ClickTime's Resource Planning allows you to input monthly budgets for your Projects and then distribute those hours in dollars across the staff that will work on them. The result is the ability to plan capacity around staff members' availability. We take into consideration unique and even dynamic billing rates along with the utilization or billing goal per staff member.
Getting Started With Resource Planning
- Resource Planning Tab
- Access to Resource Planning Features
- Monthly Hours and Billing Goals by Person
- Billing Rates
- Lifetime Budgets
Monthly Budgets and Allocations
- Your Resource Planning View
- Entering Monthly Budgets (for Projects)
- Entering Monthly Allocations (for People)
- Quick Month & Clear Month
- Locking Budgets & Allocations
Managing with Resource Planning
Please be aware that Resource Planning was designed to be used with a medium to large screen using a high resolution. It may be difficult to see everything you need with a smaller screen or low resolution.
Getting Started With Resource Planning
Success with Resource Planning will require a little bit of initial set-up, which we'll cover here. The following are all important concepts to understand when using Resource Planning:
- Resource Planning Tab
- Access to Resource Planning Features
- Monthly Hours and Billing Goals by Person
- Billing Rates
- Lifetime Budgets
If you have any questions about any section, please reach out to our Support Team and they'll be happy to help. They can also connect you with our Professional Services Team to schedule additional training.
The Resource Planning tab will appear to all Administrators, as well as Managers with the appropriate permissions (more info below).
In order for the tab to appear, you must have access to the Resource Planning features and have enabled Resource Planning from the Company --> Preferences page. Specifically, you will need to make sure that you have enabled both "time billing features" as well as "Project estimation features" in the "General Company Information" section of the page:
Then open up the "Project Estimation" section of the page and choose "Resource Planning":
After saving, the Resource Planning tab should be available.
Resource Planning can be used with all 7 of the Billing Rate Structures (more details here). You will have to determine Billable Status by the Project in the Billing Rates section of the Company --> Preferences page.
Demo customers can activate Resource Planning from the "Do You Budget" tab and then select "Monthly Budget":
Access to Resource Planning Features
Resource Planning has several different related components. All local ClickTime Administrators will be able to access all aspects of Resource Planning. Standard Users will only be able to access their Personal Dashboard from their time entry pages (more details here).
Managers can be set up to use different parts of Resource Planning on an as-needed basis, which can be set up on the Security and Permissions section of their Person Details page.
In order to see the Resource Planning grid, they must be able to "View" allocations and budgets. If they are expected to enter allocations or budgets they must also have "Add and Edit" permissions. Please note this means they will be able to see work hours, billing goals, and billing amounts on the Resource Planning spreadsheet.
In order to run the Resource Utilization Summary (more info here), they must have the ability to "Run Company Reports" for "All People" and to view "Billing Rates" (if they have access to "Resource Planning Allocations and Budgets", these options will already be enabled and cannot be disabled without removing their Resource Planning access):
If Managers are expected to enter/edit Monthly Hours and Billing Goals for employees (more info below), they must have "Add and Edit" permissions for the People Lists:
If Managers are expected to enter/edit Lifetime Budgets (more info here), they will need to be able to "Add and Edit" Project Lists:
In order to edit the Billing Rate of a Person, Client, Project, or Task, they will need to be able to "Add and Edit" the appropriate List (more information on Billing Rates can be found in this guide).
Monthly Hours and Billing Goals by Person
ClickTime understands the capacity of each of your workers. We know how many hours each person is available to work each month. We know how much time off they have scheduled. We also know the utilization or billing goal for each person.
In this example, we have an employee named Janet. She is expected to work 40 hours a week (Monday through Friday) and needs to be 80% billable. This is set on the Person Details page:
May 2017 has 184 potential business hours, and she has added her 32 hours of vacation to ClickTime as Time Off, bringing her "Available Hours" to 152 for the month:
Resource Planning will show that Janet needs to be assigned 121.6 billable hours to meet her goal in a month in which she is available to work 152 total hours. These details can be seen by clicking on her name in the column header.
