Resource Management Software

Resource and Project Management Software

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Improve the utilization of your enterprise's time and money by including ActiveCollab Project Management and its features in your day-to-day.

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Read it all in use cases..

Resource Scheduler

Forecast and plan resources for future projects months, quarters, or years in advance. Make business decisions based on data and your team's skills.

Resource Planning

Before scheduling, resource management starts with serious planning and a forecast. The benefits of careful planning outweigh "winging it" when it comes to managing projects, especially if you're set to take on multiple projects at once. Planning and using a management solution is essential if managers want to keep clients and team members happy.

The two popular techniques used for this purpose are resource leveling and resource smoothing. They both aim to make the most out of the available resources to complete a project.

You could be facing a shortage or excess of resources, but both can be successfully solved if you have a clear plan for projects in the pipeline and the resources they need to be completed.

The crucial steps in the planning process are identifying which resources are needed, forecasting, and allocating. While identifying will give you an idea of what type of job you require for the project, forecasting will tell you how long each activity will take to complete, and allocating will distribute tasks to the right people.

Resource Scheduling

The scheduling phase includes making data-based detailed decisions on the start and due dates of specific tasks, assigning them to particular users, and ensuring their workload is adequate. These details will clarify whether you need additional staff or have space for additional projects.

In the past, the business tools used for scheduling included large whiteboards and spreadsheets. Their main disadvantage is updating them and manually rescheduling tasks and milestones.

Luckily, nowadays, there are plenty of online tools that can help managers organize projects and free up their time by automatically rescheduling activities. ActiveCollab is one of them, and we've prepared a detailed guide on how to use it best for managing resources in an easy way!

Resource Tracking

The final step in managing resources is tracking them carefully. Don't make the mistake of thinking this activity comes after the project is wrapped up and finished. Sometimes expenses will start piling up even before the project begins. So, you must track the budget, progress, and deadlines throughout a project's lifecycle. This way, you'll make sure not to overstep a project's budget and deadline.

This task can be performed at daily, weekly, or monthly intervals. The great news is that a software resource such as ActiveCollab track data, and all you have to do is check it and compare it with the aimed results regularly.

Why Is Resource Management Important?

One of the most common mistakes in project management is letting one team member carry out most of the work and having everyone rely on them. Businesses must learn that proper allocation of assignments means paving the way for resource forecasting, and there are many enterprise tools for that solution.

Workload Planner, Team Availability, and Team Reporting

Learn all about the phases of project initiation, duration, and completion. Become an expert user of ActiveCollab by checking out how to use it for your business' resource management.

Project Planning

Create a new estimate

Everything starts with an offer. Create an estimate and fill it with essential details such as the client's company name, preferred currency, the description of your services, tax, and discount (if any), and ActiveCollab will calculate the final sum.

Then, you can send it to your client via email and mark it as won if they're pleased with your offer. If you've sent out many offers, it will be easy to overview them on the Estimates page.

Create a new project

We started with estimates because you can create a project out of own estimates. However, that's not the only way. You can create an unlimited number of projects from scratch on the Projects page! They're also easy for all users to overview, filter, group, and sort, so you can find the project you're looking for in a matter of seconds.

Create tasks

Break down your projects into tasks and group them into lists. Gather your team and go over the main activities required to complete the project successfully using ActiveCollab as forecasting software. Use this opportunity to collect rough time estimates and gain a more accurate idea of the necessary resources, but integrate a float calculation to avoid task overlapping.

Add details

Once you have a rough idea of the project's plan, it's time to start filling out each task's details. Describe each task and what needs to be done to complete it. Schedule the start and due dates, and add labels, reminders, and subtasks if necessary.

Project Scheduling

Assign tasks

Scheduling and resource allocation depends on distributing tasks to specific users according to their availability and setting their deadlines. This way, you'll know who you can rely on, when, and with what. With a management tool such as ActiveCollab, you can assign each task and subtask to team members and define the start and due dates.

Create dependencies

Some tasks are connected so that one can't start before another one is completed. In the digital-based industry, video creation could be a good example: you can't film before the writers complete the script, and you can't make a montage before recording the necessary materials.

ActiveCollab is very handy in this case because you can connect the assignments in two ways. The first is more visual and requires viewing a project in the timeline view, also known as the Gantt chart. Connect the dots of two tasks to create a dependency between them and forecast their schedule. It's that simple!

The alternative way to do the same is to open a task and add its dependent task. You can even create it on the spot if it doesn't exist yet.

Include days off

You can't assign a task to someone if they're on vacation. There's no need to regularly fill out and update various calendars because ActiveCollab keeps you in the loop on your team's capacity in real-time. Every user can insert their days off or sick leave in the system. The information on their availability will be displayed in at least three places: Workload, the date picker, reports, and timesheets.

Workload planner

Once all the tasks have been appointed an assignee and due date, they'll appear on the board. Scheduling assignments and project phases are much easier when you have powerful software on your side. You'll be able to drag and drop tasks from one user to another, and they'll be automatically reassigned. The Workload feature also takes into account days off, so it will reschedule assignments in real-time around vacations, weekends, sick leave, and non-working days.

The date picker

So far, you've probably gathered that you can assign tasks to team members, drag and drop assignments, and schedule due dates. But what happens when you've appointed someone for an assignment whose deadline needs to be moved, and they've taken a week off? Here's a solution: in ActiveCollab, the task's date picker will turn the dates when someone's absent red, so you know precisely when they're not available without having to check other apps or calendars!

Project Tracking

Timesheet

The integrated Stopwatch helps you and your team track the time spent on tasks and projects. Many apps and management software offer time tracking, but only a few will neatly sort out your teams' hours in timesheets. The ActiveCollab Timesheet collects all-time records and includes information on days off, so it can also be used as scheduling software.

Reporting

ActiveCollab houses timesheets and different types of data reports, and now we'll only focus on a few key features. The Team and Projects Timeline will give you an accurate picture of your teams' and projects' progress. You can filter them out and enjoy a visual overview of tasks in a specified timeframe.

Estimated vs. Tracked Time is a report that gives you an insight into previous results and a lesson for the future. Filter out time records by team members, projects, or tasks, and learn how to estimate hours better.