Resource Management Module
ClickTime's Resource Management allows you to input monthly budgets for your Projects and then distribute those hours 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 billing goal per staff member.
Quick Navigation:
- Getting Started With Resource Management
- Customizing Your Resource Management View
- Quick Filters in Resource Management
- Monthly Budgets and Allocations
- Budget Alerts
- Bulk Actions: Copy and Clear Month
- Resource Management Dashboard
- Capacity Planning
- Differences with Task-Based Billing
- The Personal Dashboard
- Reporting Options
- Troubleshooting
Resource Management Training Video Series:
Please be aware that Resource Management 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 Management
Success with Resource Management 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 Management:
- Project and Person Availability
- Resource Management Tab
- Access to Resource Management
- 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.
Project and Person Availability
Before entering Resource Management you have the ability to control which Projects and People appear in the grid. These settings are helpful in making sure that only the right People and Projects appear in the RM Grid, essentially getting rid of any "empty space" offering improved management and performance of RM.
These settings can be found under:
- Company ---> People ---> Edit an Individual ---> Resource Management and Billing Goal
- Company ---> Projects ---> Edit a Project ---> Basic Information
Additionally, this setting can be controlled on both the Project and Person list pages (Company ---> Project and Company ---> People respectively), as seen below:
Newly created Projects and People will have this option enabled by default and appear in the Resource Management grid. Similarly, already active Projects and People will appear in the grid by default unless their Start/End Dates exclude them from particular months.
When these settings are disabled, this will typically remove the Project or Person from the RM grid, dashboard and capacity view. That said, there are three exceptions to this rule:
1. Allocations existed before the Person or Project was marked ineligible
As an example, we can see Aada was allocated to New Project A in October. Later, Project A was marked ineligible. New Project still appears in the grid for October.
2. Month budgets existed before the project was marked ineligible
As an example, Same added a budget to New Project A in October. Later, the project was marked as ineligible. New Project A still appears in the grid for October.
3. Worked time exists, when EITHER the Person or the Project is ineligible
As an example, Aada is RM eligible but New Project A is not. She logged time to the project in October. New Project A now appears in the grid for October.
Inactive People do not appear in the Resource Management grid by default. With this in mind, the following would be reasons why an inactive Person would appear in the Resource Management grid:
- If the person is inactive but has time data within a given month
- If the person is inactive but time has been allocated to them within a given month
In the case of both Projects and People, as long as they are eligible for Resource Management (use the eligibility setting shown above) you can decide to display inactive Projects and People in the grid using "specific people" or "specific projects" filters and selecting show inactive.
For more information about filters in Resource Management, see our Customizing Your Resource Management View section below.
Resource Management Tab
The Resource Management 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 Management features and have enabled Resource Management 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 Management":
After saving, the Resource Management tab should be available.
Resource Management can be used with all 7 of the Billing Rate Structures (more details here), but it is required that Billable Status be determined by the Project in the Billing Rates section of the Company → Preferences page, as shown here:
Demo customers can activate Resource Management from the "Do You Budget" tab and then select "Monthly Budget":
Access to Resource Management Features
All local ClickTime Administrators will be able to access all aspects of Resource Management. Standard Users will only be able to access their Personal Dashboard from their time entry pages.
Managers can be set up to use different parts of Resource Management on the Security and Permissions section of their Person Details page.
In order to see the Resource Management grid, Managers 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 that Managers with Resource Management permissions will be able to see work hours, billing goals, and billing amounts on the Resource Management grid.
In order to run the Resource Utilization Summary, they must have the ability to "Run Company Reports" for "All People" and to view "Billing Rates" (if they have access to "Resource Management Allocations and Budgets", these options will already be enabled and cannot be disabled without removing their Resource Management access):
If Managers are expected to enter/edit Monthly Hours and Billing Goals for employees, they must have "Add and Edit" permissions for the People Lists:
If Managers are expected to enter/edit Lifetime Budgets, 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).
It is also possible to further restrict a Manager to only see the Projects that they manage in Resource Management by using the "project access limit" found on the Person details page. By navigating to a Manager's profile under Company ---> People ---> Security & Permissions, you can select the option for "This person should only see projects they manage". This universal per person setting ensures that project managers always have access to the correct data in ClickTime, without additional configuration required every time a new project is added to the system.
To specify which projects this manager is responsible for, go to Company ---> Projects ---> Edit the Project ---> Project Manager. From here you can assign this person to this specific project, which will allow the project to be viewable to them in Resource Management.
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 billing goal for each person.
In the following example, we have an employee named Aada.
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 2022 has 176 potential business hours, but Aada has 32 hours of vacation, bringing her "Available Hours" to 144 for the month:
The "Available Hours" (or "Projected Available Hours" as it is referred to in the Resource Utilization Summary report) is calculated in the following way:
- ClickTime looks at the daily expected hours (Sunday - Saturday) from the Person Details page - it will only calculate days that have an hour value greater than 0
- We calculate how many days are in the month and multiply that by the daily expected hours
- We then subtract any Time Off hours saved for the month from that total to determine the "Available Hours"
Using this formula, Resource Management will show that Aada needs to be assigned 115.2 billable hours to meet her goal in a month in which she is available to work 144 total hours. These details can be seen by clicking on her name in the column header.
