How do I do resource planning in Excel?
Resource planning in Excel takes three sheets. A people list holds each person's standard day. A time-off sheet holds leave and holidays, and a grid of people by days holds planned hours per project. Conditional formatting flags anyone booked past their day. The spreadsheet holds up until leave changes faster than somebody updates it.
Excel is a fair place to start. A good spreadsheet has the same shape any resourcing tool uses. Build it properly and moving later is easy.
Start with a sheet of people. One row per person, with their name, role, department and standard hours per day. Keep it as the single place where a new joiner is added.
Next comes time off. One row per absence, with the person, the start date, the end date and the type. Add your company holidays as a separate list on the same sheet.
Then build the grid. Put people down the side and the working days of the month across the top. Each cell holds the hours planned for that person on that day, with a project code in front. If you prefer, use one row per person per project.
Formulas do the checking. A COUNTIFS against the time-off sheet sets a person's available hours to zero on a holiday or a leave day. A SUMIFS totals planned hours by person and by project. Conditional formatting colours any cell above the standard day red, and anything under half a day pale.
Review it weekly against what really happened. Pull last week's logged hours from your timesheets and set them beside the plan. The gap tells you whether estimates or allocations need fixing.
The spreadsheet starts slipping at predictable points. Leave approved in another system never updates the time-off sheet on its own. Copies get emailed and edited in parallel. Nobody can see who changed a cell or why.
PeopleMuster keeps the same grid and removes those gaps. People run down the side and days across the top, with planned hours per cell and a monthly total per person. Approved leave appears as an L and company holidays as an H the moment they're recorded. Each day is banded Under, Partial, Full or Over, and the activity log keeps the before and after of every change. It costs $3 per person, per month, with 14 days free.
Related questions
What columns does a resource planning spreadsheet need?
At least four: the person, the project, the date and the planned hours. Add the person's standard day and a time-off lookup, so the sheet can flag overbooking and leave clashes.
How do I show leave in an Excel resource plan?
Keep leave and holidays on their own sheet, one row per absence. A COUNTIFS formula in the grid then sets available hours to zero on those days and highlights any planned work that clashes.
When should resource planning move out of Excel?
Usually when more than one person edits the plan, or when leave is approved somewhere else. At that point the spreadsheet is always a few days behind the team it describes.
Can PeopleMuster replace a resource planning spreadsheet?
Yes. The capacity grid has the same people-by-days layout, with leave and holidays filled in from approvals and the company calendar. It groups by people or by projects.