Please Note: Since Resource Planning is a monthly system, whatever an employee's Monthly Hours and Billable Goals are in the system at the end of the month will be hard-coded into reports, etc. You will not be able to change the expected hours an employee should work, or the billable percentage of those hours, once the month has ended. However, any changes made within the calendar month will be reflected in the system and any reports for current (and future) months.
With each hour you allocate a staff member to work on a specific Project, ClickTime looks up which billing rate to use. For this example, Janet has a Billing Rate of $150 an hour. This will be important when we are allocating her hours and seeing how that effects the Monthly Budget.
More information on Billing Rates can be found in this guide.
Our Resource Planning tool has a deep understanding of budgets and capacity on a monthly basis, but much of the time each month will be part of a larger picture. ClickTime allows for the entry of a lifetime Project budget on the Project Details page.
You can also go to this page from the Resource Planning grid by using this link:
Resource Planning is based on monthly budgets and allocations. As you create monthly budgets you will be able to forecast the rate at which a Project's budget is burned through, then track and visualize actuals vs. that forecast.
Monthly Budgets and Allocations
ClickTime's best-in-class Resource Planning tool will let you look at monthly budgets and distribute resources accordingly. Even if your staff members each have different billing rates that differ by Project, ClickTime can support your plan.
- Your Resource Planning View
- Entering Monthly Budgets (for Projects)
- Entering Monthly Allocations (for People)
- Quick Month & Clear Month
The Resource Planning grid can be set up exactly how you'd like it. We'll cover what all the different options do here - to learn how to save and share your specific view, please see the Creating and Sharing Filters section below.
Time Period:
Use this option to choose the month you'd like to set budgets and allocations for. Resource Planning will let you edit one month at a time.
Filters:
ClickTime allows you to save filters, which allows you to load whichever specific view you'd like (more info below). There are also a few default filters you can use to get started. The name of the filter you've loaded will display here.
People:
You can set up your view to show "all active people", only "people with hours to allocate", only "people whose billable goals are not met by allocated hours" or "specific people".
If you choose "specific people", you'll then see a pop-up that allows you to choose who to select. You can choose by person, Division, or the employee's Role:
Projects:
You can also show "all active Projects", only those "Projects with a budget available to allocate", or "specific Projects".
If you choose "specific Projects", you'll then see a pop-up that allows you to choose which Projects to include. You can select by Project name or all Projects within a Client. If you don't see the Project you are looking for, you may need to choose to "show inactive Projects" or to "show non-billable Projects":
Other View Options:
To the right of these options will be icons that change what the system displays for the time period/people/Projects you've selected:
Quick Month and Clear Month:
These features allow you to quickly populate budgets/allocations, or to remove all existing budgets/allocations (see below for more details). You must be an Administrator for your account to see Quick Month or Clear Month.
Hours vs Billable Amounts:
While budgets will always be in dollars, you can choose to view what has been allocated and worked by hours or total billable amount. Billable Amount is calculated by the hourly billing rate multiplied by the number of hours allocated or worked.
Allocated vs Worked:
You can choose whether you'd like to see how much has been allocated, OR how much has been worked, OR both values in the grid. In this example, we've chosen to see both allocated AND worked hours.
What to Show:
Changing which People/Projects are displayed can be helpful for all organizations. This setting allows you to "show all rows and columns" (regardless of the data in the system), to "only show people and Projects with data in the spreadsheet", or to "only show people and Projects with exceeded allocations in the spreadsheet".
If you are loading a new month in the system and do not see any data, it may be because this filter is set to "only show people and projects with data in the spreadsheet", and there are no allocations or worked time saved to the database for the month.
Reports & Company Summary:
The "Reports" button will show you Resource Planning-specific reports. Clicking on a report's name will either generate that report for you or take you to the report criteria page for the report. More information on these reports is available below.
The "Company Summary" button will display a summary of your company's data for the current month. More details on how these fields are calculated are available in this section of the guide.
Entering Monthly Budgets (for Projects)
To assign a monthly budget, click into the cell next to a Project and enter the monthly budget in your default currency.
Once you click out, the field above will be updated. In this case, it is set to show the available budget left to allocate, and the allocated hours for this project are less than the budget, so the monthly budget left to allocate displays in green. See below to learn how to change how this field is displayed.
