In brief: The Job Performance tab shows Plan, Actual, and Remaining hours, then breaks the Job down by Deliverable drift and by service type.

Applies to: Anyone who can open a Job. The tab appears on any Job past Pending and is read-only.

See also: How Performance Works: Effort, Timeline, and Drift covers the concepts behind these numbers, and Responding to Drift: What You Can Actually Do covers what to do once the meters go red.

Every Job past Pending has a Job Performance tab, and it answers one question: how is execution tracking against the approved scope? Three numbers at the top, Plan, Actual, and Remaining, then two tables underneath. Deliverable Drift shows Original Plan against Current Plan against Actual for every Deliverable, largest overage first. Service Type Breakdown shows planned against actual by kind of work. On a Retainer, a cycle switcher at the top scopes all of it to one month.

You'll find it under Jobs → your Job → Performance.

What the Job Performance tab is for

The Tasks tab is where the work happens. The Performance tab is where you find out what the work cost.

That separation is the point. Nobody wants a running effort meter in their face while they are trying to get something done. But somebody does need to look, regularly, and this is the surface built for that person.

Performance appears on any Job past Pending. A Pending Job has nothing to measure yet, because there are no actuals and no locked plan.

The ideas underneath everything on this tab, effort, timeline, and drift, are explained in How Performance Works: Effort, Timeline, and Drift. This tab is the single Job view of them. A cross-Job version is on the way in the Performance Dashboards, coming at the end of August 2026.

The three numbers

At the top of the tab, in a row.

PLAN is the Current Plan: what you committed to at activation, plus every applied Change Order. It is the number the Job is actually working against today.

ACTUAL is the human hours logged against this Job. Every time entry on every task, added up.

REMAINING is Plan minus Actual, and it is signed. Positive means hours are still available. When Actual passes Plan it goes negative and turns red, so an overage reads as an overage rather than as a zero.

Underneath sits a meter showing Actual against Plan, and a line summarizing Change Orders: how many are applied and how many hours they added, plus how many are still sitting in Draft and what those would add.

Deliverable Drift

The first table, and usually the one that tells you something.

One row per Deliverable, sorted largest overage first, so the Deliverable in trouble is at the top before you have read anything. Each row carries:

• Deliverable name, with its execution state underneath
• Original Plan, what this Deliverable was estimated at when the Job went live
• Current Plan, that number plus any Change Orders that touched it
• Actual, hours logged
• LOE meter, Actual against Current Plan, with the due date status underneath and overdue Deliverables called out in red

A Totals row closes the table, with the Job's Remaining hours on it.

Reading the two plan columns together

This is the part worth slowing down on, because those two columns answer completely different questions.

Original Plan against Current Plan tells you how much the scope moved. If Original says 40 and Current says 70, the client asked for more and somebody wrote it down. That is a commercial story. The reason the Original number never moves on its own is covered in Baselines: Why Net Net Never Rewrites the Plan.

Current Plan against Actual tells you how execution is going. If Current says 70 and Actual says 95, the work is running hot against the scope you are actually being paid for. That is a delivery story.

Those two stories have different causes and different fixes, and a tool that folded them into one number would hide both.

Service Type Breakdown

The second table cuts the same Job a different way: by kind of work rather than by promise.

One row per service type, showing Planned against Actual with a meter, and a Totals row at the bottom.

This is where a specific, quiet failure shows up. A Job can be perfectly on plan overall while the mix underneath it has gone sideways: the Strategy hours untouched, the Support hours at triple, and nobody noticed because the total still looked fine. Deliverable Drift will not catch that. This table will.

Retainers: one month at a time

A Retainer Job gets a Cycle switcher above everything else, showing a month like Apr 2026 with an arrow either side.

It opens on the current cycle. Change the month and all three numbers, both tables, and every meter reload for that month. No data from one cycle appears in another.

The layout is otherwise identical, which is deliberate. The question changes from "how is this body of work going?" to "how did we use this month?", but the shape of the answer stays the same, so you do not have to learn a second screen. More on the cycle model in Running Retainers: Monthly Cycles, Tasks, and Actuals.

What this tab does not show you

Worth saying plainly, because people go looking.

No money. Net Net measures effort and timeline. There are no dollar figures on this tab, no profitability label, and no verdict on whether a Job was worth doing. That judgment belongs to you, and it needs numbers this product deliberately does not hold. If you want a method for turning effort numbers into that judgment, measuring estimate versus actual profitability walks through how firms do it.

No actions. The Job Performance tab is read-only. There are no action buttons and no row menus on it. Nothing here rewrites your plan, moves a Deliverable, or reassigns anybody. Performance shows you where to look, and you act on the Job's Tasks tab or its Change Orders tab. Responding to Drift: What You Can Actually Do lays out the moves available.

Who can see it

Anyone who can open a Job can open its Performance tab. What they can change elsewhere in the Job still follows their role, and an Owner or Admin can adjust what each role can do with Jobs under Settings → Roles. User Roles Explained: Owner, Admin, Lead, and Member covers what each one starts with.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between Original Plan and Current Plan?

Original Plan is the frozen snapshot taken at activation and it never changes. Current Plan is the Original Plan plus every applied Change Order. The gap between them is scope movement. The gap between Current Plan and Actual is execution.

Why is my Remaining number red?

Because Actual has passed Plan, so Remaining has gone negative. It is showing you an overage rather than flattening it to zero. Nothing is blocked and nothing needs approval, it is information you can act on while the Job is still running.

Where do I find which Deliverable is drifting?

In the Deliverable Drift table, at the top. It is sorted largest overage first, so the Deliverable that needs attention is the first row. Each row shows Original Plan, Current Plan, Actual, an effort meter, and due date status, with overdue Deliverables in red.

Does the Performance tab show whether a Job was profitable?

No. Net Net measures effort and timeline, never money. There are no dollar figures, no profit or loss, and no profitable or unprofitable label anywhere in the product. It shows you what the work actually took so you can make that call yourself.

Can I change anything from the Performance tab?

No, it is read-only. There are no action buttons and no row menus on it. Once you have seen where the drift is, you act on the Job's Tasks tab or, if the scope genuinely grew, on its Change Orders tab.

How do I see last month on a Retainer?

Use the Cycle switcher at the top of the Performance tab. It opens on the current cycle. Step back with the arrow and every number and table on the page reloads for that month. Cycles never bleed into each other.

My Job total looks fine but something feels off. Where do I look?

The Service Type Breakdown. A Job can sit exactly on plan overall while the mix underneath has drifted, with one kind of work running far over and another barely touched. That table is the only place that shows up.

Do Draft Change Orders affect these numbers?

No. Only applied Change Orders move the Current Plan. Drafts are reported separately in the change order summary line so you can see what would change if you applied them, without them touching anything yet.

Related articles

For the thinking behind these numbers, How Performance Works: Effort, Timeline, and Drift is the concept article and Responding to Drift: What You Can Actually Do is what to do once the meters go red. To step out of a single Job, the Jobs Report: Look Up Any Job's Plan vs Actual History compares every Job side by side and the Time Report: See Every Time Entry Your Team Logged shows where the hours came from. For the individual version of this same view, My Performance: Your Own Effort, Never a Scorecard gives each person their own effort picture.

Updated on: 08/04/2026