This article details how to set up each component and feature in FYI to run Capacity Planning reports.
Setting up the Capacity Planning Template
The Excel Spreadsheet Template for Capacity Planning need to be added as a Spreadsheet Template in your practice's Knowledge.
- The information in the Employees worksheet needs to be set up with the weekly hours for the users who are assigned to Tasks in the Processes.
- The information in the Leave worksheet needs to be set up with the leave dates for the users who are assigned to Tasks in the Processes.
The weekly hours and the leave dates are used to calculate the time Available for the assigned users.
Depending on your Job Mapping settings, capacity will be calculated either forwards from the Job Start Date or backwards from the Job Completed Date. Refer to Managing Mappings.
Download the Latest Capacity Planning Template
To begin using Capacity Planning, you will need to download and install the Capacity Planning Report. Refer to the "Latest Master Report Template Versions section" of the article Managing FYI Excel Master Report Templates.
A copy of the FYI Master Report Templates can be downloaded and added to your practice at any time, for example, if you modify the original template.
Preparation
- Decide which of your users will be used as an Assignee as part of the Capacity Planning.
- Determine the number of hours per week these users are available.
- Determine any leave dates that are relevant for these users.
Employees Worksheet
Set up the Employees worksheet with the weekly hours for your users. This can be set up for all users (for example, directly from your HR system) or just those that are assigned to the tasks in any Processes that will be used to run the report.
The Employees are also automatically populated so that, if you are creating a Capacity Report without a template, the users who are assigned to the Tasks are added to the Employees worksheet. If you are creating a Capacity Report and using a template that has an existing Employees worksheet, any users who are assigned to the Tasks that are not currently listed will be inserted at the first blank row in the Employees worksheet.
- Enter the Employee Name, exactly as it is held in FYI.
- Add the users' weekly hours.
You can add adjusted weekly hours directly to the Actual Hours column.
Or, add the full Weekly Hours and a value for Productivity to calculate the Actual Hours.
Note: The hours that are held in the Template can be added so this relates to the tasks involved in the Capacity Planning.
For example, if a user is full-time but is usually only available half of their time for these tasks, you can enter the hours for that person to reflect this such as entering 20 for the Weekly Hours.
Leave Worksheet
The Leave worksheet holds the information about any Leave dates for your users.
Dates of any public holidays, or any other dates where all users are not available, also need to be recorded in the Leave worksheet.
This can be set up for all users (for example, directly from your HR system) or just those that are assigned to the tasks in any Processes that will be used to run the report.
The Leave should be entered with each day of leave as a separate entry. This ensures that the Leave is applied correctly for any time period that the Capacity Planning Report is run for.
- Enter the Employee Name, exactly as it is held in FYI.
- Enter the start Date of the leave.
- Enter the total number of Hours of leave being taken from the start date.
The following is an example of the Leave dates for the users including the Easter public holidays for all users.
There is no need to record any weekend dates in the Leave worksheet. The report is processed on a seven-day cycle, therefore allocated time falling on a weekend is not an issue as most practices will run Capacity Planning at a monthly level. If, however, you want to run the Capacity Planning at a weekly level, you can add the dates for weekends in the Leave worksheet.
Do not make any other changes to the Template
It is important that, apart from the employee details and leave date details, all other settings in the Template must be left unchanged.
The spreadsheet for the Template uses advanced Excel functions (such as Pivot Tables). If any other changes are made to the spreadsheet Templates that have been provided by FYI, this can alter how the Capacity Planning is calculated and displayed. The FYI Support team may not be able to assist you if changes made to the Template cause the Capacity Planning function to give incorrect results, or that stop the feature running correctly.
Setting up the Job Views that will be used by the Custom Processes
For each Process that will be used in the Capacity Planning, a Job View needs to be set up and selected as the Filter in the Process. The Job View determines the client Jobs that drive the Process. For example, to run a Capacity Planning report for Jobs that are due in the next quarter, you would use a Job View that has the filter set for the Job Start Date between the dates that relate to the next quarter.
You can use existing Job Views, or create and save Views that are specifically for Capacity Planning.
