In brief: A glossary of every term in Net Net, alphabetical, each defined in a sentence or two, with unshipped terms marked as planned.

Applies to: Everyone in the workspace, on any plan.

See also: Getting Started With Net Net: How It All Fits Together puts these words in the order the product actually uses them, and Projects vs Retainers: Choosing the Right Job Type covers the Job that almost every other term hangs off.

This is the Net Net vocabulary: every word the product uses, defined in a couple of sentences, in alphabetical order. Each entry stands on its own and links to the article that goes deeper, so you can look up one term without reading the rest. If a word in the interface is not making sense, it is almost certainly here.

Most of these come down to three ideas. Work lives in a Job. A Job promises Deliverables. Deliverables are paid for in effort, measured in hours.

The name itself has an origin too, and it is explained in what the heck "net net" means.

Baseline

The numbers a Deliverable was planned with, frozen at the moment the Job was activated. Net Net never rewrites a baseline, because drift is only meaningful measured against something that does not move. When the plan genuinely changes, a Change Order layers on top of the baseline rather than editing it.

Deeper: Baselines: Why Net Net Never Rewrites the Plan

Change Order

The only way to change a Job's plan after it has been activated. A Change Order adds effort to existing Deliverable pools or adds new Deliverables, and applying one recalculates the Current Plan while leaving the Original Plan untouched. Its scope is estimated effort and Deliverables only, not due dates, statuses, or who is on the team.

Deeper: Change Orders: How to Add Scope to a Locked Job Plan

Confidence

A human judgment call on a Deliverable, set by hand by the person closest to the work. Four values: Not set, which is the default, then High, Medium, and Low. Nothing calculates Confidence and nothing overrides it, which is exactly the point: the numbers can look fine while the person running the work knows something the numbers do not.

Deeper: Deliverables: Status, Due Dates, and Confidence Explained

Deliverable

A promise inside a Job: Discovery, Design, Build, Launch. It is the unit Net Net measures, and it carries a status, a due date, a Confidence, and an effort pool for each service type it uses. A task is one person doing one thing. A Deliverable is what you actually owe the client.

Deeper: Deliverables: Status, Due Dates, and Confidence Explained

Deliverable Type

A label for what the client receives, like Website Build, SEO Sprint, or Brand Strategy. You create one by typing a name while planning a Job, and it becomes reusable everywhere afterwards. It carries no rates and no hours; its value is being able to compare similar outcomes across Jobs later.

Deeper: Deliverable Types and Setting Your Primary Industry

Drift

Work going off course quietly, before anyone has said it out loud. Net Net treats drift as something that emerges from evidence rather than from a label: logged effort running ahead of the plan, a Deliverable past its due date, a service type mix that has shifted underneath a total that still looks fine. Being close to a number is not drift.

Deeper: Reading the Job Performance Tab: Plan, Actual, Drift and Responding to Drift: What You Can Actually Do

Effort

Net Net's word for the work itself, measured in hours. Effort is what your team logs, what Deliverables budget, and what Performance reads. The surfaces you look at every day speak in effort and days rather than money, because effort is the thing you can actually act on.

Deeper: How Performance Works: Effort, Timeline, and Drift

Flow

The state Net Net is built to protect: noticing a shift in the work early and making a calm adjustment while adjusting is still cheap. Flow is the opposite of Drift. Every signal in Performance exists to turn the second into the first.

Deeper: How Performance Works: Effort, Timeline, and Drift

General Job Tasks

The grouping at the bottom of a Job's Tasks tab for work that belongs to the Job but not to any single Deliverable. Kickoff coordination, status calls, client wrangling: real work, real time, just not attached to one promise. They take assignees, LOE, due dates, chat, and time exactly like any other Job Task.

Deeper: Job Tasks: Assignees, Allocations, and Statuses

Job

The container for one real piece of work, and the thing everything in Net Net rolls up through. Every Job is either a Project or a Retainer, is designated Client or Internal, and holds Deliverables, tasks, chat, and performance. If work is not inside a Job, it does not roll up anywhere.

Deeper: Projects vs Retainers: Choosing the Right Job Type and Job Lifecycle: Pending, Active, Completed, Archived

Job Number

A human-readable number every Job gets, the way an accounting system numbers invoices. The first Job in a workspace is 1001, then 1002, and so on. Numbers are numeric only, unique inside your workspace, and editable while a Job is Pending, Active, or Completed.

Deeper: Projects vs Retainers: Choosing the Right Job Type

Job Task

A task that lives inside a Job, either under a Deliverable or in General Job Tasks. One task is one real activity, with one due date and as many people on it as it actually took, each with their own allocation carrying their own service type and LOE. Time logged on a Job Task rolls up into its Deliverable, and the Deliverable into the Job's performance.

