Studios quote dates from the edit side: how long the cut takes. That is the half you control, and usually the smaller half. The other half is how long this particular client takes to answer. Everyone knows which clients are slow, but few people put a number on it before promising a date.
Once a client has review history, the task panel adds a Projected delivery row that does exactly that.
What it is made of
Two legs, and the tooltip spells them out: Team done ~{date} + ~{time} of client review.
The first leg is your own internal deadline, the date your team declared the work would be finished. RecReview doesn’t invent a throughput figure, it takes you at your word. The second leg is the review tail — how long this client historically takes to approve, folded on top.
If the task is with the client right now, the wait already spent is discounted, so the projection tightens as the days pass rather than restarting.
How to read it
A ~ in front means the estimate rests on thinner history, so treat it as a direction rather than a date.
Green means the projection still lands before the promise, and the panel says how many days of buffer are left. Amber means it lands after, with the number of days it is projected to slip.
No row at all means the client tail can’t be estimated yet. RecReview shows nothing rather than a confident date built on nothing, and that silence tells you something too: you are quoting this client blind.
Use it at the two moments that matter
The first is when you are about to give a date. Set the internal deadline and look at the projection: if the row is there, quote the projected date rather than the one you wanted, and if it isn’t, say that you don’t have review history for this client yet rather than treating the absence as good news. A client who is reliably slow to approve has been buying themselves late deliveries for years, and this is the first time you can say so with a date attached.
The second is when the amber appears mid-job. A projection that turns amber is telling you the promise is already gone, days before the promise itself is missed, and that is the cheap moment to renegotiate. See When a deadline slips.
Make the projection worth trusting
It reads your own history, so it is only as good as the discipline behind it. Deliver with Send to client so the send is timestamped, let approvals and change requests come back through the portal so the answer is timestamped, and clear blockers as soon as an answer arrives.
Three jobs with a client is roughly where the projection stops hedging. Until then it keeps the ~, which is the honest answer.
Note: Metrics → Client response time shows the same history per client, without a task in front of you. It is the number to bring to a pricing conversation about a client who is expensive in days rather than in hours.
What’s next
When a deadline slips covers what RecReview does once the projection stops being a warning.