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The 10 Best Resource Management Software & Tools Of 2022

Best Resource Management Software Shortlist

Check out the 10 best resource management software for 2022.

  1. monday.com

    Best for distributing work across teams evenly

  2. Resource Management by Smartsheet

    Best for professional services

  3. Mavenlink by Kantata

    Best RM for scaling organizations

  4. Float

    Best RM for agencies and production teams

  5. Forecast.app

    Best AI-assisted RM

  6. Runn

    Best RM for growing IT and software teams

  7. Hub Planner

    Best RM for enterprises

  8. Saviom

    Best for optimizing modern workforce

  9. Resource Guru

    Best resource calendar view

  10. Silverbucket

    Best for capacity and utilization tracking

Managing your team members without a proper plan or tool can be a total nightmare. And that’s probably why you’re here. You know there must be a better way to manage your resources and team, right?

According to PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2020 report, poor resource management can waste up to 11.4% of a company’s resources. You can’t afford to be hemorrhaging time and money like that, especially since most project managers are running between 2-5 projects at the same time! Resource management software can help mediate your workload and address some of these risks.

In this complete resource management software review, I’ll walk you through the best options along with a simple explanation of the criteria for choosing high-performing tools. On top of that, I answer all the commonly asked questions about resource management.

best resource management software logos list

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The 10 Best Resource Management Software Overviews

Have a look and sign up for some trials to test-drive and find the best resource management software for your case.

1

monday.com

Best for distributing work across teams evenly

monday.com is a flexible platform to help teams communicate in context and get a birds-eye view of outstanding projects, available resources, and projected timelines. monday.com’s smart design and straightforward interface mean teams can get started planning timelines, assigning project ownership, and managing any project in minutes.

monday.com offers various views to represent data, so each team member can work according to his preferences. With workload view, you can easily see who’s able to take on more work and who’s not. Gain insight into your team’s work capacity and make adjustments to timelines or ownership accordingly—no matter where you are. The monday.com app gives you the flexibility and power to run your team on the go. You can organize your daily work, projects, and teams all in one place.

Monday.com has over 40 integrates with apps like Slack, Excel, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and others, accessible via Zapier.

monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

14 days free trial

From $6/user/month

Pros

  • Color coded status great for resource overviews
  • Easily create boards dedicated to operational resource tracking
  • New features being rolled out regularly
  • Quick learning curve

Cons

  • Gantt charts locked to mid-level plan
  • May be too robust for small teams
  • Comparatively complex pricing rubric
2

Resource Management by Smartsheet

Best for professional services

Resource Management by Smartsheet, a high-level project, and resource management software, helps teams make confident decisions about project planning, team capacity, budget forecasting, team utilization, and hiring needs in real-time.

The tool’s unique project and resource matching feature allow users to match team members to projects requirements according to different criteria like disciplines, skills, availability, and more. Resource Management by Smartsheet also offers built-in timesheets, mobile time tracking, and expense tracking. Users can create project reports by filtering project data, get insight into historical data, and see forecasts on team utilization, actual vs. planned time reports, budget tracking, expense reports, and projects in the pipeline.

Resource Management by Smartsheet easily integrates with a variety of internal workflows and software suites. Additionally, it provides a flexible API and Zapier integration that can connect with top operational tools for analytics, communications, project management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and finance.

Resource Management by Smartsheet’s basic plan starts at $25/user/month.

14 days free trial

From $25/user/month

Pros

  • Combines time tracking and resourcing
  • Able to forecast resource utilization
  • Skills database helps resource allocation
  • Intuitive for keeping timesheets and assigning hours

Cons

  • Initial resource set-up is time consuming
  • Needs better data visualization
  • Bulk project edits don’t apply to resource field
3

Mavenlink by Kantata

Best RM for scaling organizations

Mavenlink is a well-rounded tool that bridges the core planning, execution, project accounting, and analysis systems in a single operating environment. It has modules for project management, accounting, resource management, business intelligence, and team collaboration. On top of this, it offers a system of dashboards, live time and expense tracking features, a great documenting system. And all of these best-in-class features are delivered through straightforward and minimalistic design.

Mavenlink ticks off all the boxes when it comes to RM features. The resource management module offers real-time utilization and margins at the project and even the task level. Some key features include resource forecasting, capacity management, skills management, scenario planning, and role-based planning.

Drilling down into its other features, the BI suite module supplies built-in reports, custom reporting, trend analysis, data visualization, as well as data integration with other systems. The software also provides more accounting tools than many others, with project costing, project and task budget management, real-time utilization and margin tracking, invoicing, rate cards, and robust integrations into back-end financial systems. It also has some good contextual collaboration features to communicate in both private and public discussions around tasks, projects, and many other project objects.

I could go on and on about Mavenlink’s features because there really are too many to list—it’s a comprehensive RM suite, that, despite requiring time to truly master, has been recognized as being easy to use and learn. What’s more, the company leverages its professional services expertise as part of their offering, making available their Mavenlink BI Consultants who can build reports specifically for your business. As well, they provide some great training resources that can help mitigate the risks and costs of implementation.

