Planned Dates Setting

Update and monitor your Planned vs Actual data throughout the system. Plus, use our easy-to-create and highly configurable Task Dependencies to automate plans and planned dates. We've also added a new setting designed for teams who want to automate Actuals to impact their plans.

While for some orgs or teams or projects, Planned Dates should be fixed and never-changing, for other teams, “Planned” is a former state and they accept that Plans change. There are many reasons teams might want to allow Actual Start or Finish Dates to update the Planned Start or Finish Dates of tasks, and as those teams operationalize their projects, they expect Planned dates to adjust to Actuals.

Learn the project-based settings that enable Actuals to update the Planned Dates. 

How Dependencies Impact Planned Dates

When creating a new project from a blank state, all tasks are created with no dependencies. However, if you create a new project from a template or import a plan that has links/dependencies defined (only available in the MPP or XML formats), your plan will populate with those pre-defined dependencies. 

When a plan has no dependencies, then tasks don't impact other tasks' Planned Start or Planned Finish Dates, or any other dates for that matter. Each task is indepdendent. 

Dependencies are not required to generate the overall project's timeline. ProjectManager will still populate the dates of the entire plan based on the first task's Planned Start Date and the last task's Planned Finish Date, which drives reports and dashboards and data throughout the system.

Dependencies are useful when trying to enforce dates on related tasks. When a plan has dependencies, those tasks automatically update their Successor tasks according to the following criteria:

• Link Type (finish-to-start, start-to-start, start-to-finish or finish-to-finish)
• Lag or Lead (A positive number defines Lag; a negative number defines Lead)

When tasks have Dependencies, changes to the Planned Dates Setting impact how those Links work and how Lag and Lead work. 

Planned Dates Settings

You can find the Planned Dates option in the Project Settings menu or during project creation. This per-project setting enables each project manager the ability to control their project settings depending on their preferences or project phase.

You can adjust this setting at any time. Tasks are not updated immediately when you change the setting, but it will apply to any future actual date changes.

Default Setting: Always enforce planned dates

With the Default setting, Actuals do not impact Planned Dates—ever.

• The Planned Dates (Start and Finish) of a task are always preserved, regardless of Actual Start or Finish Dates or %Complete or Actual Effort
• The Planned Dates can only be updated manually by a user with permissions to do so

The only way a Planned Date for a task can be automatically updated is if there are Dependencies on that task. For dependent tasks, when a Predecessor task's Planned Start Date (PSD) or Planned Finish Date (PFD) is updated, then its successor's PSD & PFD automatically update as well, while retaining any previously defined Duration, Lag or Lead.

When a Predecessor task's Actual Start Date (ASD) or Actual Finish Date (ASD) is updated, however, no change is made to the Successor task's PSD or PFD. By default, the Planned Dates are always preserved when changes are made to Predecessors.

Optional Setting: Allow actuals to update planned dates

This is for teams with operationalized plans and want to automate mostly downstream tasks further. This setting enables Actuals to update the Planned Start and Planned Finish Dates of Tasks and any dependent tasks, as well.

This setting automatically modifies the plan as Actual dates are recorded, essentially making the plan a real-time representation of the current project state.

This logic ensures two things:

1. That your plan is being automated by the Actuals
2. Your team is being kept up to date with relevant notifications on their Task Assignments when their Planned Start or Planned Finish Dates change.

Let's dig into the details.

How it works

Planned dates may or may not change, depending on when the Actual dates are recorded. For example, if Task A was planned to start on 1/5/25 and actually started that 1/5/25 (same day), then the original planned date is the same as the actual.

But if Task A actually started earlier on 1/2/25, its Planned Start date would change to the earlier date. Similarly, if Task A starts later than its planned date, then the Actuals update the Planned Start date.

The same rules apply for Planned Finish Dates. If Task A was planned to finish on 1/5/25 and actually finished that 1/5/25 (same day), then the original finish date is the same as the actual. But if Task A actually finished earlier on 1/2/25, its Planned Finish date would change to the earlier date. Similarly, if Task A finishes later than its planned date, then the Actuals update the Planned Finish date.

If you don't want a particular task's Planned Date to change from its Actual or another dependent task, however, the Planned Dates can be manually overwritten again, and that does not impact the Actual Dates. You can also leverage the Task Lock feature to prevent Planned Dates from changing for a particular task.

Impacts on Task Dependencies

Since Dependencies are defined by Planned Start or Planned Finish Dates (depending on the Link Type), when Actuals impact a Predecessor task, it may also impact the Successor task's Planned Start & Finish Dates.

If Task A had a Finish-to-Start link type with Task B, and Task A started earlier (on 1/2/25), then with this setting, Task B will now automatically move up 3 days, as well. Similar rules govern all task dependencies, according to the Link type and when Actuals are entered. 

This means the plan is automatically updating as it's being worked on by the team and the team is always being notified of the relevant changes. This saves time for Project Managers, who no longer have to manually adjust Dependencies, or the Lag or Lead of Dependent tasks, when its Predecessor starts or ends at a different date than its original Planned dates.  

How Lag/Lead are impacted

Lag is designed to help define a buffer between two tasks and Lead (negative Lag) is designed to support overlapping of two dependent tasks. Lag/Lead are always based on the Planned Dates. But when Actuals are updating those planned dates, it will consume the Lag or Lead accordingly to reflect the new, updated Planned Start Dates. 

If you don't want the Lag and Lead to be consumed with this setting, we recommend utilizing the Task Lock feature to prevent changes to the Planned Dates for those tasks. When the Task Lock feature is enabled, the Planned Start and Finish dates cannot be adjusted, which means any Lag or Lead will auto-extend to preserve those dates in the event of Actual changes upstream or downstream. 

How % Complete impacts Planned Dates

Because % Complete generates an Actual Start or Actual Finish Date based on the percentage, this can impact Planned Dates, too, with this setting.  For example, when I mark one task as Started (25% completion), my Planned Start Date changes to the Actual Start Date.

When I mark that task 100% complete, then my Planned Finish Date changes to the Actual Finish Date. Marking a Task Done on the Board or List is also updating its % Completion, so this updates my PFD dates too.

You can still compare planned vs actual data in all the reports and dashboards. The Plan, in other words, even though it has changed, is still the Planned vs Actual. In the next section, we will look at how you can track the Original Plan against the current state in multiple ways in the software.  

Reporting: How to Compare the Original Plan with the Actual Plan

There are several simple and effective ways to preserve, view and restore your original plan when you choose the "Allow Actuals to update Planned Dates" option in Project Settings. You can baseline the plan and view it at any time. You can restore or create a copy of the original Version with Version Control. Copy the initial project as another project or a template, or export the project before turning on the setting to retain a copy. 

These are the ways you can view or access your original plan:

• Set a Baseline - Setting a baseline at the start of a project is how project managers typically manage any changes made to the original, baselined plan. The baseline can be set and displayed via the gantt settings menu. You can always toggle to view the Baseline in the Gantt or run a Variance report for Actuals Against the Baseline.
• Version Control - You can always view, export or restore a plan to the originally planned dates via project version control.
• Other Solutions - You can create a copy or template of the original project to compare/restore at any time.

You can still view the Planned vs Actual Reports and Dashboards to see how you're tracking - a bonus for your team if you're ahead of schedule! 

How can I prevent planned data from changing?

If you don't want your planned data to change automatically:

1. The "always enforce planned dates" option might be a better option for you

2. Use our improved task locking feature to prevent important dates from ever changing (coming soon)