How a promise to a customer gets kept.

Victor runs the new Acme portal. He creates its board from a template, so the phases are there on the first day: discovery, build, test and release. In the project details he writes down what the project is for, names who is responsible and adds his team: Natalie and Ben to build it, Julia to test it, and two analysts for the first weeks.

The backlog Acme sent arrives as a spreadsheet and comes in as tasks. Victor asks Board Chat, the AI assistant in Plankwork, to draft the first phase, checks what it proposes and confirms it. The signed scope document goes on the kick-off task, where everyone will look for it. This is the one time the work has to be brought in: from here on it lives in Plankwork, and nobody types it again anywhere else.

The project also gets its own Service Desk on the first day, so Acme has one place to send questions and requests from the start. We come back to it in step 6.

Victor writes down what could stop the portal going live in time. The one that matters most for Black Friday is simple: if system testing slips, the load test lands inside Acme's change freeze, when no fix can ship. He gives that risk to Ben, links it to the load test and the go-live it threatens, and plans a load test of the orders service during the build to make it smaller.

Every risk has a review date. When a review is due it appears in its owner's Now, so the list of risks does not go stale between steering meetings.

Nobody asks for a status update. A task warms up as its date comes closer and turns red when it is late, and the card says why. Each person starts the day from Now: one queue across every project, with the reason on every row.

When Victor needs something from someone, he delegates it with a follow-up date, and Plankwork suggests who has the right role and the time. People track their time on the task itself, with a timer or by the week, so the hours in the reports are the hours that went into the work. Victor looks at both every day: the project's progress against the scope Acme agreed, and the hours each person put in.

Victor's reports put themselves together from the board. The status report says where the project stands, the progress report shows the work done with the Burnup beside it, and the executive summary is drafted for him from the period's own figures. When Diana asks what is coming, the Task map shows every open task by its due date and priority, so a crunch is visible before it arrives.

He sends the status to Diana and to Acme on a schedule, so nobody waits for an email on Friday. Anything he needs elsewhere goes out as a PDF, an Excel sheet or a CSV file.

Diana's figures come from the work itself. Every hour tracked or booked is priced at a cost rate, set for the company, a team or a person, in any currency and converted into one reporting currency. Licences, travel and a share for risk go on as cost lines. Revenue comes from contracts: Acme Mobile has four, and a contract holds its value, the projects it pays for and a payment plan with an amount and a date for every invoice.

Financials sets revenue against cost from the past year into the months ahead, by customer, contract, product or period, and follows cost down to the project, the team and the person. Cost ahead is people's bookings at their rates, so the margin counts the work still to come as well as the work done. Contracts not yet signed can be added as pipeline, drawn apart and never counted as cover. Owners also see what the company pays for everyone's working week, so time no project carries shows as a gap.

Invoicing and cost asks whether the invoices ahead will cover the cost ahead, and Running total adds both up over time: green where invoicing covers cost, red where it does not. Click a month and the Invoices list opens on what makes up its figure. For a single contract, Freeze plan keeps the plan as a baseline, and the Performance tab sets the actual cost against it and against the contract's value.

Plankwork is not your accounts. It plans and records invoices without issuing them or recording payment, and rent stays outside unless you enter it as a cost line. Without Financials in their profile, a person sees no money figure anywhere, in search, exports or an AI assistant.

Everything on this page can be asked of an AI assistant: in the app through Board Chat, or from the assistant you already use, connected through MCP. It reads the same boards, plans and reports as you do, and nothing you are not allowed to see.

When Board Chat would change something, it shows the change on a card for you to confirm. Every change an assistant makes is recorded with the assistant and the model that made it.

How AI works in Plankwork →