Some work doesn't have an end date. You've got a big client, you're on site two or three days most weeks, and it'll carry on until it's finished — whenever that turns out to be.
Mucka used to make you pretend otherwise. You'd put in the days you knew about, and the project would show a date range as if the last day you'd booked was the day you finished. It wasn't, and anybody reading the screen got the wrong idea.
Tick "open-ended" when you set it up
In the project, under the days, there's a box:
Open-ended — no finish date yet
Tick it and two things change.
The project stops claiming a finish date. Instead of 12 May – 19 Jun, it reads:
Started 12 May · booked to 19 Jun · carries on
Which is the truth: that's what you've got in the diary so far, and there's more to come.
And you can save the project with nothing booked in at all. Handy the day you win the work, when you know the client and the name of the job but not who's on site next Tuesday.
The strip of days
Every project now shows its days as a row of marks rather than a progress bar.
- Solid dark — days that are done
- Orange — today
- Grey — booked in, still to come
- Orange shading — pencilled in
- A short dashed line trailing off the end means the work carries on
There's a gap at the start of each week, so a long run reads like the planner on your office wall. Underneath it says the same thing in words — 23 done · 3 booked · 2 pencilled — so you're never reading colours alone.
The old progress bar had to go. On a job with no finish date it went backwards: every time you booked another day the percentage dropped, so a good week looked like you'd lost ground.
Book more days as you go
Open the project and hit Book more days.
It asks two things — what date to start from, and how many days. Everything else is already filled in from the last day you booked: same engineer, same start time, same length. Change any of it if you need to.
Weekends are skipped, so three days from a Friday is Friday, Monday, Tuesday. It shows you the actual dates before you save:
Booking in 3 days · Fri 14 Aug – Tue 18 Aug
Pencil them in when they're not firm
If you're fairly sure you're back on it Tuesday but nobody's promised anything, tick Pencil these in.
A pencilled day still holds the time in the diary, so nobody else gets booked over that engineer — including by the AI receptionist if a customer rings. But it shows up shaded orange everywhere it appears, so you can see at a glance which days are firm and which aren't. Nothing goes out to the customer.
When it firms up, open the project, hit Edit, and tap the pencil button on that day to confirm it.
You can also pencil a single day in from the project editor, on any day you're adding.
Or just ask Mucka
You don't have to go through the screens for any of this. Mucka understands the lot:
"Set up a project for Hendersons, no end date yet, nothing booked in"
"Put Dave on the Hendersons job Monday to Wednesday"
"Pencil Dave in on Hendersons next Tuesday"
"Hendersons have finally given us an end date — it's not open-ended any more"
Ask it how a project is going and it'll tell you what's booked, not a finish date it hasn't got: "booked to 19 June, and it carries on."
A few things worth knowing
Days you haven't put in the diary don't block anyone's time. If a project has work on it with no date yet, it shows as not booked in — it's a note to yourself, not a booking.
Finishing the project doesn't clear days you've already booked. If you mark an open-ended project completed and there are days still in the diary next week, they're still there — go in and take them out.
Untick open-ended whenever you like. If the customer finally gives you an end date, untick it and the project goes back to showing a normal date range.