Please Note: Since Resource Management 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.
Billing Rates
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 Majors has a Billing Rate of $150 an hour. This will be important when we are allocating her hours and seeing how that affects the Monthly Budget.
More information about Billing Rates can be found in this guide.
Lifetime Budgets
Our Resource Management tool has a deep understanding of budgets and capacity on a monthly basis, but there are times that each month will be part of a larger picture.
ClickTime allows for the entry of a lifetime Project budget on the Project Details page, as well as in the Project Budget Modal (more information on this modal in the Monthly Budgets and Allocations section).
You can also go to the Project Details page from the Resource Management grid by using this link, accessible via the Project Budget Modal, and the Alerts Modal (see the Monthly Budget and Allocations and Budget Alerts section for more information on how to access these modals):
Resource Management 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.
Customizing Your Resource Management View
The Resource Management grid can be set up exactly how you'd like it using filters to customize your view. The filters you create in Resource Management are "universal", meaning that you can navigate from the Resource Management Grid to the Resource Management Dashboard without changing or updating your filters. This feature helps optimize workflows, by ensuring that you can work in a planning mode (Grid), and move over to monitoring mode (Dashboard) for exactly the same set of data, without stopping to re-create filters, or create unique filters for every page you visit. When you're working in a filtered view, you will see information about your selections, to help you understand what you're seeing onscreen. This indicator will stay in place across all RM pages, unless you dismiss it, or apply new filters.
We'll cover what all the different options do here in this section of the article.
Time Period:
Resource Management lets you view and edit budgets and allocations for a Month at a time. To navigate to the month you’d like to work in, use the Time Period selector in the top left hand corner of the grid. This selector will allow you to choose the Month and Year to add or edit budgets and allocations in.
View Menu:
To access filtering options in Resource Management, click the “Filters & Settings” button in the upper left hand corner of your screen. This will open the View Menu, which contains the options to filter the data displayed in your Resource Management grid. When you are done filtering the contents of your grid, you can click the “Filters & Settings” button again to collapse the View Menu and see only the Resource Management grid.
People:
The People section of the View Menu allows you to choose the set of People to display in your Resource Management grid, as well as the capacity information associated with them.
You can choose which capacity information you want displayed by clicking the Person Capacity dropdown, and selecting the value you want shown.
This will update the value shown above their name in Resource Management. In this example, the amount of Unallocated Hours for each person is shown.
To filter the specific People shown in your Resource Management grid, click the “Specific People” button, as shown here:
This will open the Person Selection Modal, where you can choose the people you want to filter into view by checking the box next to their name and clicking “Select People”. You can also filter this list by Division, Start and End date, and Role for a more focused list of People to choose from.
Clicking "All People" in the People section of the View Menu will display all active people in the Resource Management grid.
Additionally, you can refine who appears in your grid by clicking the check box next to "Only show people with data", which will filter the people shown in your grid to only those with hours and allocations for the projects in view. This is useful for monitoring specific projects, as checking this box will quickly filter your Resource Management view to only display people with allocations and/or hours worked against these projects.
Projects:
The Projects section of the View Menu allows you to choose which set of Projects, and the associated budget information, you want to be displayed in the grid.
To change the budget information associated with each Project, click into the Budget Variance dropdown menu in the Projects section of the View Menu. The value you select will be reflected in the Budget Variance column in the Resource Management grid.
In this case, it is set to display the “Unallocated” portion of the budget, or the amount of budget that has been yet to be allocated in hours for people working on each Project. Other options to display here include the Budget Left to Work, the Percent of Budget Worked, or the Lifetime budget.
To choose the specific Projects displayed in your gird, click the “Specific Projects” button, as shown here:
This will open the Specific Projects Modal, where you can select the projects you want to filter into view by checking the box next to each project's name. When you are ready to apply your changes, click "Select projects". You can also filter this list by Client Name, Project Number, Billable Status and Project Manager.
Clicking “All Projects” in the Projects section of the View Menu will display all active Projects within their Project Date Parameters, covered below.
If you only want to see Projects with hours and allocations against them, check the box next to “Only show Projects with data.” Checking this box will filter the Projects shown in your Resource Management view to only those with hours and allocations for the people you’ve chosen to display.
Quick Filters in Resource Management
Quick Filters are designed to streamline your focus on a specific person or project with the Resource Management (RM) grid. By using Quick Filters, you can quickly "zoom in" to subset of data you care about, enhancing your ability to make data-driven adjustments to capacity or budgets with minimal effort.
Common ways to use Quick Filters
To filter for a specific person:
- Click a person's name
- At the bottom of the person pop out, you will see the quick filter for that person
- Applying a quick filter to any person on the RM grid will show only projects with data for that person, you can focus on monitoring and adjusting just that person's allocations.
To filter for a specific project:
- Click a billable project's name OR click into either budget field
- At the bottom of any project pop out, you will see the quick filter for that project
Project Budget Pop Out:
- Applying a quick filter to any billable project on the RM grid will show only people with data for that project, so you can focus on monitoring and adjusting just that project's budget and allocations
- Non-billable projects do not support quick filtering at this time
Quick filters behave like all RM filters, in that they:
- Persist across RM pages
- Can be cleared
- Override other views applied to the page
Quick filters cannot be edited, but you can save a copy and make any changes you like to that saved copy. By default, quick filters optimize for monitoring use cases, and "only show people/projects with data" for your selection.
