Productive's Resource Planner is a powerful tool that helps you make big-picture time allocations across your team, helping you plan your resources, book people for time off, services in budgets or deals, monitor their capacity, and create placeholders for future hiring and work.
In addition to planning directly from the Resource Planner, bookings can also be linked to tasks — whether created from a task or from the Planner, they use the same booking form and stay connected to both the task and the underlying service.
Productive is rolling out an updated booking form. If your booking form looks different from the screenshots in this article, your organization hasn't been switched over yet: the rollout is gradual. Learn more here.
1) Booking Resources from the By Person View
When you select By Person from the Resourcing menu, you’ll see a clear list of team members or teams on the left side.
This helps you manage resources better, avoiding overworking or underutilizing anyone. Follow the steps below to create a booking and schedule someone on a service from this perspective.
📌 If you don’t see someone you expected in the list, try adjusting the filters to refine your search.
1 | First, ensure that you have the right permissions to add new bookings. |
2 | Navigate to your Resourcing tab, hover over the Resource Planner and select By Person from the dropdown. |
3 | Select the start date for the booking, then drag to set the duration. |
4 | If you can't find your budget or deal service, check the possible reasons here. |
5 | Confirm the start and end dates for the booking and choose how much time you are allocating per day or in total. |
6 | Fill in the booking details and then click Create booking to add the booking to your Resource Planner. |
👉 When creating a booking from the Resource Planner, you can link it to a task using the Task field in the booking form.
2) Booking Resources from the By Project View
When you select By Project from the Resourcing dropdown menu, you’ll see a list of projects on the left side. This view gives you a project-level perspective, showing all bookings grouped under each project. Use this layout to:
Get a clear overview of how people are booked within a project
Compare workload across different projects
Adjust team allocation directly within the project context
📌 Tip: If you don’t see a project you expected in the list, try adjusting the filters to refine your search.
Follow the steps below to create a booking from the By Project perspective.
1 | First, make sure that you have the right permissions to add new bookings. |
2 | Navigate to your Resourcing tab, hover over the Resource Planner and select By Project from the dropdown. |
3 | Select the start date for the booking, then drag to set the duration. |
4 | If you can't find your service, check the possible reasons here. |
5 | Choose the person and confirm the specific service for the person's booking (either budget or deal). |
6 | Confirm the start and end dates for the booking and choose how much time you are allocating per day or in total. |
7 | Fill in the booking details and then click Create booking to add the booking to your Resource Planner. |
👉 When creating a booking from the Resource Planner, you can link it to a task using the Task field in the booking form.
3) Booking Resources from the By Budget/Deal View
When you select By Budget/Deal from the Resourcing dropdown menu, you’ll see a list of budgets, deals, and, if they are part of projects, projects on the left side, allowing you to allocate time efficiently for each and plan ahead.
📌 If you don’t see a budget/deal you expected in the list, try adjusting the filters to refine your search. You can filter by budget, deal, or project.
Follow the steps below to book someone on a budget or a sales deal.
1 | First, ensure that you have the right permissions to add new bookings. |
2 | Navigate to your Resourcing tab, hover over the Resource Planner and select By Budget/Deal from the dropdown. |
3 | Select the start date for the booking, then drag to set the duration. |
4 | If you can't find your service, check the possible reasons here. |
5 | Choose the person and confirm the specific service for the person's booking (either budget or deal). |
6 | Confirm the start and end dates for the booking and choose how much time you are allocating per day or in total. |
7 | Fill in the booking details and then click Create booking to add the booking to your Resource Planner. |
👉 When creating a booking from the Resource Planner, you can link it to a task using the Task field in the booking form.
👉 Learn how the budget and deal track works, including color coding, usage indicators, and hover details in Understanding the Budget/Deal Track in the Resource Planner.
4) Booking People for Absences
Manage your team's time off, including vacations, sick leave, or remote work, set up as absences in Settings > Absence.
👉 For further details, check out Adding Absence Bookings in the Resource Planner.
📌 You can also access the Resource Planner directly from a specific project by opening the Resource planning tab in that project’s navigation.
Creating Bookings for Multiple People at Once
You can create identical bookings for several people in one go. This option is only available in the expanded modal: use the expand icon in the bottom-right corner of the compact modal to switch.
In the expanded modal, the Assignees field supports multiple people. Select everyone who should receive the same booking setup. Once done, the button will show how many bookings you're about to create, e.g. Create 4 bookings.
These bookings are independent. Editing or moving one will not affect the others.
📌 If you create bookings for people who haven’t been explicitly added to the budget or deal, the booking will still be added to the Planner.
However, to track time against that budget or deal, the users will need to be added, either directly from the booking or from the budget or deal itself.
When to book multiple people at once
Scheduling a team meeting for several people
Assigning a project (budget) to the whole team
Adding time off for multiple team members at once
Adding multiple booking assignees is available on the Ultimate subscription plan only.
Booking Colors
To make your schedule easier to read, you can color bookings based on their project or budget.
In any view in the Planner, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner to access color options. Select one of the options:
No color: Removes all color highlights
Project colors: Color bookings according to their related project
Budget colors: Color bookings according to their related budget
📌 Colors for projects and budgets can be selected during their creation or adjusted later by choosing Edit project for a project or Edit general budget info for a budget.
Available colors can then be selected next to the name of the project or budget in the editor.
Good to Know: Open Hours Service
If your newly created budget doesn't have any services defined yet, don’t worry.
Productive can automatically create new placeholder services called Open hours and Open expenses on newly created budgets.
This way you’ll always have something to schedule against in the Resource Planner.