Blog · Territory, capacity and quota planning · Professional services
Resource allocation records planned assignments, while utilization reflects actual use of capacity. Compare the same team hours both ways, reconcile the gaps, and decide which staffing commitments need attention.
Resource allocation and utilization separate hours promised to projects from hours actually used. Allocation helps you decide whether to accept an assignment; actual use helps you understand what happened after accepting it. Compare the same teams, work categories, and reporting period before interpreting the gap.
Allocation is a commitment. It records which people or teams are expected to spend time on which assignments. Asana defines resource allocation as identifying and assigning available resources to an initiative; this comparison focuses specifically on staff hours in a US professional services firm.
Actual use is the record of time spent. It can differ from the commitment because work arrived late, required more effort, moved between teams, or was recorded under a different category. The difference is a prompt to investigate, rather than a performance grade.
| Question | Resource allocation | Actual utilization |
|---|---|---|
| What does it measure here? | Planned client-project hours committed | Recorded client-project hours used |
| Where does it come from? | Approved assignment or staffing export | Approved time-entry export |
| When is it useful? | Before accepting or changing work | After work is recorded and reviewed |
| What capacity does it use? | Available project capacity for the period | The same available project capacity |
| What decision does it support? | Assign, defer, or change staffing | Investigate overruns, delays, or unused assignments |
| What does it not establish? | That the work will happen as scheduled | That the work produced an accepted deliverable |
Keep the unit explicit. The utilization glossary describes seats attended against seats sold in hospitality and sports; the resource comparison here uses staff hours. Different business questions need different underlying rows.
Start with a capacity workbook, an assignment export, and approved time entries. Preserve the plan as it stood before the reporting period so later changes do not erase the original commitment. Keep an updated plan separately if managers also need a current staffing view.
Match employee identifier, team, project, work category, and period across the files. Summarize to team and week only after checking those details. A person assigned to several projects should have their capacity counted once, even though their planned and actual hours span multiple assignment rows.
For this example, available capacity means hours available for client-project work after approved leave and reserved internal obligations. Planned hours and actual hours both cover client-project work, whether billable or nonbillable. Do not subtract those same internal obligations again when reading the results.
A Chicago consulting firm reports the following weekly totals. The available-hours column comes from its capacity workbook; the other columns come from the matching assignment and time-entry exports.
| Team | Available project hours | Planned project hours | Actual project hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisory | 160 | 144 | 128 |
| Implementation | 120 | 132 | 138 |
| Design | 80 | 48 | 54 |
| Total | 360 | 324 | 320 |
The totals are 160 + 120 + 80 = 360 available hours, 144 + 132 + 48 = 324 planned hours, and 128 + 138 + 54 = 320 actual hours. These are illustrative company records, with no outside benchmark implied.
For the column layout and fill-in checks, use the resource utilization sheet. The comparison here is about what the completed rows say about commitments.
Divide each team's planned hours by its available project hours for the planned allocation percentage. Divide its actual hours by that same capacity for the actual-use percentage. The table shows both calculations, with percentages rounded to one decimal place.
| Team | Planned calculation | Actual calculation | Actual minus planned hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisory | 144 / 160 = 90.0% | 128 / 160 = 80.0% | 128 - 144 = -16 |
| Implementation | 132 / 120 = 110.0% | 138 / 120 = 115.0% | 138 - 132 = 6 |
| Design | 48 / 80 = 60.0% | 54 / 80 = 67.5% | 54 - 48 = 6 |
| Total | 324 / 360 = 90.0% | 320 / 360 = 88.9% | 320 - 324 = -4 |
The company used four fewer hours than planned, but Implementation exceeded both its assignment and available capacity. Advisory used 16 fewer hours than assigned, while Implementation and Design each used six more. The reconciliation is -16 + 6 + 6 = -4 hours, and 324 planned hours - 4 hours = 320 actual hours.
Check capacity separately. Advisory has 160 - 128 = 32 unused hours; Implementation has 120 - 138 = -18; Design has 80 - 54 = 26. Their net balance is 32 - 18 + 26 = 40 hours, matching 360 - 320 = 40. That net balance cannot establish whether someone with the right skills was available when Implementation needed help.
Before the week starts, Implementation's planned 110.0% allocation calls for a staffing or scheduling decision. The resource manager should resolve the excess commitment with the project manager before treating the assignment as feasible.
After the week closes, the 115.0% actual-use figure calls for a different review: was the extra time approved, did the assignment grow, or were entries misclassified? Do not increase the capacity denominator simply to bring the percentage down. Establish what happened first.
Advisory's gap may indicate delayed client inputs or work that finished sooner than expected. Confirm the cause before removing capacity from the team. Design's extra hours could be legitimate work transferred from elsewhere, but the assignment record should explain it.
Availability alone does not make staff interchangeable. Asana's capacity-planning guidance includes availability, skills, and workload in workforce capacity planning. Confirm skills and timing before moving assignments across teams. Covirage is not affiliated with Asana or Google.
If you are choosing how to maintain the comparison across reporting cycles, the resource utilization tool guide covers the workflow considerations.
Upload a workbook with available capacity, planned assignments, and recorded hours, or bring a Google Sheet with the matching columns; Covirage maps the columns, and its tools compute and check the team comparisons. The external AI model explains the results with every figure traced to its rows. Create a free Covirage account, which takes about a minute, then set up your business and bring a sample of your own data.
See capacity planning for the wider staffing context.
Yes. Managers may assign more work than a team can support, but delayed approvals or missing inputs can prevent that work from starting. Check the assignment snapshot against approved time records before concluding that the team needs fewer people or more work.
No. Recorded hours show effort used, not deliverables completed or accepted. High use may accompany rework, an underestimated assignment, or a scope change. Review milestones and remaining work alongside hours before changing a deadline or promising additional capacity to a client.
Only when the allocation contains the same kind of work. A client-project allocation compared with billable time can mislead if some project work is nonbillable. Keep client delivery, internal work, and billability separate, then choose a consistent scope for both sides.
A resource manager or operations lead can maintain the comparison, with project managers confirming assignments and team leads checking recorded hours. Finance should agree on the reporting period and work categories when the figures inform project cost or staffing decisions.