If you want to see "all projects AVAILABLE to your selected person" (for example), you could:
- Apply the quick filter
- Pop open the filter menu
- Uncheck "only projects with data"
Project/Person Filtering by Availability
For ClickTime customers using Moderate or Maximum Project List controls (see this article for more details) we also allow for the grid to be filtered to just the actionable projects or people needed.
Let's use the example of Elise, shown in the screenshot below. We want to focus on just allocating her to the projects she should be working on. We have set our People area of Filters & Settings to only look for Elise. We can see in the screenshot that because Elise is not able to log time against certain projects we have a number of locked cells we cannot interact with.
To simplify our view and only see projects that Elise can log time against, we can enable the "Show only programs for selected people" option (nested under the Programs area). With this enabled, we can now see just the projects that we can and should allocate Elise to.
This can also be done for Projects, where if we have specific Projects selected in our view, we can enable the "Show only people for selected programs" (nested under the People area). This will then limit our view to only show people who are able to log time against the filtered project.
Project Date Parameters
Project Date Parameters are respected in the Resource Management Grid. If a Project’s Start Date or End Date is set on the Project Detail, then the date period will appear below the Project name in the Project Budget modal. Additionally, Projects will appear as inactive in your Resource Management View when viewing a month entirely outside of their start or end date.
Grid Settings:
The Grid Settings section contains options to toggle the display of Worked Time, Total Allocated and Worked Hours, and Person Roles in the grid. By default, all three options will be displayed in Resource Management.
To hide any of the above mentioned information, uncheck the box next to the piece of data you’d like to hide and your Resource Management view will no longer display this information.
Sorting Your View:
You can also choose to sort your view in a variety of ways. To sort the Client/Project rows, click either the Client or Project header section of the grid to alphabetically sort your view by these values.
To sort by Monthly Budget or Budget Variance, click either column’s header. Sorting by these columns will order the grid in ascending or descending order according to the values contained in them.
To sort by a Person's Allocation or Worked columns, click the column header. Sorting by the Allocated column will sort projects ascending or descending by the projects available to that person and the hours allocated. Sorting by the Worked column will sort projects ascending or descending by the hours worked on projects.
You can sort the people shown in your Resource Management view by Name, role, or capacity. To sort by Name and Role, click on the row headers for either value. This will sort the grid alphabetically by Name or Role, depending on the value chosen.
To sort by Person Capacity, click the row header for the value shown. As a reminder, capacity information can be dynamically displayed by using the Person Capacity dropdown menu contained in the People section of the View Menu. Clicking this header will sort the people in your Resource Management grid in ascending or descending order, according to the values shown.
View Actions:
Here is a brief overview of the actions available for Custom Views. The actions available can be seen here:
The table below describes when these actions are available, based on the View you are looking at:
| State | I Can Edit the View | I Can Save Changes | I Can Save a Copy | I Can Share the View | I Can Edit the Name | I Can Delete the View |
| I own a custom view | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| I am using my own custom view. I haven't made any changes to filters and settings | Yes, I can edit filter settings directly without clicking any action buttons | No, I need to make at least one change to enable the "Save" icon | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| I've made edits to my view and there are unsaved changes - Unsaved is appended to the view name | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Someone has shared a custom view with me | No | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| I've made a copy of a shared view - Unsaved is appended to the view name | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| I am using preconfigured view provided by ClickTime | No | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| I've made a copy of a preconfigured View - Unsaved is appended to the view name | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Saving a Custom View:
Once you have selected the Filter & Settings options for your Custom View, you can save it following the steps in the screenshot below:
Once the View is saved, you will see you can now access other View Actions for this View:
Saving Edits to Previously Saved Custom View:
To save an already existing Custom View, it is required that at least one edit is performed to the view. If this is not done, you will notice the icon is not able to be clicked and is a lighter blue, seen here:
Once an edit is made, you will notice the name of the View will show "(Unsaved)" and the save icon will be available to select, seen here:
Sharing a Custom View:
To share a Custom View, click the share icon and then type the name of the individual you wish to share it to. Select their and any other names using these steps and then click Save Selections, seen here:
Copying a Custom View:
To copy a Custom View, click the copy icon and then type the name of the new view, seen here:
Renaming a Custom View:
To rename your already saved Custom View, click the rename icon, seen here:
Deleting a Custom View:
To delete a Custom View, click the delete icon, review the warning message displayed and click the delete option if you wish to proceed, seen here:
Quick View:
Resource Management provides fast and easy ways to filter and sort your grid known as Quick Views. To access Quick Views, click into the Quick Views menu in the header. To apply a quick view to your Resource Management grid, select the view from the drop down menu and your grid will automatically reflect the filtering options associated with that view.
The provided “Preset Views” are as follows:
- People with unallocated hours → Filters the people shown in your Resource Management view to only show people who still have hours left to allocate in the month, according to their Working Capacity.
