Value and the contract

What this page is — How a customer contract that is priced by milestone becomes traceable money on the plan: the amount on each Milestone, the share each contributing task carries, and the Value tab that reads it all back. What it is for — Builders, fit-out firms and any project business whose customer pays on milestones — "first floor complete", "wood work complete" — and wants every task to say which part of the contract it earns. The problem it solves — With a value per task alone, the sum of the tasks and the sum of the contract drift apart, and nobody can say how much of "wood work complete" is actually on the plan. Pricing the milestone and letting its tasks share the line keeps the two in step by construction: the tasks always add up to what the customer pays.

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Route: /org/tasks/planning → Value tab · Roadmap → Milestone drawer · Project settings → Planning → Money → Contract · Permissions: View planning (read the Value tab), Manage planning (allocate on the board), Milestone management (price a milestone), Manage planning (contract settings) Module: Planning, under the Task Management category · Entry points: the Value tab of Planning · the Milestone drawer on the Roadmap · the milestone rail on the Plan tab

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1. The three places money lives

Place	What it holds	Who sets it
The Milestone (Roadmap)	The contract line: Chargeable amount, how it is Billed, Terms, Retention, the Contract reference	Whoever manages milestones
The task (board card)	Its value. Under a priced milestone that is a share of the line, worked out from its effort — or a figure the planner typed	The planner, on the Plan tab
Project settings → Money → Contract	Task values only or Price by milestone, the headline Contract value, default terms and retention	Whoever manages planning

Only a Milestone can carry an amount. A phase or sprint is where the work sits; the milestone is what the customer is buying.

2. Why you would use it

• The tasks always add up to the contract. A share is a fraction of the line, so however the work is cut, the milestone's tasks total what the customer pays.
• "How much of the wood work is on the plan?" has a number — allocated vs the line — on the rail, on the Value tab, and on the milestone itself.
• Earned before invoiced. Each task's progress earns its share, so the Value tab shows what has been earned against each line before a bill goes out.
• One figure for the whole contract. The headline contract value against the priced lines shows what has not been priced yet.

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3. Pricing a milestone — step by step

1. Project settings → Planning → Money. Turn on A value per task if it is not on already, then under Contract choose Price by milestone. Type the Contract value if the contract has a headline figure; set default Payment terms and Retention if every line uses the same ones.

Figure 1 — A Milestone's Contract line: 1 amount, reference, how it is billed, terms and retention, with what the tasks and invoices already hold.

2. Roadmap → New Stage / Milestone, type Milestone. A Contract line block appears: Chargeable amount, Billed (on completion, on progress, by hand), Terms (days), Retention %, Contract reference. Save. When you edit a priced milestone later, the block also says how much is on its tasks and how much has been invoiced.

Figure 2 — The Milestones rail: each line's amount and how much of it is on tasks, and the ⋯ menu that re-shares a line.

3. Planning → Plan. Drop the tasks that deliver the milestone onto its entry in the Milestones rail. Each takes a share of the line by its effort; the rail shows ₹12.0L · allocated in green when the tasks add up to the line, ₹3.0L · ₹2.6L unallocated in amber while they fall short, and ₹1.2L · ₹35,400 over in red when they add up to more.
4. Commit when the plan is right. The shares are written onto the tasks like any other value, and the Value tab reads them.

tip

A milestone that already has contributing tasks can be re-shared any time from the rail's ⋯ menu — Allocate by effort or Allocate evenly — which starts again from the line and forgets any share typed by hand.

Plan by Milestone — the line in every column heading

On the Plan tab, Plan by → Milestone gives each milestone its own column; dropping a card there says what it delivers. A priced milestone's heading shows:

• its due date — red with N days late once the date has passed with work still open, amber within a week, green once every contributing task is done;
• its line in bold;
• an allocation bar: what the tasks add up to against the line, green when they match (within ½ %), amber when short (₹35,500 of ₹300K · ₹264.5K unallocated), red when over — the bar full, with a tick where the line ends.

When a line is over because its tasks carry their own prices (Fixed, Rate or Quantity), the text reads fixed and quantity prices exceed the line. Re-sharing only re-divides shares and takes own prices off the top, so it cannot bring those down: change a price, move a task to another milestone, or raise the line on the Roadmap. The rail chip uses the same words and colours.

Figure 3 — Plan by Milestone: 1 late and over its line because of own-priced tasks, 2 short of its line, 3 exactly allocated.

