Using Usage Percentage to Understand Department Load

Viewing department load is an important way for you to see how much work that your departments have been allocated for your current projects and your upcoming projects.

To view department load in Staff Planner, select Usage on the Show menu on the Staff Planner toolbar.  Then select Percentage on the Units menu and select Department on the Grouping menu.  Once selected, then you will see see all your departments and the cell metrics will display the percentage load for each department.  This percentage value is the amount of work that a department has been allocated as compared to their capacity.

Example: A department has 10 staff and has 50 days capacity each week for working on tasks (i.e. 10 staff x 5 days = 50 days capacity).  If there was 25 days of work assigned to the department for that week, then the department load for that week would be 50%.

Hover your mouse over a usage cell and it will display the number of days required and the number of days available for that day, week, month or year.

If the cell is colored red, then this alerts you that there is too much work assigned to the department. This over allocation is a risk to the company whereby the staff may not be able to complete the work in the time allocated.

Click on a usage cell to view the bookings, activities and tasks allocated for that day, week, month or year.

Tip: You can follow the above steps to also view loads for your office locations.  Simply select Location on the Grouping menu to view your locations and you will now see the load on each location for that day, week, month, or year.