Review the account settings overview for your Resource Management account.
Set up your account
Step 1: Before you get started
If you plan to evaluate Resource Management with a team, first decide who will be part of the evaluation team. You don't have to create multiple trial accounts for everyone who wants to be involved in testing; you can create one account and then invite the other team members.
Create one Account Owner account from which you invite participating team members. The person who creates the account will be the Account Owner. You must have Resourcing Admin permissions to be the Account Owner.
When your team evaluates the same instance, you get a more realistic view of how Resource Management works.
Then, if you continue with a paid subscription, you'll already have an account built out.
Resource Management handles all your trial data with the same strict Privacy & Security policies for all customer data.
Step 2: Select your account settings
In Account Settings, set company defaults and add important business information like project dropdown lists, locations, and official holidays. Account Settings are organized so you can go through each section on the left menu and add information about your company.
For a trial account, you must complete the following sections: Account Settings, Roles, Disciplines, Bill Rates, People, and Projects.
You can change the account owner on the settings page. Only Resourcing Admins can be account owners, and there can only be one owner.
From the main Account Settings page, indicate if you want to use Resource Management for time tracking and what level of detail you want to track.
Should you track time or not? Good question. Learn more about time tracking if you’re not sure how your organization should approach timesheets.
If you don't plan to track time in Resource Management, keep in mind you can always integrate with other time-tracking tools.
1. Select your incurred hours setting:
When you make an assignment on the schedule, time entry suggestions appear on a person’s timesheet. That person can choose to confirm or change these hours. Unchanged are considered unconfirmed in Resource Management; changed hours are confirmed.
If you're tracking time in Resource Management, select Confirmed hours only or Approved hours only. This way, actual hours from the timesheets show up on the Project Status as incurred time or fees.
When your organization isn’t tracking time, you can still track incurred time using the original schedule. Select Confirmed hours and unconfirmed past scheduled hours for passive tracking.
You may want to start with the Confirmed hours and unconfirmed past scheduled hours during your free trial and change it once your team starts tracking time toward your projects.
2. Select your time tracking setting:
Option 1: 1/2 Days
This option is great for teams with little variation in their daily activities, typically because people are working on one or two projects at a time.
- Pro: Time is entered in 4-hour increments, and the Confirm Suggestions button makes entering time easy.
- Con: You won’t get the same accuracy as other time entry settings.
Option 2: Hours & minutes
This setting combines the efficiency of ½ days with the accuracy of Itemized. People can enter the exact amount of time spent on each project or phase and confirm the suggested hours for the days they work according to the plan. This design has a timer (available in Day view), to eliminate guesswork when it comes to entering time.
- Pro: Team members can track and report on actual time spent per project without adding unnecessary steps to the workflow.
- Con: Your team can't add categories or notes to timesheets, so you won’t get the level of detail you would with the itemized option.
Option 3: Itemized Hours & Minutes
This is the most detailed time entry setting. People can assign a category to each entry and add more detail in the notes field. Use these same categories to assign sub-budgets per project for an additional reporting layer.
This is the best option if you want to understand how long work actually took to complete – and compare it against scheduled timeframes. Over time, you’ll be able to more accurately predict how long projects take to complete, based on a comparison of scheduled hours vs. actual hours spent.
When you track itemized hours and minutes, you can select Require a category entry when entering time. Use this setting for billing clients or other projects that require detailed time entry information.
Requiring a category with each time entry deactivates the option to bulk confirm suggested hours for a given day.
- Pro: Itemized time tracking is the most accurate choice; you can break down time based on specific activities (like meetings, travel, etc.) and report on those details. Customize tasks in Account Settings > Time & Fee Categories.
- Con: Since this includes the most detail, time entry takes longer than the other options
Step 3: Set up roles and disciplines
Before adding team members, add Roles and Disciplines from your Account Settings. Disciplines are the departments in your organization (ex: Finance, Research, Visual Design), and Roles are the levels of expertise you use (ex: Director, Junior, Lead).
Step 4: Set up bill rates
If you're a professional services company and you charge clients for your time, use Bill Rates.
You can assign a bill rate to each person based on their Discipline/Role, or a bill rate unique to the individual.
For example, you could set your account so that Design Director = $200/hr (Account Settings > Bill Rates), or you could give Charlie a specific bill rate of $200/hr (Edit screen of Charlie's profile)
Bill Rates are the external rate charged to a client for services. It typically includes Cost + Overhead + Markup.
If you don't want your team to view project financials or bill rates, you can hide this information when you set permission levels.
Step 5: Adding & inviting people to your account
1. Add a roster of team members and needed placeholder resources.
Add all the resources you plan to include in the software (you have unlimited seats during your trial), but only send invitations to your core group of Resource Management testers.
2. While only first and last names are required to add a person, you can add more properties later on to filter or group your team.
Once your people are added, you can invite them to your account. They’ll receive an email to accept your invitation and create a log in.
3. Add properties to your people.
You can add locations (city, county, team, etc.), bill rates, utilization targets, and any other Custom Fields that your organization uses to group people, such as skill sets, the person’s manager, certifications, etc.
Before giving access, check the permission levels for each person to make sure they can view or make changes as desired.
4. Create Placeholders
When staffing a project, you don’t always know who you'll need for your projects. Setting up Placeholder Resources gives you the flexibility to hold a project assignment without having a specific person to assign it to.
Step 6: Adding projects
Add two to five projects. Build them out to test and understand how your process maps to Resource Management. Now that you’ve added the basics of each project, provide more detail on the Project Page with phases, budgets, team members, and tasks.
Step 7: Using the schedule
You have Account Settings, people, and a few projects. Look at the Schedule to see who’s working on what, when people will become available, when projects are coming up, and more.
Collapse the schedule view to see a condensed view of your team's availability. Select the drop-down menu above your team on the People view of the schedule and select Hide All Details.
