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Two issues usually arise during resource tracking. First, resource managers and project managers might be unsure of which metrics to track. Second, they might know what to track but struggle to gather the right information from different tools.
The former problem results in insufficient data for decision-making. The latter leaves managers feeling overwhelmed, mentally strained, and grappling to connect the dots.
Effective resource tracking is about gathering well-organized, easily comprehensible, and accurate data, knowing the right metrics to track, and using insights for informed decisions.
Thousands of our customers successfully track and plan their resources with Float every day—and below are the metrics they usually look for and how they use reports in Float to interpret them. You don’t have to use Float (although we’d sure like it if you did!) for any of this article to make sense. We cover:
- The specific metrics to look for
- Considerations to keep in mind when tracking resources
- The benefits you gain from effective resource tracking
What is resource tracking?
Resource tracking refers to overseeing how resources are assigned and utilized throughout a project. In this context, resources refer to people, time, and money, but the term can also include:
- Office space
- Materials
- Software and hardware
- Machinery
- Finances
Why is it important to track resources?
Tracking resources ensures you are prioritizing high-value work and utilizing your resources correctly. Resource tracking also helps you:
- Keep your projects on schedule
- Keep tabs on who’s doing what and when
- Be notified about the need for more people, time, and/or budget for a project
- Prevent overworking team members
- Avoid keeping team members on the bench
- Keep an eye on your budget and billable hours, so you know where your spending and usage rates are
Use these 9 metrics to track your resources
Below are the metrics and elements you should be tracking for project success:
People
- Utilization rate
- Allocations
- Capacity (number of hours)
- Available skills
Cost and time
- Scheduled hours (billable vs. non-billable hours)
- Scheduled vs. logged time
- Time off and public holidays
- Overtime
- Budget
Editor’s note: we strongly recommend using resource management software to track all the metrics listed above. A dedicated tool consolidates relevant project data in one central place and gives you and your team actionable insights in real time. The examples below are all based on our tool (Float 👋), but the general concept will be applicable even if you choose—gasp!—one of our competitors.
1. Utilization rates
Utilization rates show how much productive work your people are doing compared to their capacity and can signal instances of excessive workload. Targeting a resource utilization rate between 70% and 80% is advisable, as it allows flexibility for project adjustments and helps prevent burnout.
Your team’s capacity and scheduled hours are displayed in the Report dashboard in Float. Visual bars to the far right display their utilization level.
You can spot when a team member’s utilization rate hits 100%. For example, their capacity hours might be 40, and they’re scheduled for precisely that amount.
Alternatively, resource underutilization might arise. For instance, this happens when a team member logs fewer hours due to a skill mismatch, like a data scientist handling data entry much more quickly than a junior person would. Bottlenecks like waiting on dependent tasks can also lead to reduced output.
Float pro tip
Using resource planning software like Float helps ensure your team isn’t underutilized or overbooked and that you maintain optimal utilization rates. Keep track of capacity, allocate work efficiently, and automate tasks like time tracking with pre-filled timesheets.
Learn more2. Allocations
Allocations help you grasp which projects your team is engaged in and the portion of their time dedicated to each. They provide insights for your resource management plan and help improve decisions on prioritization.
Allocations to projects can be easily viewed on your team’s Schedule in Float. You can filter by person, department, or skill type to know who is allocated to what and for how long.
This broader perspective of your team’s time is important for prioritizing work. For instance, imagine your design team allocates six daily hours to a design project with a deadline far out in the future. Faced with a new, urgent project, you can promptly reduce hours from the longer-term project to focus on the impending deadline.
3. Capacity (number of hours)
Your capacity hours are the total hours your team is available for work. Capacity planning is important in this context because capacity constantly changes depending on factors like the team’s workload, administrative tasks, and time off.
For example, a copywriter might have less time to work on other project tasks because they work on revisions for a client’s website copy. Or the designer you depended on for an urgent project is suddenly off with a nasty flu for the next seven days.
If you don’t consider these possibilities while planning projects or scheduling resources, your estimates might be off, and your people might be overloaded or underutilized.
If you’re using Float, team capacity is reflected in the People report. This will vary based on custom work hours, time off, public holidays, and custom holidays, all deducted from a person’s overall capacity.
4. Available skills
Your projects can only happen when people have the right skill sets to get them done. As new projects come in, it’s crucial to review available resources to detect any skill gaps that could stop the projects from progressing.