The history of/progress towards the budget can be seen by clicking on the Project name field. The first tab will show you how much progress has been made towards the monthly budget (it will only show data if you are in the current month). You can scroll your mouse over the field for more details:
The "Lifetime" tab will show you details on the progress of the lifetime budget. Again, scroll your mouse over the graph to see more details:
As you do this for more months, you'll be able to track the progress of the available lifetime budget over the course of the Project.
If needed, you can always edit the Lifetime Budget from the Project Details page (as discussed above).
Monthly budgets will appear in green if the Project has more than 1% of budget left for the month. The field will turn gray when it is within 1% over or under budget. The field will then turn red if you are more than 1% over budget.
Entering Monthly Allocations (for People)
Once you've made sure that all billing rates are accurate in the system, you can then start entering the number of hours you expect your staff to work on each Project for the month. Make sure you have the "Allocations" column displayed in your view, and then click into the cell to enter the expected number of hours an individual should work on that project.
When you do so, you'll see that the available monthly budget will begin to be reduced by the number of hours multiplied by that individual's billing rate. The hours left to allocate to that employee in the month, or the starting capacity, will also be reduced by the assignment:
Any time a change is made to your Resource Planning grid, you should also see a green triangle in the top-left corner of the field you've edited, indicating this has been updated since you last loaded the grid. You can scroll your mouse over the field to see who edited the field and at what time.
As you enter allocations, you may start to notice some interesting insights. Are you finding that you are over or understaffed on a specific Project? Did you underestimate the amount of work you could complete on a Project? Is one staff member spread very thin while another still has many available hours?
Taking note of how your budgets and allocations display after updating the month should help you have a more accurate estimate for the future. It may also indicate you may need to re-think the current month's plan or demonstrate that your expectations were accurate.
ClickTime allows for simple copying and pasting of budgets and/or allocations from one month to the next with the Quick Month option. This feature is only available to Administrators.
If you go to a month in the future where there is no budget or allocation data, ClickTime will prompt you to copy either the budgets or allocations from the proceeding month into that month.
You can also choose to use Quick Month at any time, which will overwrite any data in the current month with budgets and/or allocations from the previous month. Using this month's budget and allocation data as a starting point for next month's resource planning is a tool used by most of our clients. You will be asked to confirm before data is copied.
If you find that Quick Month has been used in error, or you simply want to clear out any budgets/allocations from the current month, you can do so with the Clear Month option. This will delete any data you've entered for the current month.
You will be asked to confirm before clearing data for the month.
Locking Budgets and Allocations
If you'd like to prevent anyone from changing Budgets and Allocations for months in the past, you can do so using the Company Lock Date, which is available on the Company --> Preferences page:
The Company Lock Date is typically used to prevent employees from adding/entering time entries before that day, but can also be used to prevent changes to budgets and allocations. Specifically, any full months prior to the Company Lock Date will not be available for edits when on the Resource Planning page.
The system will allow edits if the Company Lock Date is set to a day within the month. For example, if the Company Lock Date was July 5th of 2017, your team would still be able to edit budgets and allocations for July 2017, but not for months prior
More details on changing the Company Lock Date can be found in this section of our help documentation.
Managing with Resource Planning
Resource Planning allows you to set up multiple different filters and share those with your team so everyone is on the same page. After creating allocations for your staff, those employees will then be able to monitor progress towards their goals. These features make it easy for everyone to understand what the internal priorities are as well as to note if adjustments to expectations should be made as the month progresses.
Filters can be used to create specific views of People, Projects, and other preferences. Resource Planning will show you the name of the filter you've last loaded next to the month you are viewing:
By default, we provide a few standard filters that are accessible to everyone.