Mavenlink takes a unique approach to integrations. As part of their “API-first strategy”, they’ve built a solution that doesn’t require a third party in order to integrate with any apps. They provide an integration platform (called M-Bridge) that’s designed to simplify integration between Mavenlink and other business apps like CRM, HCM, and financial software. On top of the M-Bridge platform, Mavelink provides several pre-built integrations with these tools: Expensify, G Suite, Xero, Salesforce, Netsuite, Jira, Hubspot, Slack, Concur, Dynamics 365, Qualtrics, Quickbooks, and Sage Intacct.

Mavenlink offers plans to meet your needs. Choose from resource management to complete PSA with advanced BI. To receive accurate pricing information, contact Mavenlink directly.

Custom pricing available upon request

Pros

  • Easy capacity management
  • Distinguish between soft and firm allocation
  • Good reporting functionality for resource data
  • Resourcing fully integrated with master planning

Cons

  • Custom reports can be difficult to create without training
  • Proofing solution is an add-on
  • Advanced features are available only in the Premier and Enterprise editions of the application
4

Float

Best RM for agencies and production teams

Float is for teams who want robust and powerful resource management software that’s also unfussy and easy to use. Over 4,000 of the world’s top teams use Float, including Deloitte, Ogilvy, BuzzFeed, and MetaLab. Its simple, visual design and rich feature set make it the perfect choice for teams big and small.

Scheduling in Float is easy and intuitive. Create new projects quickly, and assign them to your team within seconds. The schedule view gives you an accurate, high-level overview of your team’s availability and capacity, and you can drill down deeper using Float’s search and filter functionality. Set custom work hours, import and assign public holidays, schedule time off, assign custom tags like location and skills to your people and projects, and set a scheduled status to let everyone know when you’re working from home or remotely, or what you’re up to on a particular day.

Updating your schedule is simple, with a right-click menu full of editing shortcuts, a click-and-drag feature that lets you reassign and update tasks, and a lightning-fast interface that can handle an enterprise volume of people and projects.

Real-time reporting lets you track your resource utilization, monitor project budgets, and forecast your team’s capacity. Add time tracking to access pre-filled timesheets and compare your team’s scheduled hours with the actual time spent on tasks.

Float has a range of dedicated integrations that play well with your existing apps. Sync and schedule your Jira, Asana, Teamwork, or Trello projects and import your Google or Outlook Calendar events directly onto your schedule in Float. Stay on top of schedule changes via Slack, email, or mobile push notifications.

Float is free to try for 30 days, and you get unlimited access to both resource planning and time tracking features. After that, it’s $6 per scheduled user, per month, or $10 with time tracking. Float also has volume and yearly subscription discounts available.

30 days free trial

From $6/user/month

Pros

  • Easy-to-use resource editing tools
  • Team availability management
  • Project phases and milestones for planning
  • Mobile app for iOS and Android
  • Built-in time tracking with pre-filled timesheets

Cons

  • Updating staff/personnel list takes time
5

Forecast.app

Best AI-assisted RM

Forecast is a full project and resource management solution used by professional service companies all around the world to improve KPIs and scale with real-time insights at hand. Powered with artificial intelligence (AI), Forecast aids with scheduling and finds the right people to work on projects and tasks. The AI learns from the work being performed and helps optimize all parts of people, planning, and projects.

For resource management and scheduling, you can allocate people to projects or specific tasks. On task allocation projects, Auto-Schedule weeds out the need to manually assign resources to tasks. The whole resource allocation process, together with task estimations, can be fully automated. You can manage allocations directly in the heatmap feature, which is a quick visual way to see everyone’s capacity and utilization. You can use the searchable database to find the person with the right role and/or skills that are most likely to be available for any task that’s not assigned yet.

The reporting features in Forecast are great. Timesheets and tracking are built right into the product (and there’s iOS and Android apps for tracking on the go). Forecast uses actual and planned data to present customizable reports with key metrics such as real-time utilization, compare actual vs. scheduled utilization, track project progress, profitability, budgets, and get other insights on a portfolio or project level.

Integrations are above average—there’s turnkey integrations with several mainstream tools in their extensive app catalog, as well as two-way sync with Jira.

Forecast is currently used in 40+ countries worldwide, by agencies, consulting companies, and enterprises – has Lite, Pro, and Enterprise options that cost from $29/user/month (14-day free trial).

14 days free trial

From $29/user/month

Pros

  • Quick top level view of available resources by user
  • Easily compare budget and expenses
  • Connects to your existing toolstack
  • Colorful, intuitive resource charts

Cons

  • Higher learning curve
  • Time-consuming logging structure
  • Time-consuming logging structure
6

Runn

Best RM for growing IT and software teams

Runn is a real-time resource, demand, and capacity planning tool with integrated time tracking and powerful forecasting capabilities. Get a bird’s-eye view of all projects and people to instantly spot overbookings and identify resourcing patterns. Collaborate with co-workers to stay up-to-date and on the same page with remote teams.

