Tentative work is a workflow that brings together multiple Teamwork features. Availability depends on the specific features used and your plan.
What
Tentative work is a planning workflow that lets you model and schedule work that is expected, but not yet confirmed, before committing delivery teams or timelines.
Why
  • Understand future capacity before committing to clients.
  • Plan resourcing and timelines earlier in the sales cycle.
  • Support scenario planning without disrupting active projects.
  • Eliminate spreadsheets and manual rework when deals are won.
Who
  • Site admins can create and manage tentative projects, plan allocations, and convert work to confirmed.
  • Project admins can collaborate on tentative planning within projects they administer and confirm projects when ready.
When
Use tentative work when opportunities are likely, but not signed off, and you need early insight into resourcing, timing, or business impact.

Before you start

Tentative work is designed as a planning layer that sits between your sales pipeline and delivery work. It helps you make resourcing and timing decisions earlier, before delivery teams are involved.
Tentative work is often used to plan pipeline work, forecast capacity, and assess delivery risk before projects are confirmed.
  • Tentative work does not create delivery tasks or notify delivery teams.
  • Planning happens using projects, schedules, and soft allocations without committing people to work.
  • When work is confirmed, tentative plans carry forward without rebuilding.

Typical flow: CRM to tentative project to soft allocations to capacity review and scenario planning to confirmed project to delivery.

Real-life use cases

The examples below show how tentative workflows help teams plan earlier, assess risk, and make informed decisions before work is confirmed.

Scenario: project-based work

A team is discussing a new project that is expected to start soon and needs to understand whether it can be delivered alongside existing work.
What they need to decide: Can we commit to this timeline with our current capacity?
How it works in Teamwork: Create a tentative project, outline the likely schedule, and add soft allocations. Review capacity alongside confirmed work, then convert the project to confirmed once the work is agreed.

Scenario: long-term engagements

A firm is shortlisted for a multi-month engagement and needs to understand how it will affect staffing over the next quarter before committing to a start date.
What they need to decide: Do we need to hire, shift priorities, or adjust timelines?
How it works in Teamwork: Use a tentative project to model the engagement with project-level allocations. Compare outcomes across capacity views and confirm the project only when resourcing decisions are clear.

Scenario: multiple overlapping opportunities

Several opportunities are active at the same time and the team needs to understand delivery risk if more than one converts.
What they need to decide: What can we realistically commit to right now?
How it works in Teamwork: Model each opportunity using a tentative project, add soft allocations, and review overlap with confirmed work. Confirm only the projects that convert, keeping early planning intact and avoiding rework.

Tentative projects

Tentative projects are the core container used to represent likely but unconfirmed work in Teamwork.
  • Behaves like a real project for planning purposes.
  • Supports scheduling, allocations, templates, and integrations.
  • Remains private and limited in visibility until confirmed.
Tentative projects can be converted to confirmed projects. Confirmed projects cannot be reverted back to tentative.

Project creation and templates

Tentative work is embedded directly into the main project creation experience and is not limited to the scheduler.
  • Projects can be created as Tentative or Confirmed from the main create project flow.
  • Project templates support both tentative and confirmed projects, enabling repeatable early planning.
  • Templates can include pre-configured allocations and schedules to model work consistently.

Project-level scheduling and allocations

Tentative work extends scheduling into the project itself, not just across the portfolio.
  • Plan timelines using project-level scheduler views.
  • Create allocations for people or placeholders without assigning delivery tasks.
  • View tentative and confirmed work together to understand true capacity.
Capacity views account for both tentative allocations and confirmed task estimates. This helps teams understand true availability without blocking calendars or creating delivery commitments.

CRM-driven tentative work

Tentative work can be driven directly from your sales pipeline using CRM integrations such as HubSpot.
  • Deals reaching a defined stage can create tentative projects in Teamwork.
  • Project templates and fields can be mapped from CRM data.
  • When a deal is marked Closed Won, the project can be updated to confirmed.

Visibility, permissions, and notifications

Tentative work introduces a controlled visibility model to protect early-stage planning.
  • Site admins and project admins can collaborate freely on tentative projects.
  • Delivery teams gain visibility only once work is confirmed.
  • Notifications behave normally after a project transitions to confirmed.

From tentative to confirmed

When work is confirmed, tentative work transitions seamlessly into delivery.
  • The project status updates from tentative to confirmed.
  • Allocations and schedules remain in place.
  • Delivery teams gain full visibility and notifications begin as normal.
Converting a project does not notify users retroactively about tentative-phase activity.

Best practices

  • Plan early: Use tentative projects as soon as work becomes likely, not just at proposal sign-off.
  • Use templates: Standardise early planning for repeatable services.
  • Protect delivery teams: Keep uncertain work tentative until timelines and scope are confirmed.
  • Convert decisively: Confirm projects promptly to avoid ambiguity in capacity planning.