Allocating Hours:
We have three filters that may be useful when allocating hours:
- Available Hours will update the grid to show you all active people, all active Projects, in hours, with only the Allocated hours column displayed. All rows and columns will be available and the grid will be sorted by the "Hours left to allocate"
- Billing goals will be the same as the "Available Hours" filter, but sorted by the "Billable Hours Goal" for each employee in descending order
- Understaffed jobs will be the same as the above filters, but will sort by the "Budget left to allocate" for each Project in ascending order (this option will not be available when your Billing Rate is determined by the Task performed)
There are three filters that may be useful when Reviewing Progress:
- Budgets and billing goals will show you hours allocated versus hours worked. This filter will only show you columns/rows with data in the spreadsheet. Budgets and Billing Goals will be displayed as percentages
- Overallocated people will show you the same as the "Budgets and billing goals" filter but will show budgets and allocations in dollars and hours left to complete
- Overstaffed jobs will be similar, but will be sorted by "Budget Let To Allocate" in ascending order
You are in no way limited by these filters; these are simply starting points when allocating or reviewing progress.
As you make changes to your view, you can "Save" that view as a filter. Click the Filter option and then "Save New Filter":
You'll then be asked to name your filter:
and will see it listed in your filters options. Whichever filter you are currently viewing will be italicized:
If you adjust your filter and want to save those changes, choose to update the filter. In this case, we've changed which Projects are displayed:
Filters can also be shared with other members of your team:
You can choose who you'd like to access the filter. Only Administrators (and Managers with access to Resource Planning) will show as options to share with. You can also choose to send a notification email to the people you have given access with a note:
Sharing filters can be helpful if you want to set up a specific view that you will be referencing in future meetings, etc. Only the person who created the filter will be able to Update a Shared Filter.
Please note: Filters can be applied to any month. There is no need to save a filter for a specific month, as you can go from one month to the next without having to update the filter.
You can also choose to sort your view in a variety of different ways. To sort the Client/Project rows, scroll your mouse over the Client/Project column header section of the grid to bring the rows to the front:
Then you can click on any of the text in this section to choose to sort by ascending or descending order. You can sort by the name of the Client/Project, Budget Left to Work, or the Monthly Budget:
You can also change how the monthly budget is displayed by clicking the lines next to the column header.
Whatever you select here will affect the field above the monthly budget you have entered:
(In this example we have chosen to show the "percent of budget worked").
Please Note: The option to sort by "Budget Left to Allocate" will not be available if you determine Billing Rate by Task performed. This is because the grid does not know which Tasks will be used. The other sort options will be displayed.
Similarly, you can change the order of the columns by scrolling your mouse over the "Hours Left To Allocate" section of the grid to bring the controls to the front:
Click on any of the text in this section to sort by ascending or descending order. You can sort by employee name, Role, or Hours left to allocate:
You can also change how we display the employee hours by clicking the lines next to the "Hours Left to Allocate" header:
Whatever you select here will affect the field above their name:
(In this example we have chosen to show the "Hours left to allocate to reach billing goal").
Your staff will be able to see the progress they make towards their allocated hours when they enter time on the Day View or Week View pages. Within the time entry drop-down options they will see the number of hours they have left to work and can scroll their mouse over the number for more details:
If all allocated hours have been worked, there will be a green check-mark instead of the number of hours. If more hours than have been allocated are worked, the check-mark will be red.
To the right of the time entry options are the other Personal Dashboard options:
There are up to 4 different dashboards that will provide you with the following information:
- Month Completeness will show you the percentage of a month that has elapsed. You can change the month if you'd like:
- Active Assignments will show you the number of active and completed assignments for the month. Scroll your mouse over the graph to see the actual number of hours worked vs assigned:
- Billable Hours Goal will show the progress made towards the monthly billing goal:
- Leave Availability will show the hours of Leave that are currently available (access to this panel requires using our Time Off and Accruals Module - more information here):
ClickTime's Resource Planning allows you to keep budgets, allocations, and time worked in one place, meaning you can use ClickTime's native reporting options for real-time insight on the status of your Projects.
ClickTime offers two methods to export the data from your Resource Planning grid into an Excel or CSV file that you can use to make custom reports or analysis in another reporting tool.
The Spreadsheet Export report will export your current view exactly how it is set up at the time of the Export. This can only be run for one month at a time and will generate a .xlsx file.
The Flat Data Export will allow you to download all budgets and allocations in two separate CSV files.
You will need to specify a time frame (partial months will include all data for the month) and can then download "allocations" and/or "budgets" in CSV format.
In addition to the data export options, there are two reports that will summarize your Resource Planning data.