Scheduling allocations is easy and intuitive in Runn–simply drag-and-drop to create project phases and allocations. Flick between monthly, quarterly, and half-yearly views to plan for the short and long term. If you don’t have the right person at the right time, use placeholders to define the requirements for the project.

Runn makes resource management dynamic and visual. Watch the charts and reports update as you plan out your work. You can see visualizations of capacity, workload, availability, and billable and non-billable utilization. Drill into different roles, teams and tags to compare trends and understand which groups are overbooked. Plan out tentative projects to see how your resourcing plans might change if the work gets confirmed.

Track projects, view forecasts, and get relevant metrics within Runn. You’ll have up-to-date data in one place to keep tabs on insights like utilization, project variance, and overall financial performance. Use Runn’s built-in timesheets to understand how much time was worked compared to what was planned.

Runn integrates with Harvest, WorkflowMax, and Clockify for importing project, client, and people data and syncing time entries. With Runn’s API, you can build your own integration to send data across your favorite tools.

Try Runn free for 14 days, no credit card required. Runn has three pricing plans: Free for Startup (5 or fewer people), $10 per person for Pro, and custom pricing for Enterprise. There is also a 20% discount on annual plans.

14 days free trial

From $10/user/month

Pros

  • Drag-and-drop resource scheduling
  • Intuitive utilization reporting and forecasting
  • Easily identify overbooked/unavailable employees
  • Over-budget predictions
  • Powerful API

Cons

  • No offline or mobile time tracking
  • Limited number of integrations
7

Hub Planner

Best RM for enterprises

Hub Planner is a resource management software with a full suite of scheduling, time entry, and reporting features. The core feature is the simple and usable Scheduler, which allows for project and resource planning and visualization. Users can drag and drop to plan projects and schedule resources. The tool also offers a multi-function menu, powerful filtering, and a dynamic team capacity bar. Multiple view modes allow for both high-level birds-eye views and granular views of projects.

Hub Planner has a powerful reporting engine with 70+ pre-formatted templates. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in a template, you can create reports from scratch.

Hub Planner also has a number of inline workflows for timesheets, requesting vacation time, and a slick resource requesting & approval option. Their Unassigned Work feature is great for scheduling and forecasting ahead of the pipeline, and users can create custom fields at the resource or project level. Users can also customize schedule notifications and reminders.

They’ve taken a modular approach so you have the option to add or remove extensions to the base product, allowing teams to increase functionality or turn off bits they don’t need. Inline integrations with Basecamp, Slack, iCal, REst API, and Zapier are available.

Hub Planner offers a pretty extensive 60 days free trial with everything included. There is an extensive knowledge base with tutorial videos, and their customer support is excellent.

Licenses begin at $7 per month, per resource with annual discounts available.

60 days free trial

From $7/user/month

Pros

  • Excellent capacity planning & forecasting
  • Search filter for available resources with skill sets & location
  • Powerful & precise built-in reporting
  • Easy toggle between user/group

Cons

  • Need to click into modal for more details on events/projects bookings
  • Editing Custom Fields requires manual input or help from Hub Planner support
  • Need an API or intermediary for MS Teams
8

Saviom

Best for optimizing modern workforce

Saviom is a leader in powerful and configurable resource management software. It has helped many organizations reduce their resourcing costs by at least 10-30% and enhance profitable utilization by 10-20%.

Saviom’s comprehensive ERM suite helps optimize the modern workforce and protect them against growing market uncertainties. It comprises several modules such as multidimensional resource scheduler and planner, advanced forecasting and capacity planning, real-time Business Intelligence, integration with other business applications, and more.

Saviom’s ERM solution enables agile resource scheduling with a Gantt chart style view using simple drag and drop functionality. Besides, the enterprise-wide visibility of the tool helps you identify and allocate the right resource to the right job. Additionally, using modeling and simulation techniques, the tool helps select an optimized resource plan and enhance ROI.

Using the forecasting and capacity planning module, businesses can forward plan pipeline projects and bridge the capacity vs. demand gap proactively. Moreover, you can optimize your workforce by maximizing the profitable utilization of every resource. The tool also helps businesses achieve the desired level of maturity as per the organization’s need.

Firms can improve their organizational health index using real-time Business Intelligence. They can build customized portals, dashboards, analytics, and reports using the tool’s highly configurable and expandable capability. The tool allows you to maintain a single source of truth by seamlessly integrating with your existing systems.

With a tiered pricing model as customizable as the tool, Saviom’s power and lite licenses operate under role-based access, ensuring you retain full control over data.

30 days free trial

Custom pricing available upon request

Pros

  • Multidimensional resource forecasting & capacity planning
  • Highly configurable & customizable RM solution
  • Real-time resource optimization, modeling & simulation
  • Highly flexible real-time reports, analytics & dashboards
  • Seamless integration with other enterprise applications

Cons

  • There is a learning curve as the tool comes with extensive features
  • More suitable for medium to large enterprises
  • Pricing is available only on request
9

Resource Guru

Best resource calendar view

Resource Guru offers some solid features including: visual calendar style interface, custom views, fields, and filters, availability indicator, drag and drop resources, scale view, see utilization, reporting, overtime tracking, data import, and phone support.

