Capacity Planning Overview

Capacity Planning helps practices forecast the time users need to complete job tasks over a selected period. The report compares this against available time, highlighting over- or under-allocated resources. This feature supports efficient workload management, and ensures resources are balanced across users and time periods. 

A Capacity Planning Report can only be run by an FYI Admin or a user in a User Group with the Create Report permission enabled.

Capacity Planning Overview

Capacity Planning Reports analyse the balance between available resources and allocated tasks.

• Available Time - calculated from each user's weekly hours and leave dates recorded in FYI.
   
• Allocated Time - calculated from the tasks defined in FYI Automation Processes, based on each Job’s start and end dates, and linked to the users assigned to those tasks (which may vary by client). Note that completed tasks are not included in Capacity Planning.

The report displays the remaining available capacity, i.e. the difference between the Available and Allocated hours. Capacity is displayed as a plus or minus number of hours, highlighting where there are unallocated or overallocated resources.

You can combine time allocations for multiple processes in a single report, allowing different job selections to be reported together. For example, one process may cover individual tax returns and another company tax returns. When run together, the Capacity Report consolidates the allocated time for users across both Processes.

Capacity can be calculated forwards from the Job Start Date or backwards from the Job Due Date, depending on your practice’s settings.

The Capacity Planning Report can be used to identify where adjustments are needed, such as reassigning Jobs to different users or changing their start dates. Once changes are made, refresh the Capacity Planning Report to update the data and view the impact without re-running the entire report.

Important: The report analyses tasks in Processes, and any related tasks for documents (e.g. creating documents or meetings), only on a hypothetical basis. Running Processes within the Capacity Planning Report will not create tasks or documents in FYI.

Video Walkthrough

Setup and Preparation for Capacity Planning Reports

The following is an overview of what needs to be set up and what is used in FYI to run the Capacity Planning Report.

For more details, and for what needs to be considered in the preparation when setting up Capacity Planning Reports, refer to Setup and Preparation for Capacity Planning.

Template

When running the report, an Excel Template is selected. The latest version of the Capacity Planning Template can be downloaded from Managing FYI Excel Master Report Templates.

There are two worksheets in the Template that must be maintained by your practice: 

• Employee worksheet
  The Employee worksheet in the Template holds the weekly hours of each of the users that are assigned to the tasks in any Processes that will be used to run the report.
   
• Leave worksheet
  The Leave worksheet in the template holds the information about any Leave dates for these users.
  Public holidays, or any other dates when not all users are available, also need to be recorded in the Leave worksheet.

The weekly hours and the leave dates are used to calculate the time Available for the assigned users.

Important Note: Do not modify any details except the Employee and Leave date information.

The Template uses advanced Excel functions, such as Pivot Tables. Any other modifications to the provided Templates may affect how Capacity Planning is calculated and displayed. If changes are made that cause errors or prevent the feature from running correctly, the FYI Support team may be unable to assist.

Once your practice data has been configured, the Report Template can be imported into the Knowledge workspace in FYI. Refer to Importing the Report Template into FYI in Setup and Preparation for Capacity Planning.

Job Views

Each Automation Process selected in Capacity Planning requires a Job View, used to determine the relevant client jobs. For example, to run a Capacity Planning report for jobs due to begin next quarter, the Job view should be filtered by a Job Start Date between the dates that relate to the next quarter.

A Job View must be selected for the Process Filter, but different views can be selected when running the Capacity Planning Report. For example, if the default is filtered by a particular division for the next quarter, when running the Capacity Planning, a view can be selected for a different division, or changed to a view of jobs due in the next 6 months.

This flexibility lets you run reports without changing the process, even when the process is used outside of Capacity Planning.

Custom Automation Processes

To calculate the time required for tasks, one or more Custom Automation Processes need to be set up by your practice, containing the relevant tasks. This can also have tasks for any steps that create documents, for example, sending an email, creating a document, or creating a meeting.

To be able to allocate time for Capacity Planning, each task requires:

• An Assignee.
• A Time value, and set to either Fixed or Relative time.

Existing Automation Processes can be updated to use with Capacity Planning by ensuring a task is created with an assignee and the time.

Default Time Allocation in Process Steps

Time is added to Custom Processes using Tasks, either the Create Task step, or in the Task section of the drawer when using a step to create a document, for example, Create Email, Word, etc.

This time is used by the Capacity Planning Report to calculate the allocated time for users assigned to each task.

Time can be set to either Fixed, a set duration for the task, or Relative, based on the total estimated hours for the job.

Refer to Setting the Default Time Allocation in Process Steps in Setup and Preparation for Capacity Planning.

Job Fields for Calculating Capacity

The Capacity Planning Report uses the Job Budget Hours and either the Job Start Date or Job Due Date. An FYI Admin can configure the Practice Settings for Jobs to select whether the Capacity Planning Report should run forward from the Job Start Date, or backward from the Job Due Date. 

• Budget Hours is used for any time entered as Relative time, and is used to calculate the time required based on the total hours budgeted for the job. Relative time allows for more time to be allocated for larger jobs, while smaller jobs are allocated less time. Budget Hours is not used when time is set to Fixed.
  
  Note: In the Job Practice Settings Mappings, practices with the Job Estimated Hours option will be able to select a Custom Field to replace the Budget Hours. 
   
• The Job Start Date or the Job Due Date determines if the job and task are relevant for the dates that the Capacity Planning Report is being run for. If required, a Custom Field can be selected for the Job Start Date. Refer to Managing Mappings.
  
  Note: The Job Completed Date setting on the Mappings page is not available for the Capacity Planning Report.
   
• The Job Start Date, Due Date, and the Budget Hours must be entered in FYI for each Job. Refer to Job Custom Fields. If using a Custom Field for the Job Start Date to calculate capacity, and a date is not entered, FYI will use the standard Job Start date field instead.

For practices integrated with Xero Practice Manager, if a Custom Field hasn't been selected in the Job Mappings settings, the values in the standard XPM fields of "Start Date" and "Estimated" will be used. However, using Custom Fields in FYI allows values to be entered directly as separate values specifically for Capacity Planning, instead of having to maintain the values in Xero Practice Manager.

Running a Capacity Planning Report

After completing the setup, users can run the Capacity Planning Report by clicking the + button in the menu bar and selecting Report from the list of document types. 

To get started, refer to:

1. Setup and Preparation for Capacity Planning.
2. Running a Capacity Planning Report, Making Adjustments and Refreshing the Report Data.