Deeper: Job Tasks: Assignees, Allocations, and Statuses

LOE (Level of Effort)

Planned hours. LOE is set in two places: in the Deliverables and LOE grid when you plan a Job, and per assignee on an individual task. A task's LOE is always the sum of its assignee allocations, never a separate number you type, so the two can never disagree.

Deeper: Job Tasks: Assignees, Allocations, and Statuses

MCP

Short for Model Context Protocol, the open standard that lets an AI assistant connect to an outside system. Net Net runs an MCP server, so you can connect the AI you already use and ask questions against your own workspace data. Setup happens inside your AI tool rather than inside Net Net, and it requires an active trial or a paid plan.

Deeper: Connect Your Own AI to Net Net with the MCP Server and Setting Up the MCP Server in Claude, ChatGPT, and More

My Lists

Your private capture space, under Me. No role can see another person's My Lists, and there is no admin override anywhere in the product. Items here are not work: they do not touch performance, capacity, or reports until you turn one into a task.

Deeper: My Lists: The Private Capture Space Only You Can See

My Performance

Your personal mirror, under Me. It shows your logged time by day, week, and month, your completed tasks, your service type mix, and how your estimates have been holding up. No rankings and no scorecards, and the monthly progress bar only appears once an Owner or Admin has set your monthly capacity.

Deeper: My Performance: Your Own Effort, Never a Scorecard

My Tasks

Every task assigned to you in one flat list, whether it lives inside a Job or stands alone as a Quick Task. It is the page you land on after logging in. Owners and Admins can switch to another member's list; Leads and Members see only their own.

Deeper: My Tasks: Every Task Assigned to You, in One List

My Time

Your own record of logged effort, under Me. My Time is not a second tracker: the timer lives in the bar that follows you around the app, and My Time is where entries get reviewed, added by hand, and corrected. Stopping a timer never saves silently, you confirm or discard the captured time.

Deeper: My Time: Log Your Effort and Fix What You Missed

Opportunity

Planned for Q3 2026. Not in the app today. Work that might happen but is not defined well enough to plan against yet. An Opportunity will carry a value and will be able to link to one or more Jobs, and linking a Job is what will turn a possibility into something Net Net can plan around.

Until Sales ships there is no Opportunity record in the product. Potential work stays in My Lists or wherever you track it now, and it enters Net Net when it is solid enough to plan as a Job.

Deeper: Creating an Opportunity: How Value Will Work in Sales, part of the Q3 2026 Sales preview

Original Plan vs Current Plan

The two numbers Net Net keeps for every activated Job. Original Plan is the snapshot frozen at activation, and it never changes. Current Plan is the Original Plan plus every applied Change Order. Original against Current tells you how much the scope moved; Current against Actual tells you how execution is going.

Deeper: Activating a Job: What Happens When the Plan Locks

Performance

Effort and timeline read together, while the work is happening rather than after it ships. It lives in two places: the Performance tab on an individual Job, and the workspace-wide reports for Time, Team, and Jobs. Performance speaks in hours and days, never in money.

Deeper: Reading the Job Performance Tab: Plan, Actual, Drift

Pool

The effort budget for one service type on one Deliverable, shown as a meter with three numbers: Estimated, what you planned, frozen at activation and changed only by a Change Order; Assigned, the effort committed to tasks so far; and Actual, the hours logged. Pools are budgets, not ceilings, so Net Net will not stop you going past one and the meter simply reads over 100%. The one real constraint is that a task can only use a service type that already has a pool on its Deliverable.

Deeper: Deliverables: Status, Due Dates, and Confidence Explained

Quick Task

A standalone commitment with a real owner that is not attached to any Job. It takes time and appears in My Tasks like anything else, but it does not roll up into a Deliverable or a Job's performance, and it has no chat. The favor for a client, the internal errand, the thing that has to happen Thursday.

Deeper: Creating Quick Tasks: Fields, Statuses, and Filters

Retainer

A Job for ongoing work, where you are selling monthly capacity rather than a finished artifact. Retainers are planned in three steps with no Timeline, and the hours you enter describe what a typical month looks like rather than a total for the engagement. A Retainer cannot carry an end date.

Deeper: Running Retainers: Monthly Cycles, Tasks, and Actuals

Retainer Cycle

One month of a Retainer, and a self-contained window: its own effort pools, its own tasks, its own actuals. A Cycle selector at the top of the Tasks and Performance tabs steps between the months the Retainer actually has. Nothing leaks from one cycle into another, and time counts in the month it was logged.

Deeper: Running Retainers: Monthly Cycles, Tasks, and Actuals

Sales Clarity (Fog / Emerging / Clear)

Planned for Q3 2026. Not in the app today. How ready an Opportunity will be to plan around, in three levels rather than a probability percentage.