- Overallocated people → Filters the people shown in your Resource Management view to only show people who have been allocated beyond their Working Capacity for the month.
- People with unmet billing goals → Filters the people in your Resource Management view to only show people who have not yet met their Billing Goals. People without billing goals will not appear in this view.
- Under allocated projects → Filters the Projects shown in your Resource Management view to only show projects that have unallocated budget funds for the month.
- Overallocated projects → Filters the Projects shown in your Resource Management view to only show Projects that have exceeded their monthly budget in allocations.
Monthly Budgets and Allocations
ClickTime's best-in-class Resource Management tool will let you look at monthly budgets and distribute resources. Even if your staff members each have different billing rates that differ by Project, ClickTime can support your plan.
- Entering Monthly Budgets (For Projects)
- Budget Alerts
- Entering Monthly Allocations (For People)
- Copy Month & Clear Month
Entering Monthly Budgets (for Projects)
To assign a monthly budget, click into the cell next to a Project in the Month Budget or Budget Variance columns. Clicking either of these cells will open the Project Budget Modal, where you will be able to enter a budget for any month within the Project’s lifespan.
Once you enter a budget into a month the value will be automatically saved. Additionally, the fields shown alongside a month’s budget will be updated to reflect your changes, namely the Billings, Budget Remaining, and Percent of Budget Worked for that month.
If needed, you can always edit the Lifetime Budget from the Project Details page.
Budget Alerts for Resource Management can be set to notify you when a Project reaches a certain percent of its monthly or lifetime budget.
Alerts are set up per individual, meaning only the person who set up the Alert will be notified. Anyone who can access the Company → Resource Management grid will be able to set up a Budget alert.
At this time, Alerts can only be set for billable Projects.
Types of Budget Alerts:
- Monthly Budget Alerts
- Lifetime Budget Alerts
- Budget Alert Emails
Monthly Budget Alerts
To set an alert, go to the Company → Resource Management page and click anywhere in the specific cell of the Project you would like to be alerted for.
If the bell is gray, that means you have not set any alerts for that Project. A darkened bell means that is an active alert in place.
Please note that Alerts are Project-specific and will need to be individually configured for each Project you wish to be notified about.
After opening the Budget Alert window, check the appropriate box to set an alert based on the Monthly budget. When doing so, please be aware that it will set an alert for every month the Project has a budget.
Next, set the budget threshold. When the budget reaches this percentage, that will trigger the alert.
This value defaults to 90%, but can be changed at any point during the lifetime of a Project.
When you've checked the box and set a budget threshold, you can either close the window, or set an additional lifetime budget. To set another monthly budget, close the window and repeat the process for the next Project.
To disable the monthly Budget Alert, un-check the box.
Lifetime Budget Alerts
To set up a lifetime budget alert, click in the Project cell to open the Budget Alert pop-up, and check the box in the Lifetime Budget Alert section. Then, set the budget threshold at which you would like to be alerted.
Just like with Monthly Budget Alerts, the threshold is the percentage of budget that when reached triggers an alert. This can be edited at any point.
Please note that Lifetime Budget Alerts can only be configured for Projects that have a Lifetime Budget.
You can now close the window and add additional Budget Alerts as needed. To stop receiving lifetime budget alerts, uncheck this same box.
Alert Emails
When a Project’s budget reaches the threshold you specified, you will receive an email at the email address associated with your ClickTime account.
Clicking “View the status of this Project” will take you to the Resource Management grid, where you can take note of your Project’s status as well as make any necessary changes.
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.
To begin, 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:
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.
Bulk Actions: Copy and Clear Month
Copy and Clear month are easy ways to quickly populate, or clear a month’s worth of data. Both are accessible via the Bulk Actions menu in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
PLEASE NOTE: this is an administrator-only function.
In selecting either Copy or Clear month, you will be prompted to specify which information you would like to copy or clear from a month. You may choose to copy or clear allocations, budget data, or both. Please note that these actions will overwrite any existing data for the information you choose to update.
To only copy or clear projects and people that are displayed in your current Resource Management View, select "Projects in my current view" for Budgets and "People and Projects in my current view" for Allocations. People and projects not shown in your current view will not be changed.
PLEASE NOTE: When using Copy Month for All Projects and All People, the system will copy every budget and/or allocation for active Projects from the previous month into the current month. This may included data that is not included in your current view or filter.
ALSO: if you are working in a custom (unsaved) view, be sure to save and name the view prior to using Copy Month, in order to ensure that all People, Allocations & Projects copy over successfully.
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 Management 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 2022, your team would still be able to edit budgets and allocations for July 2022, but not for months prior.
More details on changing the Company Lock Date can be found in this section of our help documentation.
Optimizing your team's capacity is easy with ClickTime's Resource Management (RM) module. This piece of RM is a dynamic, interactive surface that lets you plan your team's workload/allocations for up to 6 months at a time, and answers questions like:
- Who has the capacity to take on new work?
- Is the team at risk of burnout?
- Are team members as billable as they should be?
- How is time off affecting our capacity to do work?
- Do we need to hire additional staff?
Capacity View can be accessed by all managers and administrators who can use Resource Management. Project managers who can only access their own projects can see all people, but they can only see, add, and edit allocations for their own projects. Managers who have view only access are not able to manage allocations.
