Creating Allocations

Creating allocations in Forecast helps ensure your team’s resources are assigned and tracked efficiently. Whether you’re managing time, budgets, or specific assets, utilizing both project and non-project time allocations keeps you organized and on top of your projects and resources every step of the way.

This article covers:

• Allocation Types
• Creating a New Allocation
• Editing an Existing Allocation

Allocation Types

Allocations represent project time, internal time, and time off for your team. They can be created on the following pages by users with appropriate permissions:

• People Schedule
• All Timelines
• Project Timeline
• Capacity Overview

Creating and managing allocations is permissioned-based. Users who do not have access to People Schedule cannot create project or internal time allocations. 

• Check out: Permissions: How They Work to learn more about permission profiles.

Project Allocations

A project allocation is the assignment of time to a resource for a particular project. These allocations can be created by companies using one of the following resource management settings:

• Allocate people to projects
• Both project allocation and task assignment (Combined Mode)

Internal Time Allocations

An internal time allocation assigns time for internal activities such as team meetings, training sessions, or stand-ups. Internal time allocations do not depend on your resource management settings.

Internal time allocations and internal time entries are not the same.

• Internal time allocations are created in a schedule and impact planned utilization.
• Internal time entries are logged in a user's timesheet and reflect actual utilization.
• Internal time entries do not generate corresponding schedule allocations and therefore do not impact planned utilization.

Time-off Allocations

A time-off allocation represents non-working time, such as paid time-off, holidays, or vacations. Time-off can be recorded as a timesheet entry or as a schedule allocation.

Time-off entries are synced between Timesheets and People Schedule:

• When time off is entered in one view, it appears in the other.

If your organization uses an HR integration (e.g., BambooHR or HiBob), time-off is managed within the HR system and synced to Forecast.

• Time-off cannot be entered, edited, or deleted directly in Forecast.

Creating a New Allocation

Allocations can be created from various platform pages, but People Schedule is most commonly used.

To create a new allocation

1. Click Resourcing in the navigation bar.
2. Select People Schedule from the dropdown.
3. Identify the resource for the allocation.
4. Click the resource's total utilization value within the heatmap.
5. In the Utilization window, click Add Allocation.
6. (Optional) Click, hold, and drag across the row to open the Create New form.

The following fields appear for all allocation types:

• Assignee: The team member assigned to the allocation (supports multiple assignees).
• Date: The time period for the allocation.
• Allocation per person: Total allocated hours.
• % of day: The percentage of a team member's workday being allocated.
• Distribution: Allocated hours are evenly distributed by default. Adjust hours per day if needed.
• Notes: Additional context for the allocation.

To create a project allocation

1. Follow the steps in To create a new allocation.
2. In the Create New form, select Allocation (top left).
3. Select the project from the dropdown.
4. Add assignees, total hours, and duration.
5. Choose between a soft or hard allocation. (Learn more: Soft vs. Hard Allocations)
   
6. Click Create. 

To create a new internal time allocation

1. Follow the steps in To create a new allocation.
2. In the Create New form, select Internal Time (top center).
3. Choose the internal time type from the dropdown.
4. Add assignees, total hours, and duration.
5. Click Create.

To create a new time-off allocation

1. Follow the steps in To create a new allocation.
2. In the Create New form, select Time Off (top right).
3. Select the time-off type.
4. Add assignees, total hours, and duration.
5. Click Create.

A time-off allocation is automatically linked to the user’s timesheet. When a time-off entry is created in Timesheets, a matching allocation is also generated.

Editing an Existing Allocation

Users with the appropriate permissions can edit allocations from any of the scheduling pages.

• Users with access to People Schedule can modify allocations to reflect project changes, internal bookings, or time off.
• Users without access to People Schedule can view individual allocations using My Schedule (view-only access).

To edit an existing allocation

1. Click Resourcing in the navigation bar.
2. Select People Schedule from the dropdown.
3. Locate the resource and allocation you need to edit.
4. Right click on the allocation bar.
5. Select Edit  from the action menu.
6. Update the allocation and click Save.

Additional Right-Click Options:

• Delete – Permanently remove the allocation.
• Split – Divide the allocation into two.
• Duplicate – Create a copy of the allocation.

Note: Deleting an allocation is final and cannot be undone. 

• If you have deleted an allocation in error, you will need to recreate it. 

Related Articles

• Understanding Resource Allocation in Forecast
• Soft vs Hard Project Allocations
• Managing time-off using schedule allocations
• Permissions: How they work