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- Control access to business finances
- Control access to rates
- Control who can create projects
- Control project administration
- Control staff and team management
- Control expenses and claims
- Control report definition editing
- Control access to contacts
- Give full project control with Owner
- Manage project work without changing money
- Let project members edit tasks safely
- Share a project safely with Viewer
- Let a team lead coordinate shared work
- Share teammate profiles without management access
- Keep team members focused on their own work
Test a scenario before you commit to it
Scenarios is a live sandbox on the Dashboard: model a hire or a new project against your current roster and see the financial and capacity result update as you type, with nothing to apply and nothing at risk.
What you'll achieve
Understand what a scenario models, how its levers work, and how to read its results.
You'll end up with: You can open Scenarios, add a roster or project change, and read what it does to margin, cash, and capacity before making the real decision.
A sandbox, not a plan
Every other tab on the Dashboard reads what's actually happening at Meridian Studio. Scenarios is different: it's a sandbox for a decision you haven't made yet, will hiring a second architect pay for itself, can the practice actually staff Riverside Civic Library on top of what's already committed. You build the question as a set of levers, and Monument models the answer against your real current roster and pipeline, live, as you add and remove them.
Nothing here is provisional in a way that could go wrong. Levers save as you make them, there's no separate "apply" step that pushes a scenario into the real schedule or the real books, and a Baseline scenario, your practice exactly as it stands today, is always there automatically to compare against.
The tab only appears for an admin account access level with Business finances and Rates access, because modelling a decision means touching both money and staffing. If you don't see Scenarios in the Dashboard's tab bar, that's why.
Levers: roster changes and project changes
Everything you model is a lever, and there are two kinds.
- 1
Roster: add a role with a From date to model hiring, or remove one to model a departure. Each lever shows what it costs, or saves, per month from that date.
- 2
Projects: add a project type with a From date to model taking on new work, or remove one to model a project ending. Each lever shows the revenue and hours it adds or removes from that date.
Open the scenario dropdown at the top of the Levers panel to Switch scenario between saved scenarios, or to Rename, Save as a copy, or Delete the one you're on. New scenario starts a fresh one from the current Baseline. Changes autosave as you go, the panel simply reads Saving… and then Saved, so leaving the tab never loses a lever you've added.
Reading the result
Everything below the levers is the model's output, and it's clearly marked as modelled, not actual.
- Scenario result is the headline: net multiplier, profit margin, excess hours this month, and the lowest cash balance the scenario reaches.
- Financial outlook charts modelled revenue, costs, and cash across the months ahead, with the date it hits its lowest cash called out underneath.
- Capacity after the scenario is a heatmap of required hours against available hours, by role and by month, so you can see exactly which role runs short and when.
- Project headroom, when it's available, states in a sentence how many more projects like the ones you're running the current roster could absorb before a role needs more capacity.
Switch back to the Baseline scenario to see the practice exactly as it stands, then switch to your what-if scenario. The two use the same output cards, so it's a direct comparison, not a different screen to reinterpret.
Troubleshooting
- Scenarios isn't in the tab bar. It needs admin, Business finances, and Rates access all together. Ask an admin to check your account access level if you expect to see it.
- Financial outlook is blank. Money outputs need a single currency across the practice; a scenario against a multi-currency practice still models capacity, just not cash and revenue.
- A lever's cost or revenue reads unavailable. That role or project type doesn't have enough rate or fee data behind it yet for Monument to price the change.
- You expected an "apply" button. There isn't one. A scenario is read-only against the real schedule and books; when you're ready to act on it, make the hire or add the project the normal way, outside Scenarios.
Where this fits next
Scenarios models a decision before you make it. Once you've decided, add the role or the project for real: see Plan with roles and tracks for staffing, or start the project the usual way from Schedule. To understand where the money in a scenario's outputs actually comes from, read the financial model overview.