Resource Guru makes sense of the gong show that is resource conflict resolution: resource management and team collaboration is built in to make resource booking more straightforward, with clash management, leave management, and a waiting list to prevent over-booking. It helps project managers make bookings simultaneously with no chance of stepping on each other’s toes. Clashes are automatically prevented.

Helpfully, each staff member gets their own resource dashboard so they can log in and know exactly what they should be working on. And to monitor business performance, powerful reports help identify which projects and clients are being over-serviced and help to monitor team utilization and help with future capacity planning. Resource Guru costs from $2.50/user/month (they offer a 30-day free trial).

30 days free trial

From $2.50/user/month

Pros

  • Availability bar for capacity planning
  • Clash management for unintended overlap
  • Attractive and flexible UI
  • Daily resource summary emails

Cons

  • Very affordable per-user rate
  • Unable to sort resources by experience level
  • No copy-paste of resource tasks
10

Silverbucket

Best for capacity and utilization tracking

Silverbucket is a resource planning tool for project-based businesses, and is designed for use by architects, engineers, and IT professionals. Silverbucket is easy to use and allows users to view and compare resource plans and actual hours to get insights into the success of resource management activities.

The tool provides clear views of a company’s resource allocation activities, including conflicts, workloads, and capacity levels. Project managers can allocate team members to tasks and projects, and make allocations to unassigned roles if needed.

Skills tracking features such as tracking competencies and abilities are also included, as are reporting tools such as performance dashboards, insights on past resourcing plans, and forecasting for future resource management plans.

Silverbucket gives different parties, such as project managers, team leaders, and company management, information about resourcing and how it affects the success of projects, as well as monitor sales forecasts, cash flow, and utilization rates.

Silverbucket offers a variety of APIs for integrations, which also allow automation of data flows.

Pricing starts from €10/planned person/month.

30 day free trial

€10/planned person/month

Pros

  • Easily compare resource plans to actual hours
  • Soft booking can be used to create tentative allocations

Cons

  • No mobile application available
  • No ability to create “what if” resource planning scenarios

Need expert help selecting the right Project Resource Management Software?

We’ve joined up with the software comparison platform Crozdesk.com to assist you in finding the right software. Crozdesk’s Project Resource Management Software advisors can create a personalized shortlist of software solutions with unbiased recommendations to help you identify the solutions that best suit your business’s needs. Through our partnership you get free access to their bespoke software selection advice, removing both time and hassle from the research process.

It only takes a minute to submit your requirements and they will give you a quick call at no cost or commitment. Based on your needs you’ll receive customized software shortlists listing the best-fitting solutions from their team of software advisors (via phone or email). They can even connect you with your selected vendor choices along with community negotiated discounts. To get started, please complete the form below:

The Best Resource Management Software Comparison Chart

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the baffling array of resource planning software out there. Below, we’ve put together a reader-friendly table neatly summarizing basic info about the tools described in this article.

Tool Free Option Price
1
monday.com

Best for distributing work across teams evenly

14 days free trial

From $6/user/month Check out monday.com
2
Resource Management by Smartsheet

Best for professional services

14 days free trial

From $25/user/month Check out Resource Management by Smartsheet
3
Mavenlink by Kantata

Best RM for scaling organizations

Not available

Custom pricing available upon request Check out Mavenlink by Kantata
4
Float

Best RM for agencies and production teams

30 days free trial

From $6/user/month Check out Float
5
Forecast.app

Best AI-assisted RM

14 days free trial

From $29/user/month Check out Forecast.app
6
Runn

Best RM for growing IT and software teams

Freemium version

14 days free trial

From $10/user/month Check out Runn
7
Hub Planner

Best RM for enterprises

60 days free trial

From $7/user/month Check out Hub Planner
8
Saviom

Best for optimizing modern workforce

30 days free trial

Custom pricing available upon request Check out Saviom
9
Resource Guru

Best resource calendar view

30 days free trial

From $2.50/user/month Check out Resource Guru
10
Silverbucket

Best for capacity and utilization tracking

30 day free trial

€10/planned person/month Check out Silverbucket

Comparison Criteria

To be featured on this list, I evaluated tools based on the following criteria:

  • User Interface (UI): Project resource tools should offer clear and easily comprehensible displays for optimizing your team’s workload.
  • Usability: Is the system easy to learn and master? Are there tutorials and training? Does the company offer good tech and user support?
  • Integrations: Is it easy to connect with other tools? Any pre-built integrations?
  • Value for $: How appropriate is the price for its features, capabilities, and use case? Is pricing clear, transparent, and flexible?

