Skip to main content

Reports – Resource Planning

Analyse planning against actuals and the planned capacity utilization of your employees.

Written by Benny Hahn

Resource Planning comes with two reports. Both are located in the Reports menu in the "Resource planning" group. One compares the planning with the hours actually recorded, the other compares the available capacity of your employees with the time already scheduled.

Note: This article describes the new Resource Planning, which appears in ZEP as the main menu item Planning. If your main menu also contains Work packages, you are still working with the previous resource planning. Its features are described in Feature Overview – Scheduling and Work Packages.

Planning/Actual Comparison

This report compares planned hours with recorded hours, per employee and project in the selected period. It answers the question of how closely your planning matches reality. By default the result is shown as a bar chart.

Columns

Each row of the table shows one combination of employee, project, and time period.

Column

Meaning

Employee

The planned person

Project

The project the person was planned for

Time Period

The time slice according to the selected scale

Plan (h)

The planned hours

Actual (h)

The hours actually recorded

Deviation (h)

The difference between actual and plan

Filters

The filters define which data is included in the report. When you open it, the bookable project statuses are preselected. You can clear that preselection.

Filter

Effect

Time Period

The date range to be analysed

Department

Restriction to departments, only with the Locations and Departments module

Employee

Selection of individual people

Projects

Selection of individual projects

Project status

Restriction to particular project statuses

Project duration

Projects that overlap the period, start within it, or end within it

Project category

Restriction by the category of the project

Employee category

Restriction by the category of the person

With planning only

Hides rows without a planning

Billable/non-billable

Limits the report to billable or to non-billable times

Scale (Table)

Aggregation by day, week, or month, mandatory

Key Figures

Above the table you find key figures summarising the selected period: the total planning, the booked actual, and the deviation in relation to the plan. The deviation carries a sign, so you see at a glance whether too much or too little was booked. One further key figure appears only under certain conditions.

Key figure

Meaning

Appears only

Planning accuracy

How close the recorded hours are to the planning, as a percentage

if neither billability nor "With planning only" is set

The reason for this restriction is a factual one: as soon as you look at part of the recorded times only, planning accuracy could no longer be related meaningfully to the full planning.

Planned Capacity Utilization

This report compares available capacity with scheduled hours, per employee and department in the selected period. It therefore does not show how well you planned, but how much room your team still has.

Columns

The table is sorted by department and lists one person with their time slice per row.

Column

Meaning

Department

The department of the person

Employee

The planned person

Time Period

The time slice according to the selected scale

Available (h)

The capacity left after absences and public holidays

Scheduled (h)

The hours already planned

Still available (h)

The remaining capacity, negative in case of overbooking

Filters

The filters are deliberately leaner than in the planning/actual comparison because this report is calculated on an employee basis only. Available are Time Period, Employee, and Departments. The department filter and the department column require the Locations and Departments module. Without it, ZEP reports by employee only. There is no project, category, or billability filter here.

Key Figures

The key figures summarise the capacity situation in the period: the available capacity, the share scheduled of that capacity, the total still available as the balance of free and overbooked time, and the over/under booking as the number of employees above and below plan. In the matrix view, values above one hundred per cent are marked as overbooked.

Location in the Reports Menu

The two reports are located differently because only one of them is meaningful on a project basis as well.

Report

Employee reports

Project reports

Planning/Actual Comparison

yes, grouped by employee

yes, grouped by project

Planned capacity utilization

yes

no

The planning/actual comparison is two separate views at its two menu locations: filters and favourites apply per entry point, and a favourite carries the axis in its name. Planned capacity utilization always calculates against the capacity of a person. There is therefore no project-related equivalent. The closest thing on the project side is the open planned hours, which you read as a single figure directly in the planning view of the project.

Relation to the Previous Reports

The previous resource planning provided a report of the same name, planning/actual comparison, plus reports on work packages and workload. With the switch, the two reports described here take their place.

Note: Only one of the two resource plannings is active in your account at a time. Old and new reports therefore never appear side by side. How the switch works is described in Switching from the Previous Resource Planning.

Did this answer your question?