With Placeholders, you can create "placeholder" users, which are users without access to Productive, and add their bookings to the Resource Planner.
This means you can schedule people who are not yet part of your organization or plan ahead to see if you need to recruit new teammates.
Placeholders represent a plan for the future: you assign them an expected cost (such as a possible salary), a working capacity, and book them against services to help with your resource planning.
📌 Important! Placeholders cannot be:
Added to projects or budgets through sharing options
Assigned to tasks
Added to docs
They are only used for planning purposes inside the Resource Planner, reports, and scenarios.
You can add Placeholders to deal and budget scenarios — learn more here.
Adding a Placeholder in Settings
Navigate to Settings > Resourcing to create your placeholder.
Tip: start typing Resourcing while in the Settings for the fastest results.
Create a placeholder by adding their name or role, defining their cost rate, and assigning a holiday calendar.
The indicator at the bottom will show you how many resourcing placeholders you used and have left in your pricing plan.
Adding a Booking for the Placeholder
Once the placeholder is set up, you can create bookings for them in the Resource Planner, just like you would for any other team member.
Click + Add booking.
Choose the budget or deal and the service you wish to book them against.
Fill in the required booking details, then click Create booking.
📌 Placeholders are marked with a dotted line in the Resource Planner to distinguish them from regular users.
Note: If you want to link a placeholder to a project, you can only do so from the Resourcing tab (Resource Planner), not from the Project Management section.
Analyzing Placeholders in Reports
Analyze placeholders in reports like the Capacity & Availability report to assess resource utilization and determine hiring needs.
Editing and Managing Placeholders
From Settings
To edit a Placeholder, go to Settings > Resourcing and select the placeholder.
There you can change the color scheme of the placeholder, rename it, and change the cost rate or the working hours (capacity).
From the Resource Planner
In the Resource Planner, you can manage placeholders by selecting the Settings (⚙️) button and choosing "Manage placeholders".
📌 This will take you to Settings > Resourcing > Placeholders.
You can also click the three-dot menu next to a placeholder to:
Reassign all bookings to another user or placeholder
Duplicate the placeholder (note: you’ll need to reassign fields like name and holiday calendar manually)
Edit the placeholder directly
Assign Employee Fields to Placeholders
Since a placeholder serves as a substitute for a person (employee) in Productive, you can assign them employee fields, just like you would for other team members. Here's how to add employee fields to a placeholder:
Navigate to Settings > Resourcing and click on the Placeholder you want to modify.
Beneath the holiday calendar, you'll find a list of available employee fields that you can assign to them.
Then select the desired field from the dropdown menu, which you previously defined in Settings > Employee fields.