Key Resource Management Features

  1. Workload resource planning: Can you visualize who is doing what, how much time it will take, and who can handle more tasks?
  2. Easy resource scheduling tools: Can you drag-and-drop and point-and-click to quickly build a resource schedule template?
  3. Timesheet integration: Metrics relating to time spent, time used, and time costs are key to resource scheduling, so a timesheet integration or built-in solution is critical.
  4. Resource allocation automation: Resource allocation is time consuming, so you want to be able to automate some of the grunt work.
  5. Resource utilization alerts: Gone too far over time or cost budgets without noticing? You want a tool that monitors the relevant utilization metrics and catches this for you.
  6. Resource manager permissions: The tool should allow you to set different permissions for users depending on their required level of access, for security.

Other Resource Management Solutions

None of the above work for you? Check out the below list of additional tools:

  1. eResource Scheduler

    Best built-in financial module

  2. Celoxis

    Best reporting and analytics features

  3. Zoho Projects

    Best workload allocation tools

  4. GanttPRO

    Best for advanced resource workload calculation

  5. PSOhub

    Best RM that integrates with CRMs

  6. TeamGantt

    Best for ease-of-use and UX

  7. MS Projects

    Best RM software for Microsoft users

  8. Harvest Forecast

    Best for users of Harvest’s time tracker

  9. Clarizen

    Best enterprise-grade resource management tool

  10. Notion

    Best for tracking non-typical resources

  11. ActiveCollab

    Best for resource management dashboards

  12. KeyedIn Projects

    Best for resource management at the PMO level

  13. Paymo

    Best RM tool for remote teams

Resource Management Basics

What Is Resource Management?

In project management, resource management refers to the practice of planning, tracking, and optimizing the utilization of resources (such as staff, space, and equipment) in order to streamline project work and completion. This process involves planning and managing: checking the resource’s availability, scheduling start and end dates, managing any resourcing conflicts or dependencies, and monitoring over time to adapt to changes.

What Is Resource Management Software?

Simply put, resource management software makes it easy to plan and schedule (and reschedule) projects. Sometimes referred to as resource capacity planning software, it’s a type of project management tool that enables you to plan, allocate, and then track who’s working on what project, when, and for how long.

This software makes it easy to see the resource availability and capacity of the organization, the available skills, and then schedule and provide reporting to show historical and forecasted resource utilization.

What Are The Benefits Of Using Resource Management Software?

  1. Streamline resource management and deployment to be as efficient and effective as possible, reducing downtime and increasing utilization.
  2. Provide a bird’s eye view of organizational capacity to prevent overbooking and support hiring decisions.
  3. Forecast revenue by providing reports on upcoming projects and planned resource deployment.

What’s An Example Of An Effective Resource Management System?

An effective resource management system is one that works. It could be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet (more on this below), but it’s one that enables an organization to deploy the resources at their disposal, as efficiently and effectively as possible.

That’s hard to do without some dedicated software. To make the system effective, it enables the organization to conduct resource planning in a way that maximizes the utilization of available resources and considers the availability of staff, their skills, their preferences, their location and timezone, and maps them against projects and organizational goals. Resource management software supports project portfolio management, and provides a way to effectively manage resources to maximize productivity and profitability.

How To Create A Resource Plan

  1. Identify the different types of resources needed to complete the project.
    Resources could include: team members, equipment, meeting rooms, or anything that’ll be required as part of the project process.
  2. Quantify the amount of each type of resource required.
    To quantify the resources, you’ll need to consider the resources, and estimate their effort on the project.
  3. Schedule the consumption of each resource within the project.
    To schedule the resources, you’ll need a project schedule so you know who to book, when, and for how long.

What Is A Resource Forecast?

Resource forecasting is a plan of the resources required to deliver a project. It often occurs in the initial phases of a project, even as early as the sales process. A resource forecast is an estimate of the resources and effort that will be required for the project, which helps determine the project hours, project budget, and the project estimate put forward to the client.

How Do You Calculate Project Resources?

A simple way to calculate the level of effort required is to look at past project performance and compare it with the current project plan to identify the current project team velocity. You can then use the formula: current velocity/project estimate = resources required.

It’s important to calculate resources needed for a project so that you take the right amount of the team’s time. Resource too little, and they won’t have enough time to complete the work, and if you resource too much you’ll find they waste time, or work slowly to fill the time.

Not seeing what you need on this list? Have a look at other useful tools:

Do You Need Resource Management Software?

You might be on board, but getting buy-in to change the status quo within your agency, team, or studio can be tricky.

After all, do you really, really need resource management tools?

A quick google search for ‘resource management tool excel’ or ‘resource management software free’ and you’ll find a whole bunch of resource management templates that do the job—well, kind of. Yes, they’re a free resource management tool, but no, they are not great.

When agencies start, it’s usually with a handful of resources. There’s no urgent need for resource management or specialist software. Usually, everyone simply gets together for a quick huddle, agrees on priorities, and works out what everyone is going to work on for the day. Or—if people are feeling really ambitious—for the entire week.

As the agency grows, resource management becomes more formal and the resource scheduler becomes a whiteboard. Simple, right?

Then, disaster strikes as someone accidentally wipes the whiteboard clean, or the office grows to the extent that people can’t actually see the whiteboard, and everyone realizes it’s time to move to the agency gold standard: the infamous resource scheduler of doom, otherwise known as the resource spreadsheet.

