Your First Check-in

What is a Check-in?

Monthly Data Entry — The Core Operational Rhythm

A check-in is the monthly process of recording what actually happened on an engagement. You enter actual values for finance, performance, and capacity — and DigitalCore compares them against your plans, calculates variances, detects SLA breaches, derives labour costs, and updates health scores.

Check-ins are how DigitalCore stays current. Without them, the platform only has your plans. With them, you get the full plan-vs-actual picture.

What Data Goes In, What Insights Come Out

Enter Finance Actuals

The Multi-Period Finance Grid

Navigate to Operations → your engagement → Check-in tab → Finance. You’ll see a grid with your template line items as rows and months as columns. Each cell shows the planned value (target) and has a field for the actual value.

Planned vs. Actual Values

Enter the actual amount for each finance line item for the current month. The grid immediately shows the variance (actual minus planned) and colour-codes it:

• Green — Actual is on track or better than plan
• Amber — Variance is within the warning band
• Red — Significant deviation from plan

What Updates Automatically

You don’t need to enter everything manually. Two types of entries are created automatically:

• Labour costs — When capacity hours are logged, DigitalCore creates a finance entry for the corresponding cost using the applicable hourly rate
• SLA penalties — When a KPI breaches its SLA threshold, DigitalCore creates a finance entry for the calculated penalty amount

These automatic entries appear in your finance grid with a source indicator showing they were system-generated.

Enter Performance Metrics

Recording KPI Actuals

Switch to the Performance tab. Enter actual values for each KPI — for example, 95.2% for First Call Resolution or 4.3 hours for Average Response Time.

What Happens When an SLA is Breached

If a KPI actual breaches the SLA threshold defined in the engagement’s linked contract, DigitalCore:

1. Detects the breach based on the operator (greater than, less than, or equals)
2. Calculates the penalty amount based on the contract terms (fixed amount, percentage of contract value, or tiered)
3. Creates a penalty event for audit trail
4. Optionally creates a corresponding finance entry for the penalty cost

This happens automatically as you enter the actual value.

Enter Capacity Hours

Recording Hours by Role

Switch to the Capacity tab. Enter the actual hours worked for each role for the current month.

Seeing Labour Costs Appear in Finance Automatically

As soon as capacity hours are saved, DigitalCore:

1. Looks up the applicable hourly rate (from contract rate overrides, rate cards, or organisation defaults)
2. Calculates: labour cost = hours × rate
3. Creates a finance entry in the corresponding COGS labour line item

Switch back to the Finance tab to see the automatically generated cost entry.

Review Your Results

Domain Summary Cards

At the top of the check-in view, summary cards show the overall status for each domain: total revenue and costs for Finance, KPIs met vs. breached for Performance, and hours planned vs. actual for Capacity.

RAG Status Indicators (Red / Amber / Green)

Every metric has a RAG status based on its variance from plan. Domain-level and engagement-level RAG statuses roll up from individual items. A single red KPI can make the entire performance domain show as red.

Effects Across Domains

The cross-domain effects are visible immediately: capacity hours generate finance costs, performance breaches generate finance penalties. The engagement health score reflects all three domains combined.