4. How a share is worked out

• The milestone's amount is spread over its contributing tasks by effort — days or hours of work, else story points, else equal parts.
• A task the planner priced by hand — a Fixed price, a Quantity line, or a share typed over — keeps its number. It is taken off the top and the rest is spread over the others.
• Shares are rounded to the cent and always add up to the line exactly.
• Shares follow the plan: change a task's effort, or move it to another milestone, and the shares of everything on that line are worked out again.
• A task moved off a priced milestone loses its share and falls back to its own live value.

The board reports the difference between the line and what its tasks add up to as variance: amber when short of the line (N % allocated), red when the tasks exceed it.

5. The Value tab — field reference

The tab reads the committed plan (live rows), never a draft scenario — what a draft puts on a line shows here after its commit.

Figure 4 — The Value tab: 1 the contract strip (with cost for those who may see it), 2 a line whose tasks do not add up to it.

Contract strip

Tile	Meaning
Contract	The headline value from Project settings → Money → Contract
Milestones total	The priced lines added up
Unallocated	Contract value − milestones total; amber when part of the contract has no line yet, red when the lines exceed it
On tasks	What the contributing tasks add up to, across every line
Earned	Task value × progress (done = all of it; else what is left of the estimate)
Invoiced · Paid	Billed against the contributing tasks, and settled in Orbit Books

One card per milestone — the line, Allocated (with the variance tone), Earned, Invoiced, an earned / invoiced / paid bar, how it is billed, retention, the contract reference, days left (or overdue), and a readiness chip:

Chip	Meaning
Not priced	No amount on the milestone yet — listed under Not priced
No tasks	Nothing contributes to it yet
Allocated	Its tasks add up to the line
Unallocated	Its tasks do not add up to the line (more than ½ % off)
Work done	Every contributing task is done
Invoiced	The whole line has been invoiced

Forecast and burn-up on a line — once the delivery forecast has run for the project, each priced line reads it as money: 62% chance by 30 Nov · P80 4 Dec · about 3 days late on average · ₹1.2L at risk. Value at risk is what is still to earn × the chance of missing the date; the average delay comes from the forecast's simulated finish dates. Show the burn-up opens the line's history — the line as scope, with earned, done and invoiced rising towards it; Burn-down shows the value still to earn against the ideal line. The history starts the day the daily snapshot job first records the priced line.

Figure 5 — A contract line with its forecast in money and its burn-up open.

Raise invoice on a line — a priced line that is not fully invoiced carries a Raise invoice button (Raise invoice permission). It opens the same drawer as a time box, in milestone mode: see Invoicing → Billing a contract line.

Payment schedule — the second view of the tab (Contract lines · Payment schedule): every priced line as the customer pays it.

Column	Meaning
Expected	The milestone's end date plus its payment terms (or the project's default terms)
Amount	The line
Invoiced	Gross, before retention — hover for what the documents actually ask for
Paid · Balance	Settled in Books, and what is still open on the documents raised
Retention	Withheld on invoices against this line and not yet released
State	Planned · Ready to bill · Invoiced · Partly paid · Retention held · Paid · Overdue (a document past its due date with a balance)

Six tiles above the table add the rows up; the documents raised against each line are listed under it with their Books number and status. Raise invoice on a row opens the drawer; on a Retention held row it reads Release.

Figure 6 — The payment schedule: three lines in three states, with the invoices raised against each.

6. Cost and margin

For those who hold the See cost permission (an organisation admin has it), the same screens carry the cost side — what the planned work costs against what it is worth.

Who	Their cost
A member	Their cost profile (Organisation → Team → Cost profile): the hourly cost × the project's hours per day
A planned hire	Its Cost per day (Planning → Define → edit the hire)
A contractor	Its day rate — what it charges is the cost
Anyone without one	The project's Default daily cost; without that their tasks read as cost unknown

Every cost carries the project's Overhead % on top (Project settings → Planning → Money → Cost). From there:

• Cost — the planned effort at those rates. To complete — the remaining effort at the same rates. Spent so far — hours logged at the same rates (Value tab only).
• Margin — what the work is worth minus what it costs, and its share of the value. A Margin floor % flags a contract line whose margin falls under it (amber); a negative margin is red.

Where it shows: the Cost and Margin card fields on the Plan tab; Cost, To complete and Margin tiles on the Live tab's Value card; the cost row on the Value tab's contract strip and a cost line on each contract line; a Cost / day column under Define → Rates; on the Capacity tab, each resource's cost of its load in the boxes shown and cost · margin on the totals row. A commit records the cost of each time box next to its value.

