How it works
Five things you get done with it. The features sit underneath the outcome they serve, because on their own they are just a list.
Stop answering “do you have capacity?” by hand
You publish one page and send its link. It shows how booked you are as a percentage and a status, and the date you are next free.
A shareable Beacon page
One link, readable by anyone you send it to. No account needed to look at it, and no sign-up wall in front of it.
Or a badge on your own site
The same status as a small embeddable badge you can drop into your portfolio, so the answer is on the page a client already landed on.
Publish a number you are willing to stand behind
The figure comes from the work you have actually accepted, and it goes public only when you say so.
You publish it deliberately
Your Beacon shows the last figure you chose to publish, not a live read of your calendar. Nothing reaches it that you have not decided to say.
And a stale one says so
The page carries a marker showing how recently it was updated. A Beacon nobody has touched for a month is visibly a Beacon nobody has touched for a month - which is the difference between an honest signal and a confident one.
Work out a figure yourself, right here
This is the app’s own arithmetic, running in this page. Change your hours, your horizon or the work on your books and watch the number and the band move. Nothing is sent anywhere and no account is involved.
Two things are held fixed to keep it to two columns: a whole number of weeks, and no time off. Both are real settings in the app, and what they do is written up at how True Load is worked out and time off.
Your Beacon
How that figure is reached
- Capacity in the horizon
- 4 weeks × 5 working days × 8 hours = 160 hours
- Less the buffer you hold back
- 160 − 20% = 128 hours
- Work counted against it
- Brand refresh: 34 hours = 34
- Site build: 48 hours = 48
- Retainer, this month: 16 hours × 50% tentative = 8
- True Load
- 90 ÷ 128 = 70.3%, which is Busy
The bands are fixed for every account and are not the availability threshold in your own settings: under 50% reads Available, 50% to under 80% reads Busy, and 80% or more reads Full.
True Load 70.3 per cent, Busy.
Say no without losing the work
When you are full, the page can say so plainly and still give the person reading it something to do.
They can leave an email
A client who arrives while you are booked can ask to hear from you. You decide when to get in touch - nothing is sent automatically when your capacity changes, and no email goes out that you did not trigger.
Or you can mark yourself away
Time off is its own state, not a percentage. The page says you are away instead of implying you are simply busy.
Make it look like you, not like a dashboard
The page is often the second thing a client sees after your portfolio.
Your words on it
A short bio, quotes from people you have worked with, a colour, and a button pointing wherever you want the conversation to continue. All of it typed by you - nothing is assembled from your data.
And nothing else
What appears is what you put there, plus the figure you published. No client names, no project titles, no drafts, no half-decisions.
See it coming, before a client has to be told
The public page is the output. Behind it is where you work out what to accept, and what accepting it would cost you.
Your book, over time and ahead of you
An insights page with your load over a chosen range, a week-by-week view of what is coming, how long until you are full at the rate you are filling, and how concentrated your work is in one client. You can download the trend as a spreadsheet.
What a decision would cost, before you make it
Try a job against your capacity without saving it, and see what a stretch of time off would do to your figure before you book it. Neither changes anything until you say so, and neither touches your published Beacon.
Work you have not won yet, kept out of the number
Enquiries live on their own page with a rough size and a likelihood, and they are weighted separately. They never reach your public Beacon and they never move the figure on it, because work you have not been given is not work on your books.
Told twice, at most
When something needs your attention - you are booked past full, or your Beacon is out of date and currently misinforming people - the app says so. At most two of those at a time, ordered so a safety warning outranks a trend, because an app that interrupts you constantly is one you stop reading.
Work that repeats, entered once
A repeating job generates its instances, and a job shape you use often can be saved as a template. Every instance stays individually editable.
Called what you call it
If you do not call them jobs, rename them. The word you choose is used throughout your own screens.
What it looks like to use
The app is one screen with a navigation for the rest, and it is built for a phone as seriously as for a laptop - which matters, because capacity gets updated between jobs rather than at a desk.
Candid Beacon
- Dashboard
- History
- Waitlist
- Insights
- Work setup
- Activity
- Dashboard
- History
- Waitlist
- Work setup
- More
Ready to publish one?
Two steps: add the work you have accepted, then publish.