The Budget Summary Report will summarize the budgets, worked billings, and the variance. You can run this for a range of months and for specific Clients or Projects. If you include any portion of a month in the criteria the entire month will be included in the report.
For those months where the budget was exceeded, notice the dark red text against a light red background.
The Project Lifetime Overview Report will show you summaries of the lifetime budgets, all worked billings, the variance between the two, and monthly worked averages. You can run this for specific Clients or Projects.
The Company Summary report can be used to get a general overview of capacity and progress made for the current month (or months in the future).
These fields are calculated using the following logic:
- Total Capacity is the total available hours for all active employees, minus any Time Off that has been logged
- Allocated Billable are the total hours allocated to Projects that are Billable. The percentage is determined by the Allocated Billable hours divided by the total number of allocated hours (this field will only report up to 100% of capacity at this time)
- Total Worked refers to all hours that have been logged for the month. The percentage is determined by Total Worked hours divided by the Total Capacity
- Total Billable Worked is the total number of billable hours that have been worked for the month. The percentage is determined by the worked billable hours divided by the Total Capacity
- Total Monthly Budgeted Billings is the sum of all Project budgets for the month
- Planned Utilization is the Allocated Billable hours divided by the total allocated hours (this percentage is also shown in the Allocated Billable progress bar and will only report up to 100% of capacity at this time)
- Month to Date Utilization is the number of Billable Hours worked divided by the total number of worked hours
- Planned Billings is the Billable Amount for all allocated hours (determined by multiplying all allocated hours by the billing rates of those time entries)
- Month to Date Billings are the worked Billable Hours multiplied by the billing rates of those time entries
Since the Company Summary report is based on active users, and people may have been made inactive after the month ended, it is not currently available for previous months.
The Resource Utilization Summary report can be run for specific people and months. It has a variety of fields that you can choose to include and then export to Excel as a .xls file. It is found in the "People" section of the Company --> Reports page:
Next, choose the format you'd like the report to be in—if you choose HTML, you will be able to make changes before downloading, while choosing Excel will download all available fields.
Then choose your date range and the employees you'd like to evaluate—you can choose specific employees, everyone in a Division, or everyone of the same Employment Type. We'll run this for 4 specific employees in HTML format for the month of May:
You can now customize your report to include just the information you are looking for. To add or remove columns, hover your mouse over each column header and click the arrow for a list of options:
When you choose the columns option, you can then check the columns you'd like to display, or un-check those you'd prefer not to include.
If you are unclear how a number in the column is determined, hover your mouse over the column name for a moment and a pop-up message will provide you with more details:
You can also click on column headers and move them so they are ordered in the method you'd like:
Finally, when you have the report set up the way you'd like, use the "Download as Excel" option to generate an .xlsx file of your preferences.
Please be aware that if you run this for partial months, it will take all data associated for the entire month and combine the data in the same column. For example, running a report for April and May, when an employee had 145 potential hours to allocate for April and 162 hours to allocate for May, the "Available Work Hours Less Time Off" column would show 307 hours.
These troubleshooting steps may be helpful if you are experiencing issues using Resource Planning
Script Error
"Your Filters Don't Match Any Results" Message
Sometimes you may experience a "Script Error" message when loading the Resource Planning page. This most frequently happens after making several edits and/or viewing or saving multiple filters.
This can be solved by clearing your browsers cache. If you are not sure how to do so, you can try searching for instructions on how to clear the cache for your specific internet browser. This 3rd party help article may also be useful.
Correctly clearing the cache will require you to log back into ClickTime. After doing so, the error should no longer display. If it happens at any point in the future, please clear your cache again.
If clearing your cache does not address this error, please contact support@clicktime.com and our team will be happy to assist further.
"Your Filters Don't Match Any Results" Message
If you load the Resource Planning grid and see the "Your filters don't match any results" message, there is an easy way to address this.
Specifically, this often occurs when navigating to a month where you do not yet have any allocations or worked hours, with a filter set to "Only show people and projects with data in the spreadsheet".
Change this setting to instead "Show all rows & columns in the spreadsheet", and this should allow you to enter data into the necessary fields.
This most commonly occurs when loading a new month and choosing not to use the "Quick Month" option.
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