Using the Resource Planner
The Resource Planner in the Resourcing tab is your central tool for allocating time across your team.
Whether you need to see who's working on what—or adjust plans when someone’s out—it helps you stay organized today, next week, or months ahead.
Key Features
See who’s assigned to each service in a budget or deal—and for how long.
Schedule around sick leave, vacations, and other time off.
Distribute workload efficiently and avoid burnout.
Track time easily—each scheduled event appears as a suggestion in My Time.
No need for external tools like Hub Planner or Float—it's built into Productive.
Plan ahead to anticipate revenue and profit over the next 3, 6, or 12 months.
Tasks vs. Services: What’s the Difference?
Understanding the difference between tasks and services is essential for planning and tracking time correctly.
Services are used for time tracking and scheduling. They’re part of budgets or deals and show up on invoices.
Tasks help manage day-to-day project work and internal collaboration.
How They Work Together
Feature | Services | Tasks |
Used for | Scheduling in the Resource Planner, time tracking, invoicing | Project work, collaboration |
Shows on invoice | ✅ | ❌ |
Required for time tracking | ✅ | Optional (can be linked to tasks) |
📌 For example:
You create a budget with services you’ll be delivering.
You book people for these services in the Resource Planner.
You can also create tasks to manage detailed work, but they’re optional.
Layout Options in the Resource Planner
There are three main views in the Resource Planner. Each one gives you a different perspective on bookings.
By Person
See all your team members on the left side of the screen. Use this layout to:
Distribute work evenly
Avoid under- or overbooking people
By Project (Beta)
This view is organized by budgets and deals, which may or may not be part of a project. You’ll see:
Budgets (standalone or project-based)
Deals (not necessarily in a project)
📌 Note: If a budget or deal is linked to a project, the project name appears above it.
🔄 This view is currently in Beta. It replaces the previous "Projects" view, which showed only bookings grouped by project.
The new view includes budgets, deals, and—where applicable—projects.
By Time Off
Use this view to manage and schedule:
Vacations, sick leave
Other types of off-time
Planning Ahead with Placeholders
Planning future work or hiring new teammates? Use Placeholders to book time even if the person isn’t on your team yet.
Placeholders work the same way as regular teammates in both People and Project views.
Access and Permissions
Access to the Resource Planner depends on a user's permission set. Here's how it works.
Default Access
All users can access the Resource Planner by default.
Staff and Staff with CRM can:
See their own bookings under By Person
See their own time off under By Time Off
They do not see the By Project view, as they don’t have access to budgets or deals directly.
Staff with Time and Staff with Time and CRM can:
See their own bookings with full booking details
See others’ bookings only if they’ve been added to the relevant budget or deal
For unshared budgets or deals, they see only basic info (e.g., service name and allocation)
Users with restricted Coordinator, Manager, or Profitability Manager roles can:
See all bookings in the Planner
See full booking details only for budgets and deals they have access to
Users with unrestricted Coordinator, Manager, Profitability Manager, or Admin roles can:
See all bookings and full booking details, regardless of access to specific budgets or deals
📌 Note: The visibility of bookings is based on both users' permissions and sharing access to budgets and deals.
Budget Booking Permissions Explained
To adjust or fine-tune the users' permission sets, use the Permission Builder.
Use the Budget Bookings permission group to define what users can or can’t see when it comes to budget and deal bookings.
The following permissions define what booking information a user can see in the Resource Planner.
Permission | What it allows |
View your own budget bookings | See full details for bookings where the user is assigned |
View basic info for all bookings | See allocation info for all bookings (other peoples' basic booking details) |
View full booking info for bookings on shared budgets & deals | See full booking details for budgets and deals user's been added to |
View full booking info for all budget & deal bookings | See full details for all bookings |
View tentative booking info |
Customizing Access to Time-Off Bookings
Check out this article on Custom Time-Off Permissions for Subsidiary Access to learn how to control who can view and book time off—whether you're managing a single team or multiple offices.