In Float, you can track skills by clicking the People tab on your topmost left. The interface will display your team members, and you can filter to find specific skills.
For instance, if an upcoming project requires engineers proficient in Javascript and C++, ensure you’re tracking these skills to guarantee resource availability before launching a new website project.
Skill tracking should be a routine task involving:
- Identifying skills needed for upcoming projects
- Locating individuals with the required skills who may be engaged or on leave
Float pro tip
You can use people tags to identify and track individual skills and talents within your team.
Check it out5. Scheduled hours (billable hours & non-billable hours)
Billable hours determine project costs, so it’s important to track them to avoid overruns. You can track them in tandem with non-billable hours, as comparing them will show whether your project is profitable.
For example: while overseeing a team of agency designers, you spot an increasing chunk of time dedicated to non-billable tasks like ad hoc meetings or email answering time. Small red flag! This could indicate a potential financial loss.
You can find how logged compares with scheduled time in your Report dashboard.
6. Logged hours to scheduled hours
Comparing these two shows you if your estimates were accurate. It also improves resource forecasting and gives you a solid baseline for future resource plans.
A disparity between logged and scheduled hours can point you to adjusting your project timelines before it is too late.
For easy comparison, your scheduled and logged times are displayed beside each other in the Report dashboard.
7. Time off, public holidays, and custom holidays
Time off, public holidays, and custom holidays affect your team’s availability and, by extension, the progress of all your projects. You need to take all of the above into consideration during resource planning and allocations, so you don’t suddenly realize—usually, when it is far too late—that there are no resources to work on pending tasks.
Your team’s time off is reflected directly on the Schedule.
You can also filter by specific people or departments to see who will be unavailable and when.
8. Overtime
Overtime impacts both team well-being and the accuracy of your project estimates, and it directly impacts project costs.
You can track your team’s overtime hours in two places in Float:
a) Directly on the schedule where it is displayed in red. You can see the number of overtime next to their profile.
b) On the Report dashboard, where you can find a summary of overtime hours by person, department, or project.
If you notice that your team members are working overtime, you can change the project schedule or resource allocation for the project.
9. Budget
No one wants cost overruns, which is why keeping a close eye on your project budget is essential. However, overspending can sometimes happen without your notice, especially if you’re tracking it in a spreadsheet that doesn’t reflect changes in the project as they happen.
When allocating time to a project in Float, the budget is constantly displayed and updated.
Once you exceed your set budget, the new budget is shown in red, along with the extra hours and the percentage of costs incurred.
The Report dashboard also shows the cost overruns as they happen.
Budgets are divided into phases, enabling you to pinpoint where you might have overspent. You can also customize how you track your budgets: for example, an agency or law firm might find hour fees more suited to their need. You can see the exact hours spent instead of numbers if you track budgets in hours.
There are five budget types available in Float, so you can track your budget by
- Hourly fee
- Phases
- Fee by project
- Hours by phase
- Hours by project
Tracking resources doesn’t have to be complicated
Everything you need to know about your project data in one central place. Plenty of actionable insights in real time.
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Closing thoughts: insights are just the first step in the right direction
The information about your resources becomes powerful when you use it to make informed decisions. Based on your findings, you might need to consider slowing down spending, possibly hiring more personnel before initiating a project, or redistributing team members to other projects.
Whatever the situation, we think you can rely on Float (or any other tool... but mostly Float 😉) to simplify your resource-tracking process and get valuable insights to guide your actions. With all your project and people data consolidated, real-time updates, and seamless integrations, our resource management software is the ideal tool to improve your tracking. Want to give it a try today?
Some FAQs about resource tracking
Your resources could be used for multiple projects at the same time. But you need to ensure they are involved in projects with the most impact.
You can prioritize projects by deciding how each project matches business goals, what your resource capability is, how urgent a project is, and what’s at risk if you don’t finish it.
Once you figure these out, you can make better choices using the information you find while tracking resources.
Estimates are usually not 100% accurate, but they can be close.
If you notice that while tracking your resources, your estimates are consistently off, it might indicate larger issues like wrong baselines. For example, assuming a task will take one hour when it actually takes four.
Digging deeper to find the cause is important so you don’t miss the mark.
For instance, you might discover that project managers use guesses instead of past project data during resource scheduling. If that’s the case, you can work on improving your estimates.
The closer your estimates are to reality, the better for your project.