When running the Capacity Planning Report you can select a different Job View and use a different View to the one that is set as the default. For example, if the default View is set to run the Process for a certain division for the next quarter, you can run the Capacity Planning on a View for Jobs with Start Dates further in the future, or for Jobs that relate to a different division. This allows you to run the report without having to make any changes to the Process which is also useful if the Process is also used outside of Capacity Planning.
Once the Processes have been set up, additional Views can be added as and when needed and used to run the Capacity Planning Reports.
Preparation
- Determine which Jobs the Capacity Planning needs to be run for.
Different Processes can be incorporated into the same Capacity Planning report so a different view may be applicable to the same Process. - Determine the filters and selections that need to be set up in views to display these Jobs.
Setting up the Job Views
The Job Views are set up and saved in the usual way. Refer to Saving Changes to the View Layout, Modifying and Deleting Views.
As these views will be available in the view selector in Jobs lists, if the views are only applicable to Capacity Planning you can add this in the name of the view to distinguish it,
Importing the Report Template into FYI
Once the report has been downloaded and your practice data and views are set up, the Capacity Planning Report Template must be imported to the Knowledge workspace.
- Drag and drop your Capacity Planning Report Template into the Knowledge - Templates list.
- The Name will be prepopulated for you.
- Click Create to import the template into your Templates list.
- From the Filing section in the drawer, ensure that both the Merge Fields and Excel Report options are toggled Off.
To include merge fields in Excel templates, they are inserted as Merge Names and the Merge Names setting must be set to On. Refer to Including Merge Names in Excel Templates.
- Select the default View type and View to run the report for. This can be changed when running the report.
- Update the Filing Defaults to the relevant cabinet and categories. You may like to consider a Cabinet that is only available to users in a User Group that has security set. These can be changed when running the report.
- Set the Status field to Active.
Setting up the Automation Custom Processes
The Automation Custom Processes that will be used for the Capacity Planning need to be set up by your practice. The Processes hold the steps for Tasks that will generate the Capacity Planning report. These can be stand-alone Tasks and also Tasks for any documents that are created (such as sending an email or creating a document, creating a meeting).
Each step needs to include a default Time allocation that is used to generate the Allocated time in the Capacity Planning Report.
The Processes could be used at other times (for example, a process that sends out Checklists or BAS Reminders) or they could be Processes that are set up specifically for Capacity Planning.
For existing Processes, the only changes that would generally be needed to use them in Capacity Planning would be to add the Default Time Allocation for any of the Tasks in the Process.
When the Capacity Planning Report is run, you can select more than one Process and the results of all the selected Processes are combined. This allows you to separate what is added to the Processes not only for convenience but also where different Views are used to retrieve the Jobs that trigger the Process.
It is important to note that when the Process is used to produce the Capacity Planning Report, any emails, documents or Tasks in the Steps are not created. They are used only to calculate the time allocations. However, if the same process is run in the usual way, this will create any documents and Tasks.
Preparation
- Determine which Custom Process you need to set up.
- Determine any Processes that are already set for your practice that can be used for Capacity Planning and check what updates are needed, such as adding the Default Time Allocation to all Tasks in the Processes.
- Determine all the Tasks that will be involved in what you want to run the Capacity Planning for. Each Task will be set up as a Step in the Process, or as a Task for an email or document that is created (such as a Word document, Phone Call, File Note, or Meeting).
- Determine the Assignee for each step. These would usually be added as a role, such as Partner, Manager or Custom User Role.
- Determine the Due Date of each Task, relative to the start date of a Job.
- Determine if the Time for each Task would be "Fixed" regardless of the size of the client Job, or if this needs to be "Relative" (so for a large client the Task would take longer, and for a small client the Task would take less time).
- Determine the time that each step would take for an 'average' size client Job. Where relevant this can be calculated relative to the estimated total hours of a Job, so this needs to be entered as the default time that would be needed to do the Task for an average-size client.
Selecting the View in Process
The Filter in the Process must be set as Job - View Filters and a Job View selected. The View that is selected in the process will be offered as the default when the Capacity Planning Report is run with that Process selected (but an alternative view can be selected at run time).
Adding the Steps to the Process
All Steps used for Capacity Planning need to have:
- A Task
The Task holds the Assignee and the Due Date.
- The Time details to calculate the time to be allocated.
Adding Task Steps with the Assignee and Due Date
- For a Create Task, this is entered as usual and the Assignee and Due Date are selected.