Spreadsheets: The Ultimate Free Resource Management Tool

Everyone knows resource management by spreadsheet doesn’t really work. It’s not cut out for the job. Everything’s a bit of a hack, they’re clunky, and they’re horribly prone to errors. Months pass by and still the resourcing spreadsheet somehow just about manages to keep its head above water.

But everyone feels like they’re drowning. Yes, it enables you to keep moving and it kind of works but everyone knows that despite good intentions and some fancy formulas, it keeps on slipping under and it’s not really fit for its purpose at all. Unless you’ve got the mother of all resource spreadsheets (that I’ve never laid eyes on) it’s missing a few key features and is a disaster waiting to happen.

Still Using Spreadsheets?

At a push, your spreadsheet might tell you how under-resourced or under-utilized your teams are, or even include forecasting, but does it include budget tracking, time tracking for billable hours, project reporting, sending staff real-time notifications, helping them collaborate, or a built-in process for requesting resources and resource allocation? Without these elements, it cannot be the solution you’re looking for.

And importantly, does it have a change process for when resources get moved around by the resource manager or your rogue project manager colleague? Maybe that’s why no one follows it—it’s considered more of a rough resource management guide than a true resourcing source.

But there’s hope. A growing number of tools have evolved in recent years to fix the problem of resource management in Excel and actually create something better than the free resource management tools—stuff that actually brings additional business value on top of keeping everything organized.

Further Reading: In-Depth Guide To Resource Availability In Project Management

Which Resource Management Software Do You Recommend?

What do you think we’re missing? Which other tools do you recommend, and what would you add to these resource management software reviews? We’d love to hear if you’ve got any suggestions, tips, or thoughts on using this kind of software – why not share them using the comments below?

Check This Out: Getting The Most Out Of A Software Demo

By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 15 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony.

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51 Comments

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    Really useful content. We started to use the Forecast App and are happy so far with it.

    Reply

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    Hello, I’m looking for resource management software (I think). I work for a department that has construction project managers with different project management levels (PM1, 2, 3, 4) that manage multiple projects at one time ranging from small, medium and large. I’m looking for a software that we can input how many projects each PM is working on, the size/type of the project and estimated time the project will take overall. Then the software would need to be able to tell us based on those 3 categories and PM level when a PM is at 50%, 60%, 100% etc. of their capacity, based on a PM level. I don’t need something that tracks the actual projects and day to day activities, we have other software that does the day to day project tracking / project management piece. Is there anything out there that does something close to this?

    Reply

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    Great post! Thanks for sharing the knowledge and keep up the good work.

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    Great post! In fact, I hired an enterprise mobility management service recently and will share this knowledge with my team as well. Keep up the good work.

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    Excellent explanation, it’s simple & focus. Keep up the great work!

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    I shared this with my quality assurance software testing service and they found this article to be informative and a must share on other platforms. Keep up the good work.

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    Nice article and help to compare resource management product as per our business need. Guess what download and see which fit our need and use-cases.

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    Thanks for sharing this Great article I appreciate the valuable time you have used to share this.

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    Good list, but it would be better if you could also put some open source (GNU) softwere on it.

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      Do you know of any?

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    I like how you said it will come down to your studio resourcing workflow to choose a processing software for engineering. I would say that it's crucial to have the right software when working as an engineer to ensure your job is being done correctly and efficiently. My friend is in school to become an engineer, so I'll be sure to mention to him the importance of finding the right software to work with. https://www.epcon.com

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    Hi Ben - great article, thanks for sharing! I've just released a product called Stitch - www.stitchapp.co - to help people manage their creative networks, so when that moment comes that you've done your resourcing and realise you need a freelancer, you can find them at a seconds notice. It's also being used in production departments as a centralised store of agencies' creative networks. Hopefully that will be helpful to some people! Thanks, Fran

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    Hi Ben We service 200 clients with a resource of 10 professional business analysts (5 Technical & 5 Financial) where we can view their availability via their outlook calendar. The analysts availability is variable across each month of the year and each client requires two or our analysts (1 Technical & 1 Financial) for one day, once a year. Our forecast suggests growth will be 30% year on year so the number of clients and analysts will grow proportionally. Can you recommend a product that would fit our profile. Thanks and regards - Roger

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      Can you help me understand what's not working with Outlook?

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    Ben, Thank you for the list. I feel like all are great options, but I feel like they don't quite meet our needs. We already use Monday.com to track our projects, so we really need a tool that only focuses on resource allocation (our projects vary in length, from same day to a couple weeks). Resource Guru seems to be the one that more closely matches our needs but you can't preview availability (exact times since we have variable hour, part time and full time employees) nor skills prior to assigning a job. Any recommendations? Thanks! Alex

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    Hi Ben, We use Wrike, but it doesn't allow allocation of cost per resource. It only allocates cost per task, or cost per project. This doesn't work for projects where we want to forecast and allocate folks at different cost rates. They've acknowledged they don't have this functionality. Is there an add-on or alternative solution you can recommend? We need to see labor cost. Was also wondering why Wrike wasn't on your list. Thanks, Bobbie

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      I'd take a look at Hubplanner, Saviom, or 10,000 ft from the list above.

