Availability

Knowing your availability is key to avoid overbooking. When a potential client asks you when you’re next available, you should be able to take a quick glance at your schedule and answer without hesitation. Instead of scanning your calendar, looking for an opening, let Cushion find one with the new Availability feature!

In the preferences, you will now see two new options—Weekly Minimum and Minimum Stretch. The Weekly Minimum preference tells Cushion how many hours a week you require to be considered “available”. If you work a full 40 hours a week with a Weekly Minimum of 8 hours, Cushion will consider you available until you’ve booked at least 32 hours a week.

The Minimum Stretch preference indicates to Cushion how many consecutive weeks you require to be considered available. If your Minimum Stretch is 2 weeks and your Weekly Minimum is 8 hours, Cushion won’t consider you available until your Workloads combine for less than 32 hours a week for 2 straight weeks.

When Cushion finds an opening in your schedule that fits the requirements of your availability preferences, it will highlight the timeline based on your Minimum Stretch. Hovering the highlight will indicate the date that you’re next available. Clicking the highlight will open a new project with the availability date as the estimated start date.

As always, you can hide your availability in the schedule view settings, in case you’re swamped and the thought of taking on more work makes you nauseous. We plan to build on this feature over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for more updates!