Most studios keep one date per job. That single date has to be two things at once — the promise to the client and the target for the team — and it can only be honest about one of them. Set it to the promise and the team starts on the last possible day. Set it to the target and you have quietly promised the client something earlier than you meant.
RecReview splits it. Due is what the client was told. Internal deadline is your own date — the buffer before the promise comes due. The client never sees it, in the portal, in a shared link or in a delivery email.
Give the internal date a real job
If the internal date is “the real deadline, roughly”, nobody treats it as real and you end up with two soft dates instead of one hard one.
A better definition: the internal date is when the work must be finished so the review round still fits before the promise. Everything between the two dates is buffer, and that buffer belongs to the review, not to the edit.
Sizing the buffer
Work backwards from the promise. One client review round takes as long as that client usually takes, the changes from that round take as long as they usually take, and the two together, subtracted from the promise, give you the internal date.
When you don’t yet know how long a client takes, guess high. A buffer that turns out to be generous costs nothing, and one that turns out to be missing costs a weekend.
RecReview enforces the ordering: the internal deadline has to be on or before the due date, and it rejects the other way round.
Set both, or set neither
A task with only a Due date has no buffer, and it reports as healthy right up until the day it isn’t. Metrics → Deadline health only measures tasks that have both.
Set the two dates when you create the task, apply them to a whole selection from the actions bar, or type them straight into the Table view. On a batch of tasks created together, Apply to all sets both dates for every row in one go.
Tip: Fill in Estimated hours while you are there. The task panel suggests a number from the median time logged on this project’s other tasks, and an estimate is what makes the internal date something you can defend.
What’s next
Let the clock stop while the client has it, because the buffer only works if the client’s days don’t eat it.