Planning capacity before signing a project
Commitments get made on optimism. Somebody says the team has room, and the team finds out in week three that it did not.
A proposal is close. The work needs a certain shape of team for a certain number of weeks, starting soon.
The real question is narrow: across those weeks, do the hours exist without breaking something already promised?
Read it from the grid. Hours already allocated, leave already approved, holidays already fixed. What remains is the honest answer.
One filter changes the reading. Billable and non-billable separate client commitments from internal work, so a team that looks full may have room once internal projects are counted differently. That is a judgement, not a number the product supplies. It supplies hours, bands and overlays, and leaves the decision where it belongs.
Why one record instead of two
Committing to work is a delivery decision made from HR data. Who is here, who is away, which days are holidays. Reading it from one grid is the difference between a commitment and a hope.
What is switched on
- Resource allocation
- Monthly totals per person and daily bands show where the slack genuinely is.
- Projects
- Existing commitments are visible as projects with resource counts and milestones.
- Leave
- Approved leave in the delivery window is a real reduction, not a rounding error.
- Holidays
- Holidays inside the window shorten it before anyone writes a plan.
- Skills
- Capacity in the wrong skill is not capacity for this piece of work.
- Clients
- The client record carries the timezone and local time, which shapes overlap hours.
What the week looks like
Proposal stage
Pick the weeks and read the monthly totals per person for that period.
Same day
Subtract approved leave and holidays already on the grid. They are drawn on, so this is reading rather than arithmetic.
Same day
Filter the grid by billable to separate committed client work from internal work.
Before committing
Check skills. Free hours from the wrong people are not an answer.
On signing
Create the project and allocate the hours, so the next proposal sees them as taken.
Week one
Compare logged hours against the plan. Drift shows up early or it shows up expensively.
Questions people ask
What does the billable filter actually do?
Projects carry a billable or non-billable flag. The filter separates them on the grid so client commitments can be read apart from internal work.
Is approved leave already subtracted?
Yes. Approved leave in the delivery window shows as L on the grid, and company holidays show as H. The totals you read are the hours that really exist.
Does the plan account for people who have not started yet?
Only once they exist as a person record. Creating the record early is the usual way to plan around a confirmed starter, because the grid draws its rows from the directory.