Metrics
ClickTime's Capacity view displays a heatmap of your staff's workload, making it easy to identify who needs more work or who may need to delegate some of their tasks.
To choose how to evaluate people's allocations, select an option in the upper right corner of your screen. The page shows you two important metrics:
- % of total capacity: How much of each person's capacity has been allocated compared to their total capacity. For example, if you've allocated 96% of Bob's capacity through March, he may not be able to take on another project until April.
- % of billing goal: How much billable time each person has been allocated compared to their billing goal in hours. For example, if you've only allocated Bob 45% of his target billable hours for the foreseeable future, you may need to find more billable projects for him to work on.
Each time you return to the Capacity page, ClickTime will display the metric you chose last time.
Editing People's Allocations
By clicking on any person's row in the heatmap, you can access additional details about how they are allocated. This helps you manage planned capacity usage more granularly, act on opportunities to shift assignments around to optimize your team's billability, and resolve any redundancies across important revenue streams.
If you don't see the project you're looking for, you can add it to the person by clicking the "Add Project" button. You will se a combined Client/Project menu. This menu is searchable, and will only show projects available to the selected person.
As soon as you enter an allocation, you will see an update in the heatmap, so you get quick feedback about your allocations impact on people's capacity and billing goals. You will also see an updated in the total row for your selected person (which shows the sum of allocated hours per month).
Tabbing through rows will let you quickly allocate time for future months.
You can add and edit allocations for any valid project right from this page. Projects that meet special conditions may not be editable. If the project:
- is non-billable: :non-billable" label (editable)
- is outside the project's start and/or end date: shading lines, plus a hover (delete only)
- is no longer available to the employee: shading lines, plus a hover (non-editable)
- is inactive: grey & italicized text, plus "inactive" label (editable)
All project allocations will appear, regardless of project status or which metric you are viewing. This is so that you have full context for how allocations impact the person's score.
If you switch between metrics or timeframes while an individual's allocation details are open, they will stay open. If you sort while allocation details are open, they will stay open. Actions that refresh the page will close the allocation details.
If the person you're looking at is assigned to many projects, you can scroll to see additional allocation rows. You can also sort a person's allocations, by project name, or in ascending/descending order. Sortable data is indicated in blue.
You can open allocations details for more than one person at a time, to enable comparisons and balance workloads.
Timeframes & Date Navigation
Choose from a three or six month timeframe at the upper righthand corner of your screen. By default, you will see a three month timeframe the first time you load the page. Custom timeframes are not available at this time.
To move forwards or backwards in time, use the date picker or arrows at the top left of your screen. The "selected month" in the picker is the one that will show up in the leftmost column of the capacity page. The same month will also be displayed on the RM Grid and RM Dashboard.
ClickTime will remember the calendar month and timeframe you used during your last visit, and return you to it the next time you visit the Capacity page.
Any historical data (information from previous months) is available in Capacity View but please note you will only see allocations and not worked time.
Sorting the Heatmap
You can sort the heatmap in several ways:
- Person Name: Will sort people alphabetically. Click again to sort ascending/descending.
- Role: Will sort people alphabetically by Role. Click again to sort ascending/descending.
- Month Name: Will sort people numerically by % value. Click again to sort ascending/descending.
Understanding the Impact of Time Off
To see how taking time off affects someone's capacity in a month, hover over the cell in the heatmap. Here are three examples:
- Jim hasn't taken any time off this month and can work at full capacity.
- Jim has taken some time off this month, which limits his capacity.
- Jim has taken the entire month off and has no capacity to work. If you assign him tasks, he will be overallocated.
In all three scenarios, Jim has different billing goals. In scenario 1, his billing goal in hours stays the same. In scenario 2, his billing goal changes to account for the time he takes off. In scenario 3, Jim doesn't have a billing goal because he doesn't have working capacity.
Using Filters
All of the tabs in ClickTime's Resource Management module dynamically respects your filter selections. When you navigate between tabs, your filters stay intact, so you can stay in your workflow without interruption. You can also use shared and custom views on this page. Preset views do not apply to the Capacity page.
One note about how filters work on the Capacity tab: this page is all about people. It will automatically respect your people filters. You will not see the list of people change depending on which projects you have selected, unless you use project filters to limit the set of people returned on this page (ex. only show people for the selected projects).
To use custom Quick Views:
- Use any of your existing Quick Views on the Capacity tab or create new ones.
- When you filter from the Capacity tab, you won't see all the grid settings you have on the grid because they are not relevant to the capacity heatmap.
- Any views you create from the Capacity tab will inherit grid settings from the view you were using before you added new filters.
- Default grid settings are: show worked time, show totals, show roles, sort people alphabetically by name, and sort projects alphabetically by client and then project name.
If your selected filters return no results, you will see a prompt to choose new filters, or use the "Clear Filters" option to return to your default state of all people, all projects (active only).
Exporting Your Heatmap Data
To export heatmap values for either metric, follow these steps:
- Click on "reports" in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.
- Choose "capacity export" from the dropdown menu.
- The export will show the metric, timeframe, and people you've selected. However, it will not show detailed allocations or time off.
