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Project statuses, a calmer timeline, and Xero is live

Customizable project statuses are here

As announced last week, projects now have customizable statuses and explicit end states (completed or cancelled).

  • Status picker on the project page. Move a project between Tentative, Confirmed, Completed and Cancelled from the project header.

  • Your own statuses. In Settings → Projects → Statuses you can add as many statuses as you need inside each category: "Pending signature" and "Waiting for staffing" under Tentative, "Ongoing" and "Paused" under Confirmed, and so on. Reports and figures follow the category, so renaming a status is always safe.

  • What is allowed to be done in each status. Tentative and Confirmed statuses have toggles for time entries, expenses and invoices: do you allow tracking them or not. Every existing Confirmed status has all three on, so nothing changes for you until you turn one off.

  • Completing a project. Completing a project walks you through what is still open. A completed or cancelled project is read-only and looks like it: its plan, time and expenses are locked until you reopen it from the status picker.

  • Archiving is now a separate step. Your archived projects have been moved to Completed (if they were confirmed) or Cancelled (if they were tentative). From now on, only completed and cancelled projects can be archived.

For API and MCP users: GET /v1/project-statuses and MCP list_reference_data now return category and acceptsInvoices (both additive). The public API refuses time entries on a Tentative status whose time entries toggle is off. The old archiving behaviour via the API stays supported until the end of January 2027, as described in the heads-up.

A new way to edit allocations on the timeline

The allocation edit popover is gone. Select an allocation and its controls appear in a toolbar: dates, intensity, task, split and details, without a dialog covering the timeline you're planning on. You will still find the old pop-up form behind “Details”.

Along with it:

  • Allocation percentages no longer show fractions like 33.333 %.

  • Allocation bars no longer round hours.

Xero integration is live

Operating now connects to Xero. Invoices and credit notes you create in Operating are pushed to Xero as drafts, and payments flow back so you can see what's been paid without leaving Operating.

  • Clients sync both ways.

  • Tax rates and items are pulled from Xero, so invoice lines map to the right accounts.

  • You choose what to connect. Pick the features you want before connecting, and Operating requests only the Xero access those features need.

  • Every invoice and client shows its Xero status in a side panel, with a push button and a link to the record in Xero.

  • Problems are visible. Records Xero refuses land in an Issues tab with the reason and a retry button, and the Mapping tab is where you match Operating items to Xero ones.

  • Invoice numbers are now unique per company instead of per organisation, so each legal entity can follow its own numbering in its own Xero.

Set it up in Settings → Integrations. QuickBooks is built on the same foundation and comes next.

Defaults for new projects

Promised last time, now shipped. In Settings → Projects you can set what every new project starts with, whether it's created by hand or from your CRM:

  • billing type and task list

  • rate card, with an override per site

  • project owner, secondary owner and invoicing owner

Timesheets that fill themselves (if you want)

  • Confirmed time off allocations now prefill timesheets. You decide which time off categories do this.

  • Allocations can optionally carry a task, and timesheets show planned hours per task row.

  • "Lock timesheet" is now called "Submit timesheet" everywhere, because that's what it is. 🔒

Company assignments are time-gated

The last piece of time-gating is done. A person's company now has a history, like their role, seniority and site, so moving someone between legal entities no longer rewrites last year's figures.

50% time offs affect remaining work correctly

All partial time off now counts correctly towards booked % and overbooking. If you’re taking a half-day off, all work on that day is decreased by 50% and your booking no longer goes to 150% or so.

For teams using the API and MCP

  • Bulk endpoints for allocations and positions in the REST API.

  • Project notes can be read and written through the API and MCP.

  • MCP is on by default for new permission sets, and every tool now has an output schema and a title, so AI clients pick the right tool more reliably.

  • MCP exposes employment start and end dates, list_expenses takes a client filter, and time tracked through MCP lands on the right task and phase.

Also shipped

  • Permissions. Deleting projects and clients is now its own permission, separate from managing them.

  • HiBob. List fields from custom HiBob sections are available in field mapping.

  • Positions list. Add notes and edit inline straight from the list.

Fixed

Invoicing. Line items for projects or tasks that share a name no longer merge into one line. Invoice CSV export works again. Time entry rates are never rounded. Earned revenue to date no longer includes future retainer revenue.

Time tracking. Daily totals line up with the hours cells again. The weekly table no longer allows overlapping hours. The timesheet no longer shows duplicate task options after positions are archived. Long time balance adjustment descriptions wrap instead of being cut off.

Planning. Archived allocations on archived tentative projects are hidden on the people timeline by default. Rescheduling a project no longer creates overlapping budgets. Also: the Reschedule button moved to a better location on the project timeline. It’s a life-saver when the client postpones the start!

Integrations. HubSpot handles merged records. The Harvest full-history import is vastly improved. The public API allocations report works for large organisations, and intermittent MCP server errors are gone.

Still in flight

  • Retainers and milestone billing. Built and in early access, with UI polish under way. Several projects can now be priced per phase, so one project can mix billing types. Ask us if you'd like to try it.

  • QuickBooks, on the same integration platform as Xero. Soon!

  • Budgets with target hours and costs, and working patterns.

Questions? The in-app chat and support@operating.app are always open.

If you read this far, thank you. A human wrote this. AI helped.