• Sales Fog. No budget set and no linked Job. Real, but not usable for planning.
• Emerging. A budget is set, but there is still no linked Job. Directionally useful.
• Clear. At least one Job is linked, which is the point where the work is structured enough for Net Net to plan against.

Deeper: Sales Clarity: How Linked Jobs Make a Deal Plannable, part of the Q3 2026 Sales preview

Service Group

A parent bucket that Service Types roll up into, like Creative, Build, or Delivery Management. Groups exist so reporting stays readable once a workspace has thirty service labels on it. Every Service Type belongs to exactly one group, and Service Groups carry no rates.

Deeper: Service Types and Service Groups: What Each One Does

Service Type

The atomic category of work: Design, Development, Project Management, SEO, Copywriting. It is the language planning, tasks, time, and performance all speak in, and it is where rates live. Every effort pool, every task allocation, and every logged hour carries one.

Deeper: Service Types and Service Groups: What Each One Does

Smart Mentions

How a chat message links to real work instead of just describing it. Typing @ mentions a person. Typing [[ opens a picker for a Job, a Deliverable, or a task, and the message becomes attached to that work. The composer says it plainly underneath: [[ for work references, @ for people.

Deeper: Mentions in Chat: @ for People, Brackets for Work

Team Member (Owner / Admin / Lead / Member)

Someone with access to your workspace, in one of four roles. Owner holds billing and subscription control and is the only role that can promote another Owner. Admin manages Settings, the team, and workspace structure. Lead runs Jobs but cannot open Settings. Member does the work. Roles are set in Settings, but a person's name and photo never are, because identity belongs to the person rather than to the workspace.

Deeper: User Roles Explained: Owner, Admin, Lead, and Member and Managing Team Members, Invites, and Join Requests

Timeline

Two related meanings, both about days. On a Project, the Timeline is the Gantt-style tab showing Deliverables in sequence with dependencies between them; Retainers do not have one, because there is no sequence to draw. In Performance, timeline is the days measure that sits beside effort and tells you how the calendar is running against the plan.

Deeper: Projects vs Retainers: Choosing the Right Job Type

Frequently Asked Questions

What does LOE stand for in Net Net?

Level of effort, meaning planned hours. It is set in the Deliverables and LOE grid while planning a Job, and again per assignee on individual tasks. A task's LOE is always the sum of its assignee allocations rather than a separate number you type.

What is the difference between a Service Type and a Deliverable Type?

A Service Type is the kind of work your team does. A Deliverable Type is what the client receives. One Website Build deliverable is produced by Design effort, Development effort, and Project Management effort. Service Types carry rates and drive every effort calculation. Deliverable Types carry no rates and no hours, and exist for comparison later.

What is the difference between Drift and Flow?

Drift is work going off course quietly. Flow is catching that shift early enough to adjust cheaply. Drift is detected from evidence, like logged effort running ahead of the plan or a Deliverable past its due date, never from proximity alone. Flow is the state Net Net's whole Performance layer exists to protect.

What is the difference between a Quick Task and a Job Task?

A Job Task lives inside a Job and a Deliverable. A Quick Task stands alone. Time logged on a Job Task rolls up into its Deliverable and then into the Job's performance. A Quick Task takes time and shows up in My Tasks, but it rolls up nowhere and has no chat.

Which terms here are not in the product yet?

Opportunity and Sales Clarity, both planned for Q3 2026. They are defined here so the language is ready when Sales ships, and each entry says so at the top. Everything else in this list refers to something you can use today.

What is the difference between the Original Plan and the Current Plan?

Original Plan is the snapshot frozen at activation and it never changes. Current Plan is the Original Plan plus every applied Change Order. Comparing the two tells you how much the scope moved. Comparing Current Plan against Actual tells you how execution is going.

What does MCP stand for?

Model Context Protocol, the open standard for connecting an AI assistant to an outside system. Net Net runs an MCP server, so you can point the AI you already use at your own workspace data. You set it up inside your AI tool, not inside Net Net, and it requires an active trial or a paid plan.

What is a Pool in Net Net?

The effort budget for one service type on one Deliverable. Each pool shows Estimated, Assigned, and Actual hours side by side. Pools are budgets rather than ceilings, so nothing stops you exceeding one, but a task can only use a service type that already has a pool on its Deliverable.

Related articles

Definitions only take you so far. Getting Started With Net Net: How It All Fits Together puts these words in the order the product actually uses them, and Projects vs Retainers: Choosing the Right Job Type is the right next read, because almost every other term hangs off the Job. If the entries for Drift, Flow, and Effort are the ones you came for, How Performance Works: Effort, Timeline, and Drift is where that whole idea is worked out properly. For the three places a task can live and why it matters, see Quick Tasks vs Job Tasks vs My Lists: Which to Use, and Which Tasks Can Accept Time (and Which Cannot) answers the question that follows it.

Updated on: 08/04/2026