Mathematics Behind Capacity View
The heatmap gives you simplified view of your staff's workload, where everyone is evaluated on a scale of 0-100% capacity, or 0-100% of billing goal. This way you can compare everyone equally, easily see if anyone is over or under-allocated, and easily spot patterns and trends.
How do we calculate percent values?
% of total capacity: Allocations in hours/Capacity
% of billing goal: Billable allocations in hours/Billing goal in hours
Why is "NA" displayed instead of a percent value?
There are conditions that will result in "NA" instead of a numeric percentage. This happens when we cannot calculate a logic number, because we are trying to "divide by zero".
This happens when the denominator (total capacity, or billing goal in hours) is zero (or less).
Example: Bob has 100 hours available in February. He took all 100 hours off. His total capacity is 0hrs. But someone allocated him 50 hours to their project.
50/0 = not a calculable percent, so we show "NA".
What determines what color a cell is in the heatmap?
The colors in the heatmap are gradient, based on the following thresholds. These thresholds are not customizable at this time.
- 0% or "no goal": White
- 1-25%
- 26-50%
- 51-75%
- 76-100%
- 101% or more: darkest blue
Where are we getting the base numbers for capacity calculations?
Available hours and Billing Goals are defined on the person detail page, in the "Resource and Capacity Management" section.
Available Hours in ClickTime is the number of hours a person can work each day, based on their schedule. This number changes each month based on the calendar, and is based on the "Hours Worked Each Day" field on person details.
Capacity in ClickTime is defined as "Available Hours minus time off".
Billing Goals (in hours) are defined as "Capacity multiplied by Billing Goal in %".
The Resource Grid allows you to plan and view details of the monthly project and capacity plan, while the Resource Management Dashboard displays the progress against your plan. The Dashboard helps to optimize project profitability, identify the right resources to meet project demands, and identify gaps in capacity & staffing.
You can navigate to the Resource Management Dashboard by clicking the "Dashboard" tab on the secondary navigation bar. This dashboard shows the same month of data as the Resource Grid, but displayed in a visual format. Select the month you'd like to view, refresh your data, and run reports from the actions menu at the top of the page.
Resource Management Dashboard Filters
Before we examine the Dashboard Tiles, it is important to review the specifics of filters on the Resource Management Dashboard tab.
The Filters & Settings menu on the Resource Management Dashboard does not include "settings" options you see on the Resource Management Grid (i.e., "show" options in the Filters & Settings menu). This is because these settings are unique to the grid view. The settings/show options referred to can be seen in the screenshot below:
Users can invoke, create, and edit custom views from the Resource Management Dashboard.
- Because the dashboard doesn't have "settings" options, users cannot define grid settings from the dashboard.
- To create views tailored for the grid that include grid settings, users should create views from the grid page.
- Views created on the dashboard page will inherit the grid settings of whichever view the user "started from".
Example: I create a view on the Resource Management Grid, and my settings included "show totals". I navigate to the Resource Management Dashboard, while using that view. I make some new selections to people & projects, and save a new view based on those selections. This view inherits the "show totals" setting the view I started on. When I return to the grid, I will see totals on that page.
Hours Worked vs. Allocation Tile
The Hours Worked vs. Allocation Tile shows how worked time in the month is progressing according to the allocated plan. This allows you to see whether your staff is working to plan, falling behind, or over servicing. You can evaluate next steps based on how much of your calendar month has already elapsed. For example, if your staff has completed 25% of their billable hours, but the month is 75% elapsed, you may need to follow up.
The first bar shows the total number of allocated hours and the total number of worked hours to date in the selected month. The second bar shows the total number of billable worked hours to the total number of billable hours allocated. This second bar will be hidden for companies with Task Based Billing Models. The dotted vertical line shows how much of the selected month has elapsed. The "View Report" button will open the Project Allocations & Availability Report in a new tab.
When applying a filter to the Dashboard, this tile will return data for selected people ON selected projects.
Billables Tile
The billables chart shows the day by day progression of billings worked in the month. The dotted horizontal line shows the total amount of allocated billables, or the goal for the month. The "View Report" button will open the Budget Summary by Client Report in a new tab.
When applying a filter to the Dashboard, this tile will return data for selected people ON selected projects.
Note: The Allocated line will be hidden for companies with the Task Based Billing Models.
Budget Allocated Tile
The Budget Allocated Donut Chart shows the total amount of monthly budgets for your projects in the selected month. Your budgets may set targets for profitability. This chart shows whether your monthly allocations prepare you to hit those targets.
The chart shows a breakdown of how much of the total budgets have been allocated or unallocated in currency and by percent. The "View Report" button will open the Project Allocations & Availability Report in a new tab.
This tile also will turn orange to alert you when projects are being overallocated to. This tile is programed to turn orange and enter it's alert state when the amount of allocated dollars is more than 105% of the budgeted dollars. We have set this at 105% in an effort to not alert too early
When applying a filter to the Dashboard, this tile will return allocation and time off data for the selected people, regardless of which projects they worked on. If there is a need to see allocations against specific projects, refer to the Hours Worked vs. Allocation Tile.
Note: This Legend chart will be hidden for companies with Task Based Billing Models.