Cost by resource — below the contract strip on the Value tab, one row per resource with work on the project: members, planned hires, contractors, and Nobody yet for unassigned work (priced at the project default). Each row names where its hourly cost comes from (cost profile, hire cost per day, contractor day rate, project default), then the tasks, planned hours, Cost, Spent, To complete, the Value of the same tasks and the Margin — red when that resource's work costs more than it earns. A warning counts the resources with no cost at all, whose work would otherwise read as free.

A project can hide cost outright — Money → Cost → Hide cost on this project — so that nobody sees cost or margin there, whatever their permission: the choice for a project shared with a client.

7. Worked example

The Mehta fit-out contract is ₹25 L in three lines. The planner sets Price by milestone with a contract value of ₹25 L, then prices 1st floor complete at ₹8 L (billed on progress, Line 1) and Wood work complete at ₹12 L (billed on completion, 30-day terms, 5 % retention, Line 2). The Value tab reads Milestones total ₹20 L · Unallocated ₹5 L — the third line is not on the Roadmap yet.

On the Plan tab three carpentry tasks — 16, 16 and 32 hours — are dropped on Wood work complete. They take ₹3 L, ₹3 L and ₹6 L; the rail reads ₹12.0L · allocated. The client agrees ₹1 L for the smallest task, so the planner types it: that task keeps ₹1 L and the other two re-share the remaining ₹11 L by effort, ₹3.67 L and ₹7.33 L. After the commit, the Wood work complete card shows ₹12 L allocated and, as the tasks progress, what has been earned against it.

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8. The admin contract

• Money must be on (A value per task) before a contract can be priced by milestone; the settings refuse Price by milestone without it.
• Only a Milestone can carry an amount — a phase or sprint with one is refused when saved.
• Currency is the project's; a milestone may name its own for display, and the shares are in the project currency.
• Permissions: pricing a milestone needs milestone management; allocating on the board needs Manage planning; the Value tab needs View planning.
• Nothing writes the tasks until commit. Shares on a draft scenario are the scenario's; the Value tab, reports and risk read the committed values.
• Cost needs the See cost permission (Roles → the role → Planning), or an organisation admin. A person with no cost profile and no project default has no cost — give them one or the margin is overstated.
• The payment schedule reads Books for paid, balance and due dates; on an environment without Orbit Books it shows the lines with what Planning invoiced and nothing paid.

9. Don't confuse this with…

• Invoicing — billing a sprint or phase for the value of its tasks, or a contract line for what its tasks have achieved (with retention and a typed amount). Both write the same ledger, so a task billed through its stage is not billed again through its milestone.
• A task's Fixed / Rate / Quantity value — the task's own price. A share is the same field, worked out from the milestone instead of typed.
• Milestone progress on the Roadmap — done tasks as a percentage. Earned on the Value tab is that progress in money.

10. Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
No Contract block in the Milestone drawer	The project has no money on tasks, or the entry is a Phase or Sprint	Turn on A value per task in Money; the block appears for a Milestone only
Price by milestone will not save	Money is off	Choose A value per task first
A task dropped on a milestone shows no share	The milestone has no amount, or the project is not priced by milestone	Price the milestone on the Roadmap; check Money → Contract
The rail reads 0 % allocated	No task contributes yet	Drop the tasks that deliver it onto the rail
Shares are equal though the tasks differ in size	Nothing has effort yet, or Allocate evenly was used	Estimate the tasks, then Allocate by effort
A typed share will not move when the others change	It is the planner's number and is taken off the top	Re-allocate from the rail's ⋯ menu to start again from the line
The Value tab says No tasks though the board shows three	The plan is not committed	Commit the scenario; the tab reads the committed plan
Unallocated is red	The priced lines exceed the contract value	Correct a line, or the contract value
No Raise invoice on a line card	You lack the Raise invoice permission, or the line is fully invoiced	Ask for task.planning.invoice; a fully invoiced line is billed from the schedule only to release retention
A line reads Overdue though the customer paid	Books has not recorded the payment, or the document's due date was moved	Record the payment in Books; the schedule follows the document
No Paid figure	Orbit Books is not linked, or nothing has been billed	See Invoicing a time box
No cost or margin anywhere	You lack the See cost permission, or the project hides cost	Ask for the permission; check Money → Cost
A time box reads N tasks · no cost known	Their assignees have no cost profile and the project has no default daily cost	Add cost profiles under Organisation → Team, or set a Default daily cost
Margin reads 100 %	Nothing has a cost	Same as above — a missing cost is not a free task

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Related: Planning workspace · Project settings → Planning · Invoicing a time box · Phases, sprints and milestones