Book time with a forecast

A forecast books part of someone's time over a long period, for example half of a waiter's time for the next two weeks, before you know which days they will work. This page is for planners. You need to be a Planning Administrator, or a project manager for the shift's project.

A forecast is not a shift. It is never published, emailed, offered to employees or counted as a conflict, and it cannot repeat. It counts in workload and utilisation, and in project planned hours.

Create a forecast#

1. Open Planning → Schedule → By Resource and press New, or open an existing draft shift.
2. At Allocation Type, choose Forecast. A banner explains: "A forecast books a share of this person's time for capacity and project figures. It is never published, emailed or counted as a conflict."
3. In Resource, choose the person or material. A forecast needs one: without it you see "A forecast books someone's time: choose the employee or material."
4. In Dates, choose the first and the last moment of the period, for example Monday 08:00 to Friday of the next week 17:00.
5. In the percentage next to Allocated Time, type the share of the working hours of that period to book, for example 50.
6. Optionally choose the Role, and a Project and Task with the Project bridge.
7. Save.

[planning-forecast-form]

On the schedule, a forecast is drawn thinner, with a dashed outline.

How a forecast is counted#

Planning spreads the forecast's allocated time over the days it covers, in proportion to the person's working time on each day. A forecast never counts twice for the same work: on a given day, forecast hours are reduced by the allocated time of real shifts that cover the same work.

With the Project bridge, "the same work" means the same project. Example: a forecast books 8 hours on a day for a person on the project Wedding. A shift of 4 hours the same day on the same project is planned. The project's Planned hours count the 4 hours of the shift plus the 4 hours of the forecast that remain: 8 hours, not 12. Without the Project bridge, any shift of the same person that day reduces the forecast.

Where forecasts appear#

• Workload beside each person on the schedule, and the Utilisation report: the Forecast column and Planned (allocated plus forecast).
• On a project: Planned hours and, on tasks, Planned Hours.
• Filters Forecasts and Shifts, and the group Allocation Type.

Limits#

• You cannot publish, split into an open shift, unassign or duplicate to an open shift a forecast. The messages are "A forecast cannot be split into an open shift.", "A forecast needs a person." and, in a bulk Unassign, "a forecast needs a person".
• A forecast is not copied by Copy Previous Week.
• A forecast never makes a person "busy" for Auto Plan, but its hours count in the person's load when Auto Plan picks the lightest-loaded person.

Next#

• Reports and dashboards
• Plan project tasks