how your reporting separates the work that earns from the work that costs, which is exactly the split you see in the Jobs Report, and it is why internal effort stays visible instead of quietly disappearing into "overhead."

Where a Job lives

A Job has its own set of tabs once it exists:

Plan is the stepper, and the record of what you committed to. See Plan Stepper: How to Build a Job Plan Step by Step.
Tasks is where execution happens, Deliverable by Deliverable. See Job Tasks: Assignees, Allocations, and Statuses.
Timeline is the Gantt view, Projects only
Performance is where effort and drift are measured. See Reading the Job Performance Tab: Plan, Actual, Drift.
Settings holds the Job Name, Job Number, Job Lead, and the team roster

While a Job is Pending, only Plan is available. The rest unlock at activation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Job in Net Net?

A Job is the container for one real piece of client or internal work. It holds the Deliverables, the effort budgets by service type, the tasks, the chat, and the performance data for that engagement. Everything Net Net reports on rolls up through Jobs.

What is the difference between a Project and a Retainer?

A Project is finite and timeline-based, a Retainer is ongoing and cycle-based. Projects get four planning steps including a Timeline with dependencies, and the hours you plan are totals for the whole engagement. Retainers get three planning steps with no Timeline, and the hours you plan describe one typical month.

Can I change a Job from a Project to a Retainer later?

You choose the type on the Summary step while the Job is still Pending. Because the type decides whether the Job has a Timeline and whether its hours are read as totals or monthly, settle it during planning. If an active Job turns out to be the wrong shape, duplicate it, change the type on the copy, and activate that instead.

Do Job Numbers have to start at 1001?

They start at 1001 by default, but you can edit them. Set a Job Number to match your own books at any point while the Job is Pending, Active, or Completed. Numbers stay unique inside your workspace, and Archived Jobs are read-only, so reactivate first if you need to change one.

What is the difference between a Client Job and an Internal Job?

A Client Job points at a company and person from your Contacts, an Internal Job points at nobody. Switching a Job to Internal clears the client fields. The distinction keeps your own effort visible in reporting instead of blending into client work.

Should I create a Job for work I have not sold yet?

You can, and there is no cost to it. Building a Job plan is free, and a Pending Job never bills. What starts the clock is activating it. If the scope is still too vague to plan Deliverables against, keep it in My Lists until it firms up.

Once you know which shape of work you are dealing with, Plan Stepper: How to Build a Job Plan Step by Step walks you through building the plan, and Activating a Job: What Happens When the Plan Locks covers what changes the moment you switch it on. If the work is ongoing, Running Retainers: Monthly Cycles, Tasks, and Actuals explains how monthly cycles behave, and Change Orders: How to Add Scope to a Locked Job Plan is the path for scope that grows after the plan is locked. When you want to know where a Job stands at any point, Job Lifecycle: Pending, Active, Completed, Archived maps out Pending, Active, Completed, and Archived.

Updated on: 08/04/2026

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