Resource Manager

Resourcing, timesheets and billing in one place.

Plan who works on what, record time in seconds, and know exactly where every project stands against its budget.

  • Book people onto confirmed and tentative work, week by week.
  • Weekly timesheets with drag and drop, and time recorded as you go.
  • Budget burn, call-off drawdown, utilisation and forecasts.
  • Secure by design, and accessible to WCAG 2.2 AA.

Built for consultancies and professional services teams.

Resource Manager
Help centre

Clients

Projects, tasks and teams

Set up projects for your clients with budgets, tasks, a project manager and a team.

A project is a piece of work for a client. Time is recorded against projects, and each project has its own budget, tasks, team and billing rules. Open Projects in the menu.

  • With Create and change projects and tasks you can add and change projects.
  • With See all projects you can see every project, but not change them.

Projects without a budget

Internal work, such as developing your own tools, often has no budget. Leave the budget in days, hours and money empty (0 counts as empty too). The project then doesn't appear on the Budgets report and is never shown as over budget, but all its time is still recorded and reported:

  • Reports → Time shows the hours on it, and their cost when people have cost rates.

For internal work, consider setting Normal-hours work is to Non-billable in the project's Billing and settings, so its time doesn't count towards billable utilisation.

Finding a project

The list is grouped by client. Select a client to open it and see its projects, and select the arrow beside a project to see its tasks. Expand all and Collapse all open or close every client. Searching, or choosing a client or status, opens the clients it finds.

Creating a project

  1. Select New project. You need at least one client first.
  2. Choose the Client and the Type:
    • Time and materials: billed for the time worked.
    • Fixed price: an agreed price. The budget tracks the effort against it.
    • Call-off: a pre-paid balance of days or money that work draws down.
    • Support services: ongoing support.
  3. Enter a Project code, which must be unique, and a Project name.
  4. Choose the Status:
    • Tentative: not won yet. Enter the Chance of winning; forecasts use it.
    • Confirmed: go ahead.
    • On hold, or Closed: finished. Closed projects accept no more time.
  5. Choose the Project manager, who is added to the team automatically, and a Cost centre. Leave the cost centre empty to use the client's default. Choose the Department (business unit) the work belongs to. Time on the project counts towards that department, whoever records it.
  6. Choose how Time is recorded:
    • To the project: tasks are optional.
    • To a task: people must choose a task.
  7. Choose Who can record time: the project team only, or everyone in the organisation.
  8. Optionally set a Budget in days, hours, money, or any combination, and Dates.
  9. Select Save.

Budgets and contingency

Each task can have its own budget. The project Overview and Tasks pages show, for each unit the project is budgeted in:

  • the Budget,
  • how much is Given to tasks,
  • how much is Not given to any task: the rest of the budget, for work not split by task.

Each unit is split separately. If no task has a budget in a unit (for example, the tasks have days but no money), that unit just says Not split between tasks. Splitting is optional: the project's budget counts in full either way.

Tasks cannot be given more than the project budget unless Allow tasks to be given more than the project budget is on in the project's settings. Once timesheets are recorded, the time used against the budget appears here too.

Opening balances

If a project comes across from another system part-way through, you don't need to bring all its past time across to get the budget right. On the project's Overview, under Opening balance, enter the date you start counting from (As at), what had been used by then (or what was left), and a reason, then select Save the opening balance.

From that date the budget counts your figure plus the time recorded from then on; time before the date no longer counts against it. Timesheets show what is left on the same basis. You can record a new opening balance to replace it, or remove it, and every one is kept with who recorded it and why. You need to be able to manage projects.

Tasks

On Tasks, add a task with a name and, optionally, a budget, its own cost centre and its own department. A task without a department uses the project's. To stop time being recorded against a task, edit it and set its status to Closed. It stays in the list so its history is kept.

The team

On Team, add the people who work on the project. People on the team can always record time on it, even if the project is open only to its team. The project manager stays on the team; to remove them, choose another project manager first.

Call-off and the next statement of work

For a Call-off project, Next statement of work names the project that continues it when its balance runs out. Reports can then show the two together. Time is never moved between them automatically.

Time on a call-off project is always recorded as billable, in and out of hours, so it counts towards billable utilisation and draws down the balance. People can't change it on an entry. To allow other treatments, turn off Call-off time is always billable in Settings, or in the project's Billing and settings. Time already recorded, and time imported from another system, keeps the billing it was recorded with.

Every change to projects, tasks and teams is recorded in the audit log.