Agency resource planning for projects and retainers

A weekly plan for the whole team

Planning in Simplr starts with the week. Everyone in the agency appears in one grid, with a column for each day and the hours booked against them. Step forward to see what is coming, step back to see what was planned, or jump straight to this week.

Next to each person you see their booked hours against their weekly availability, such as 32 / 40h. When someone is booked for more than they have available, the total is highlighted, so overbooking shows up while there is still time to move work around rather than after a deadline slips.

Book time by person, job and day

An allocation is deliberately simple: a person, a job, a date and a number of hours. Add one from the grid or from a person’s agenda, open planning straight from a job, and edit or remove allocations as plans change.

Because every allocation belongs to a job, the plan sits on the same record as the brief, the creative versions and the time your team logs. Filter the plan by project to see everyone working on one job, or open a person’s agenda to see their week day by day, job by job.

• A week-by-week grid of people, days and booked hours
• Booked hours against weekly availability for every person
• Over-capacity totals highlighted as soon as they appear
• A day-by-day agenda for each person
• A project filter to see who is working on what

Availability that reflects how people work

Not everyone works the same week. Set each person’s weekly availability, for example 24 hours for someone who works three days, and Simplr compares their bookings with their real capacity instead of a one-size-fits-all number.

Planning shows the hours you have actually booked, not an estimate worked out from stages or deadlines. That makes it a plan the team can rely on: if it says someone has room, it is because nobody has booked that time yet.

Capacity planning across projects and retainers

Most agencies run both kinds of work. In Simplr, each client keeps its own billing model, project or retainer, and both appear in the same plan. People have finite capacity whatever the contract says, so retainer work is booked in exactly the same way as project work.

Bookings are internal. A retainer allocation is never shown as a client allowance, and booking more hours than expected never creates an overage charge. For project work, the plan sits alongside the project’s planned hours and budget, so account leads can compare what was booked, what was planned and what has been logged.

The right people, with the right access

Everyone in the agency can see the plan, and people with planning permission can change it. Agency roles on Plus let you decide who books time, who approves it and who sees financial information, so a designer can check their week without seeing rates or invoices.

Account teams get a clear view of who can take on the next brief. Creatives see what is expected of them and when. Agency leads see the shape of the week across every client.