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    Hi Ben, Would like to highlight below name in the list. Most of the resource management software deals mostly around human and time management. I would like to highlight following page where we manage time, material and capital resource in a project. Currently helping some of the biggest organisation where some of the project are more than $100 ml. Will be thankful if you kindly add up in the list. https://tiemchart.com/resource-management-software/

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    Hi Ben, This has been super helpful. Looking for a resource management tool that is not cloud based (one that we can host). So far it looks like Saviom might be the best bet! Looking into them currently. Is there any other tool you're aware of that is a native client with an on prem storage solution as well (not just cloud based)? Thanks! Brooke

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      Hey Brooke, most of the solutions out there are definitely cloud-based but there are a few on-prem worth looking at: - Saviom - Hansoft - Celoxis - Synergist

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    Hi Ben, it is a useful summary of the tools, a good starting point to find the right solution. Our demand may be too specific; so far I have not been able to find the right tool yet. We use huge Excels sheets that are getting unmanageable by now. Most of our tasks are not suitable for automated scheduling, as they are timed on time slots agreed with our clients. Therefore, we have to schedule our tasks on hourly basis in the day, and we cannot let them automatically scheduled by a PM tool. The fixed hourly schedule is essential, but most of the PM or RM tools are not able to manage it. On the other hand we have to have a quick overlook who is available at a requested time to be assigned to a certain task. On the other hand, our staff (assignees) have to be able to see at any time what tasks are due for them and what time. The wanted solution would be able to synchronize the project calendar with the task holders' calendar at Google or Exhange/Outlook. The Beyond the plans, task holders (assignees) periodically (e.g. end of the day) report the actually spent hours. The wanted tool has to provide them a simple, fast UI to do this job. I would appreciate if you can suggest some directions I can continue the search. Thanks. Gabor Toldi

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    Hi Ben, I just found this article on my FB feed and quite surprised that you haven't mentioned about Account Sight. I'm sure you're not aware of this amazing resource management tool. I generally outsource lot of my work to freelancers and use account sight https://www.accountsight.com for resource management and project allocation. Initially I started with their free plan and I really impressed with this easy to use tool, later I subscribed their paid plan. I would highly recommend to have a look on their website and read testimonials. You would certainly regret for not including it in your list. Cheers! Rahul

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    hello sir, i am looking for the resource management software for our institution..our institution offers some training, so students can select the training based on the availability of the staffs..so resource management is our biggest problem. sir, could you suggest the better solution for my concern

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    Hello! I'm looking for a solution that's more specific to equipment allocation than human resources, where I can track and manage the availability of this equipment and then reserve it on an hourly basis upon request for different locations. The other features like talent management budgeting and reporting are secondary... I'm familiar with a product called Scheduall but don't need something quite that sophisticated. Are any of these solutions something that you would suggest I investigate first?

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    This is a helpful article. Has there been a way to demonstrate the return on investment or reduced costs from implementing a resource management software tool?

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    Great article! Could you please tell me which tool is better for a project based company? We have long term projects running at the same time and for periods longer than 2 or 3 years Thank you

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    Ben, Thanks for this article. One issue I ran into was that Hub Planner’s pricing turns out to be per resource, not per user. So it’s not going to be $8/month for anyone unless you’re only scheduling for one person (in which case you probably don’t need a resource management software). So if you want to figure out workflows for 20 people (even if they are not users themselves), it’s going to be $160/month. They also have a ‘Lite Resource’ feature which discounts each resource by $70%, but for 20 resources, you’re still going to be around $50/month. It’s an excellent, robust, easy-to-use software, and may be worth the money depending on your circumstances, but it’s not $8/month unless you’re only scheduling for one person/resource.

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      Hi Brit, Thanks for your feedback. Please get in touch with us via our contact form https://hubplanner.com/contact/ and we are more than happy to discuss with you a pricing plan that fits your needs. Best, Mia

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    Thank you so Much for this Amazing Compilation of consisting helpful softwares.

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    Hi, I am looking for a tool which manages resources in terms of asset. It should give the availibility of instruments/labs used over different sites globally.

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    Hello! Thank you for this list - I'm looking for resource management software particularly around ticketing and resource request. I oversee the resource management department but we receive requests from both the sales and post-sales department. Our team of resources are primarily contract staff dispersed across the globe. We are also looking at software that integrates with PSA and FinancialForce. Any recommendations?

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    nice post and my only comment would be that resource management software is a quite generic and i'm sure collectively we can all come up with a long list of software tools. just to give you an idea what we use at booking live - project management - https://www.zoho.eu/projects/ hr / staff management - https://people.zoho.com/hr development management - https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira this tool via confluence does time tracking too and using zoho reports collates all the data for KPI info Mail / Calendar Availability etc - https://www.google.com/gmail/about/for-work/ and of course for meetings, rooms, or indeed our clients, would use our own scheduling software https://www.bookinglive.com we spent months and months trialling various software so i hope that list helps similar companies to ours! good luck, good post.