- For Steps that create an email, document, Phone Call, File Note or Meeting, a Task must be added to the Step and the Assignee and Due Date selected in the Task.
The selection for Assignee in the Task determines the user against which the Allocated time is added in the Capacity Planning Report. You can select a specific person as the Assignee, or you can select "Partner", "Manager" or a Custom User Role to use the relative Partner, Manager or Custom User Role for the Job. If the Job does not have a Partner/Manager/Custom User Role, then this is picked up from the Client settings.
The setting for Due Date determines when the Task will be done, and therefore whether or not it falls within the period for which the Capacity Planning is being run.
The Due Date is relative to the Start Date of each of the Jobs that trigger the Process (as determined by the Job View that is selected when the Process runs), plus the Due Date in the Process Step. It is not the Due Date of the Job itself.
The Month and the Week selected for Capacity Planning are based on the date at the start of the week where the Due Date falls. For example, a Due Date is calculated to be 01-08-2023 (Tuesday). However, the start of the week is 31-07-2023. In this scenario, the Month for Capacity Planning is July.
Setting the Default Time Allocation in Process Steps
Each Task Step in the Processes that will be used in Capacity Planning must include a Default Time Allocation.
The Time section in a Step is available for all Steps that create a Task or that create a document (such as Create Email, Word, Phone Call, File Note or Meeting).
The Time in the Steps is used in the Capacity Planning report to calculate the Allocated time for the Tasks for each of the assigned users.
Allocation
Allocation can be set as "Relative" or "Fixed".
Relative is used to calculate the time for the Task relative to the total estimated hours for a Job.
For any Allocations that are Relative, the total of the Default Times for all the Tasks in the Process is calculated. This is then compared to the Estimated Hours for the Job and any "Relative" times are then calculated and proportionately increased or decreased based on the total for the Job that is being considered. For example,
- The total of all Default Times in the Tasks in the Process is 10 hours.
- A Task has been set up as Relative, so it will allocate the time proportionate to the estimated total of the Job.
- The Default Time of this Task is 30 minutes (00:30).
- The Estimated Hours for one of the Jobs that triggered the Process is 30 hours. For this Job, the Time allocations for this Task will be increased by three times the Default Time. The time allocated for this Task, for this Job, will be 1 hour 30 minutes.
- The Estimated Hours for a different Job that triggered the Process is 2 hours. For this Job, the Time allocations will decrease and allocate it as one-fifth of the Default Time. The time allocated for this Task, for this Job, will be 6 minutes.
Fixed would be used for an action or Task that would always be a certain length of time regardless of the size of the client. For example, a Step for a Meeting where the meeting would always be allocated 1 hour regardless of the size of the client and the Job Estimated Hours. The Time for the Task would be set up as Fixed.
Default Time
The Default Time is set as the estimated time that the action or Task would take for an 'average' size Job.
The Default Time is entered as hours and minutes. For example:
- 00:05 for 5 minutes
- 00:45 for 45 minutes
- 01:00 for 1 hour
- 01:30 for 1 hour and 30 minutes
Setting up the Job Fields for Capacity Planning
When a Capacity Planning Report is run, it uses the Estimated Hours in the Job and either the Job Start Date or Job Due Date.
An FYI Admin can select whether the Capacity Planning Report should run forwards from the Job Start Date, or backwards from the Job Due Date. This can be configured from the Practice Settings - Jobs - Mappings tab. Refer to Managing Mappings.
- The Job Start Date or the Job Due Date determines if the Job and the task are relevant for the dates that the Capacity Planning Report is being run for.
- For any tasks that are set up in the Process with a Time allocation as "Relative", the Estimated Hours for a Job are used to allocate the time proportionate to the estimated total of the Job that triggered the Process in the Capacity Planning. Refer above to Setting the Default Time Allocation in Process Steps.
If required, a Custom Field can be selected for the Job Start Date and Job Estimated Hours. Refer to Managing Mappings and Managing Custom Fields.
Note: The Job Completed Date field on the mappings page is not available for the Capacity Planning Report.
The Job Start Date, Due Date, and the Job Estimated Hours must be entered in FYI for each Job. Refer to Job Custom Fields.
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.