Time Distribution Tile
The Time Distribution Donut Chart shows the total possible working hours for your people in the selected month. It shows a breakdown of how time is being spent between Time Off, Allocated Hours, and Unallocated Hours. This helps you know if your staff has the capacity to take on the work you have planned, or whether you have room to take on new business. This also lends insight into how unpaid time will impact people's capacity in a given month, so that you can plan ahead.
This tile also will turn orange to alert you when time is being overallocated based on possible working hours. The tile is programmed to turn orange and enter it's alert state when the amount of hours allocated is more than 5% greater than the possible working hours for that month.
When applying a filter to the Dashboard, this tile will return allocation and time off data for the selected people, regardless of which projects they worked on. If there is a need to see allocations against specific projects, refer to the Hours Worked vs. Allocation Tile.
Allocation Summary Tile
The Allocation Summary Tile shows which of your projects and people are Under-allocated, Fully Allocated, or Overallocated. This helps in planning how to distribute capacity over several projects. Clicking each number will open the Resource Management Grid, filtered to the selected people or projects. Note: Clicking through the grid will overwrite your current grid filters and settings.
Below are the evaluating conditions for each of the categories:
- Project allocated at least 5% under budget
- Allocated billings are at least 5% under the monthly budget. For example, a billable project that has a monthly budget of $10,000 will appear in this count when the allocated billings against this project is under $9,500.
- Project Fully Allocated
- Allocated billings are between 95% and 105% of the Monthly Budget. For example, a billable project that has a monthly budget of $10,000 will appear in this account when the allocated billings against this project is between $9,500-$10,500.
- Project allocated at least 5% over budget
- Allocated billings are at least 5% over the monthly budget. For example, a billable project that has monthly budget of $10,000 will appear in this count when the allocated billings against this project are over $10,500.
Note: The Project Row of all counts will be hidden for companies with Task Based Billing Models.
- People allocated at least 5% under Billing goal
- Billable hours allocated are at least 5% under the person's Billing Goal for hours in the month. For example, a person with 160 possible working hours in the month may have a billing goal of 80%. This means that their monthly billing foal in hours is 128. If this person has fewer that 121.6 billable hours allocated to them in the month (95% of the way to their billing goal), then this person is considered under-allocated.
- People Fully Allocated
- If the person has a Billing Goal:
- Allocated Billable Hours are greater than or equal to 95% of users' Billing Goal in Hours
- AND
- Allocated Hours are less than or equal to 105% of users Capacity
- If the person does not have a Billing Goal
- Allocated Hours are within 95%-105% of users' Capacity
- If the person has a Billing Goal:
- People allocated at least 5% over capacity
- The total allocated hours for a person are at least 5% over a person's capacity in hours for the month. For example, if a person has 160 hours of capacity, and they are allocated above 168 hours, they are considered over-allocated.
When applying a filter to the Dashboard, the Project row of this tile will return data for selected projects, regardless of who was allocated (this tile row ignores "people" filters). The People row of this tile will return data for selected people, regardless of which projects they were allocated to (this tile row ignores "Project" filters).
Budget Tiles
The Lifetime Budget tile shows the count of projects that have worked billings that exceed their lifetime budget. The Lifetime worked billings include the past months and are inclusive of the month selected. For example, if your Lifetime Budget was exceeded during the month of March, and you navigate to February's Dashboard, the project will not have exceeded the lifetime budget. The Monthly Budget tile shows the count of projects that have worked billings that exceed their budget. Clicking each tile will open the Resource Management Grid, filtered to the selected projects.
When applying a filter to the Dashboard, both the "Over lifetime budget" and "Monthly budget" rows of this rile will return data for selected projects.
Note: Clicking through to the grid will overwrite your current grid filters and settings.
Utilization Tile
The Utilization Tile shows a gauge of how much of your worked time is billable in the month. This tile will return data for selected people but does not answer the question "how utilized was person A on Project B".
- Utilization = Total Billable Hour Worked For Selected People/Total Hours Worked For Selected People
Next to that percentage, we display the Utilization that was planned according to the allocations for the selected month.
- Planned Utilization = Total Billable Hours Allocated For Selected People/Total Allocated Hours For Selected People
Clicking this tile will open the Resource Utilization Summary Report.
Time Entry Completeness Tile
ClickTime allows you to determine that an employee is classified as "incomplete" if less than a certain number of hours have been entered for a day or week. The Time Entry Completeness Tile provides visibility of how much time has been entered into ClickTime compared to what is expected at that point in the month. 100% complete means that everyone has met all completeness requirements up to the current point in the month. Clicking this tile will open the Time Entry Completion page.
When applying a filter to the dashboard, this tile will return data for People specifically and will ignore any "Project" selections in the filter. This tile is related to our Time Entry Completion feature (TEC) which allows us to measure how "full" someone's timesheet is. Because of the relation to TEC, the tile is limited to People data.
Worked Billables Tile
The Worked Billable gauge shows how your total worked billables in the month is progressing towards the total allocated billables. Clicking this tile will open the Resource Management Budget Summary Report.
When a filter is applied to the Dashboard, this tile will return data for selected projects and people.
