Creating Your First Project
Cushion uses Projects to represent your work. These can be client jobs, personal projects, or anything with a schedule and/or income. Projects have a few similar fields to Clients, including name, color, and notes, so the first few fields should be familiar.
Under the budget section of the form, you can enter an estimated income for the project. Think of this as the project’s budget, or how much you expect to make from the project. In the budget graph, Cushion will show the project’s remaining estimated income as a dashed bar.
Currently, the estimated income can be a flat fee or a retainer. If the project has a flat fee, you can keep it simple and enter a single amount.
If you’re working on a retainer, or using time-based pricing, you can select an interval. Cushion includes several intervals, like daily, weekly, and monthly, but it also has a custom interval.
In case you’re working on a custom pay schedule, like every two weeks, you can select every... and specify your custom interval.
Below the budget section, you’ll find the project’s schedule.
Cushion uses estimated and actual dates to reveal insights about your projects, like whether they were delayed or dragged beyond the expected end date. Cushion also keeps track of this on a client level, so you can learn more about your clients.
When scheduling a potential project, you’ll want to enter the estimated start date and estimated duration in the project’s form.
When the project starts, you can select start from project’s menu in the schedule view. Cushion will compare this start date to the estimated start date you originally entered, and calculate any delays.
Cushion also supports canceled projects. If a potential project doesn’t work out or you need to fire a client, you can select cancel from the project’s menu.
Cushion will then mark the project as canceled in your schedule graph and disregard any estimated income from this project.