Capacity Reconciliation Before Staffing Commitments (Onboarding)

Capacity Reconciliation Before Staffing Commitments (Onboarding)

1. 01

   Pull the last 90 days of actual hours by person and by client, not by project label

   Project labels drift; client-level hours expose where a senior designer has quietly absorbed three accounts that were scoped for a mid-level hire.

2. 02

   Convert every signed retainer into a monthly hour demand figure before looking at any calendar

   A $12,000 monthly retainer at a $150 blended rate implies 80 hours of delivery capacity, which is the number that has to survive contact with the schedule.

3. 03

   Build a single capacity view that shows committed hours, pipeline hours, and unbooked hours side by side

   Tools such as Float and Resource Guru render this as a heatmap; the format matters less than keeping all three columns visible in one screen.

4. 04

   Flag any person above 85% committed utilization and any person below 60% for the next 60 days

   Sustained time above 85% is where burnout and missed deadlines originate, while sustained time below 60% is where retainer margin leaks.

5. 05

   Match open demand against skill tags rather than against whoever is free that week

   A free generalist assigned to a technical build creates rework that costs more than the idle hour it was meant to fill.

6. 06

   Write the staffing plan into the scheduling tool with named owners and a review date 14 days out

   Runn and Tempo both support forecast-versus-actual comparison, which is what turns the plan into a document you can revise instead of a snapshot you abandon.

7. 07

   Send each account lead a one-page allocation summary covering their team and their billable targets

   Account leads who see their own utilization number weekly catch scope creep before it becomes a staffing emergency.