Introducing Baseline for Retainers

You’ve built the estimate, aligned with the client, and locked in the scope, but because the project was set up as a Retainer, there was no way to preserve that original plan as a Baseline. As a result, once actuals started coming in, you were left without a clear point of comparison.

That changes now.

Baseline is officially available for Retainer projects, allowing you to lock in your initial plan from day one regardless of contract type.

Key Benefits

Compare estimate vs. reality
Lock in your original estimate as a Baseline and measure actual project performance against it.

Flexibility at project start
Create your estimate first and decide the contract type later. Baseline works even if the Retainer structure hasn’t been finalized yet.

Familiar experience
Baseline for Retainers works just like a T&M Baseline, so there’s no new workflow to learn.

Enable Baseline on Your Retainer

Ready to start? Open any Retainer project, go to Projects settings > Financials, and enable Baseline.

Learn more: See our help article on Baseline.

If you have any questions about this new feature, please contact your Account Manager.

Note:

• Baseline data for Retainers is currently not tied to Periods. As a result, it won’t appear on the Retainer Tracking page or in period-based reporting (Advanced Analytics). Baseline Revenue derived from the sum of Period Prices is also not yet supported.

• When creating, if you select Retainer, enable Baseline later in Settings > Financials > Enable Baseline.