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    Hiya, I am looking for a resource planning tool for my design studio and I have found a few I like from a scheduling pov however I need to have this provide me with the financial information too. Estimate vs actual and so on, I know a few do them but it seems to be a separate system and I would like an all in one? help!

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      Take a look at https://hubplanner.com/ or https://www.10000ft.com/.

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        Hi Ben, There is a lot of useful info in the earlier posts and one common thread seems to be that no one software package seems to be flexible enough to meet the needs of any one situation... I manage an engineering department of approx 200 people in an Oil & Gas services company where we have multiple clients being serviced from 4 locations and need to ensure that there are the correct resources in the right places based on current & forecast work. I've been trying to find some software where the inputs are: - Proposal hours (what has been bid) - Project hours (actual work on the books) - Weekly timesheets (what has actually been done by each person) and the required outputs are: - Overall resource loading based on actual & forecast work in hand (projects) - The same with any bid work added into the equation (projects + bids) - Resource loading broken down to a number of levels based on office location, project, office location, engineering discipline and individual staff member. I know it seems like a tall order but to a non-IT person like myself it seems like there should be some database driven system that can accommodate these requirements. Any assistance on the best way forward would be appreciated....

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          Hi Grant, a couple of tools which might help that I'd recommend would be liquidplanner.com or possibly workfront.com - they both have functionality which aligns well I think with what you're looking for. Cheers, Ben

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          Hi Grant, we at PDP over a scheduling solution which includes the kind of functionality you are asking (scheduling, time sheets, planning and the related reporting). www.people-do-projects.com

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    Hello Ben, do you know if any of these tools offer Portfolio Management functions? For example, as a portfolio manager, I would like to see a consolidated view of 5 departments, managed by 5 different managers, however each of the department managers would not need to see what the other ones' plans. Thanks!

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      I suggest you look at our article on project management tools - thedigitalprojectmanager.com/best-project-management-software-tools/. Some of the more enterprise level tools include such as Liquid Planner and Workfront have that capability.

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      Ganttic.com does offer project portfolio management functions! Each manager can easily see what each resource is working of with each project, and you can set up different views to manage the information load. You should definitely check it out!

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    Hi Ben, I'm not sure if it exists but we're looking at a tool that will pull live project info from a portal or project schedule and update the schedule automatically. Most of the Project Management/Scheduling is done in Primavera and MS Project so what I wanted to know is if there is a tool that can sit across both portal and update as soon as the project schedules drags out or changes.

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      That's an interesting use-case. I'm not aware of any middleware or tools that do that probably because the rules around the source of truth (what to copy and what to not copy) might get a hard to manage!

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    Great article, thanks. I know there is no perfect solution out there, but I have a consistent problem - each tool is based on hourly scheduling but I need to schedule at a weekly level. Within that week I don't care when my resources do any task, so all I need is that they have a certain number of productivity units - e.g. 5 days or 10 half days. The overhead of fitting into an hourly paradigm feels very high, but I could still really use some of the benefits of these tools over Excel worksheets - are there any tools or workarounds you can recommend for my needs?

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      Hi Ben - thanks for your comments. I'm not sure I understand your problem though of 'fitting into an hourly paradigm'. Can't you just convert your productivity units into hours i.e. instead of 5 days, just put the task duration as 40hrs?

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        Hi Ben - thanks for the reply! The problem that I have is that all the solutions I've seen force you in the end to put a task into a particular time of the week eg. Monday 9-11am - and maintaining that detail when all I need to do is know what someone is doing in any week feels a burdensome overhead. I don't care what hours someone keeps, or whether they are free on Thursday afternoon, just that they have 16 of their 40 hours free in a week. Does that make sense?

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          Hi Ben - I understand the frustration of pegging quantity of time to specific hours of the week. At Timesheets.com we have the option for tracking project time the way you need it - not associated to specific time blocks. You can have weekly tracking also. All the best, Raya

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          Hi Ben Im having the same problem! Did you end up finding a solution?

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            I still don't understand the problem! If you don't really care when your team does the work, only that the work is scheduled to be done sometime in the week, can't you just schedule the tasks across the week and tell people to do it when suits them?
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            Hi Peta, in our scheduling tool, you only need to allocate an amount of hours to weeks or days and schedule accordingly. This should solve you problem. www.people-do-projects.com
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    Hi Craig - are you asking about resourcing scheduling tools or more generally, project management toos? I don't think I've seen resource scheduling tied directly into Jira; but I'm sure there are some plugins that enable it. The other tools you mention too - while they're project management tools, they're not really resource scheduling tools.

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    Very useful list thank you. Jira seems to be a rather de-facto standard although not often rated very highly. What's your views on https://www.scrumwise.com/ , https://www.axosoft.com/ , https://asana.com/ , https://leankit.com/ and https://trello.com/ ?

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