Resource management software that knows who is away
Resource management software plans who works on what, and for how many hours, before the work starts. PeopleMuster does it in one grid of hours per person per day, and that grid already knows who is on leave.
Each row is a person. Each column is a day of the month. Every cell holds planned hours, and the row ends with that person's monthly total.
Four bands colour the load: Under, Partial, Full and Over. They follow the expected working day, so on the default eight-hour day Full is eight hours and Over is anything past it. A planner reads a month at a glance and finds the two people carrying it.
Leave and holidays are already in the picture. A day off shows an L, a company holiday shows an H, and those hours are gone from the plan before anyone counts them.
That last part is what makes the grid worth trusting. A plan built in a spreadsheet counts every weekday as a full day, then the month starts and three people are away. Here the days are already gone when you plan into them.
The grid switches between a week and a month, groups by person or by project, and filters to billable or non-billable work. There is also a plain data table view for people who would rather read numbers than colour.
Grouping by project answers a different question from grouping by person. One asks who is drowning. The other asks which piece of work is doing the drowning. Most planning fights need both readings before anyone agrees.
Price is where you'll feel it next. On their own pricing pages in September 2026, Float Starter costs $7 per scheduled person a month, Resource Guru starts at $5, and Runn Lite is $7 with a 20-seat minimum. PeopleMuster is $3 per person, and that same $3 covers leave, attendance, timesheets and the other modules too.
What it does
- Four load bands
- Under, Partial, Full and Over, drawn from the planned hours in each cell against the expected working day.
- Leave and holidays subtracted
- Approved leave marks the day L and a company holiday marks it H. Neither day is available to plan into.
- Group by person or project
- One view asks who is busy. The other asks which project is eating the month. Same data, two readings.
- Timeline or table
- The timeline is for spotting shape. The data table is for exporting an argument into a meeting.
What it needs before it works
- Projects have to exist first, because hours get planned against them. A person with hours and no project is an empty row.
- Leave requests need to be approved in the leave module for the L overlay to appear. A pending request does not move the plan.
- The holiday calendar needs the year's dates loaded, or the H overlay has nothing to draw.
- Someone needs the resource allocation permission. Planning is an admin surface, not a self-serve one.
- One person should own the plan. A grid four people edit without talking becomes a record of four different months.
Questions people ask
Can I plan billable and internal work separately?
Yes. The grid filters to billable or non-billable work using the flag on each project, so client load and internal load read apart.
What happens to a plan when someone's leave is approved?
The day is marked L and those hours come out of the plan. Approval is what triggers it, so a request still sitting in the queue leaves the grid untouched.
How much does resource management software cost?
PeopleMuster is $3 per person a month, with resource planning and every other module included. Annual billing is $30 per person a year, and the first 14 days are free with no card.