Differences with Task-based Billing
ClickTime offers a variety of Billing Models that our customers can take advantage of. The billing model of your account can be found and controlled under Company ---> Preferences ---> Billing Rates. For more information on how Billing Rates work in ClickTime, please see our comprehensive article found here.
To successfully use Resource Management, the Billing mode itself can be based on Tasks but the Billable object must be Project. If Task is selected as the billable object, you will not be able to enable Resource Management and if Resource Management is already enabled, you will not be able to select Tasks. If you are interested in using Tasks as the billable object and are still interested analyzing project/employee performance, please see our article on our Project Insights tool found here.
In the screenshot below, you can see that a Task based billing model is selected and Project is the billable object.
For Customers who are using a Task-based Billing model, you will notice some differences in how certain data is displayed in Resource Management, which we will highlight below.
Regarding the Resource Management Dashboard
For the "Hours Worked vs. Allocation", the Billable bar will not be displayed.
For the "Billables" bar chart, the allocated dashed line will not be displayed.
For the "Budget Allocated" tile, only the total budget will be available.
For the "Allocation Summary, the Projects row will not be displayed.
For the "Utilization" tile, the planned utilization % is not displayed.
For the "Worked Billables" tile, the gauge will be empty and the expected billings amount will not be displayed.
Regarding Reports
The Resource Utilization Summary report will show allocated billings as 0.
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 left of the time entry options are the other Personal Dashboard options:
There are up to 3 different dashboards that will provide you with the following information:
1. Leave Availability will show hours of Leave that are currently available (access to this panel requires using out Time Off and Accruals Module - more information here).
2. Billable Hours Goal will show the progress made towards the monthly billing goal:
3. 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:
If you would like to hide allocations information from the personal dashboard, you can do so in the Project Estimations section of Company Preferences. By unchecking "Show planned allocations in time entry pages.", your staff will no longer see information about their allocation in the Day View or Week View pages.
ClickTime's Resource Management 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.
- Exports
- Summary and Overview Reports
- Availability and Allocation Reports
- Project Allocations vs Actuals
- Resource Utilization Summary
Reports are accessible via the drop-down menu in the upper right hand corner of the Resource Management grid. Clicking on a report's name will either generate that report for you or take you to the report criteria page for the report:
Additionally, Resource Management reports have their own section on the Company → Reports page:
Exports
ClickTime offers two methods to export the data from your Resource Management 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.
The Flat Data Export is also available from "Resource Management" section of the Company → Reports page:
Summary and Overview Reports
ClickTime has three reports that will summarize your Resource Management data. All can be found on the Resource Management page:
Additionally, all three are available in the Resource Management section of the Company → Reports page:
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 "Resource Management Budget Summary" report will show you each Project, and is available from both the Company → Reports and Resource Management pages:
There is also a version that summarizes all Project data to show you a Client overview. This report is only available from the Company → Reports page:
In addition to the Summary options, the Project Lifetime Overview Report will show you top-level data, including the total lifetime budget, all worked billings, the variance between the two, and monthly worked averages. You can run this for specific Clients or Projects.
This report is available from both the Resource Management grid and the Company → Reports page.
Allocations and Availability Reports
Allocations and Availability Reports
ClickTime offers 3 different reports to help you understand Allocations and Availability by Person or Project. These reports can be run for multiple months at a time and will group the columns by the month included in your criteria. Hours must be worked or allocated in order for the person/Project to be included in the report.
The People Allocations Summary report will show you how many hours are available for each employee by month, how many have been allocated, and how many have yet to be allocated. The report is grouped by the optional "Role" field on the Person Details page.
When running the report, you will have the option to choose the employees you are interested in. This report is available from the Resource Management and Company →Reports pages.
The People Allocations & Availability report will show you how many hours have been allocated and worked by Person, then Client, and then Project. It will also show you how many hours they have left to work according to their allocations.
When running the report, you will have the option to choose the employees you are interested in. This report is available from the Resource Management and Company →Reports pages.
The Project Allocations & Availability report will show you the number of allocated and worked hours for each person by Project. It will also show how many hours are left to work for each person.
This report can be run by the Client or Project and is available from both the Resource Management grid and the Company → Reports page.
Project Allocations vs Actuals
The Project Allocations vs Actuals report will display the number of hours that were allocated and worked for each Project, as well as how many hours have left to be worked (or have been overworked.
This report will group data by the month. Projects that have been overworked will show a negative number in the "Time Remaining" column:
This report can be run by the Client or Project and is available from both the Resource Management and Company → Reports pages.
Resource Utilization Summary
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 .xlsx file.
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:
You can also use the "Download as Excel" option to generate an .xlsx file with your data. The resulting file will include columns and will revert to the default column order.
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 Management.
- Scrollbars are not displayed (Mac computers)
- If you are not seeing scrollbars when viewing the grid and use a Mac computer, this is usually an issue with your computer settings. The following steps should resolve this:
- From your Apple Menu, go to "System Preference" and then "General"
- Under the "scroll bars" section of the page, choose to show "always"
- Refresh the page and you should see the scrollbar again
- If you are not seeing scrollbars when viewing the grid and use a Mac computer, this is usually an issue with your computer settings. The following steps should resolve this:
If you are still experiencing issues and use a mouse with your computer, please try unplugging the mouse and then plugging it in again.
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