Project resourcing

Resourcing for every project aggregates together to give managers a cross-project view of how much work is delegated to every member of the team — a must for running an effective and efficient business.

Resourcing is something that needs constant attention since not everything always runs exactly how it is planned. Clients change minds, obstacles are discovered, and the time to complete tasks doesn't always magically align with what you planned. The process of routinely checking in on the resourcing calendar as well as task completion will help any organisation manage projects effectively, and hold everyone involved accountable for their delivery.

Resourcing is where you apply the effort (time allocations) you have planned for people to the resourcing calendar. As you do this the interface provides you with live updates on how changes impact your cost projections as well as the available resource.

Let's look at some examples:

• You resource someone based on the project Gantt (visible at the bottom of the screen), only to realise the person you wanted to do it is on annual leave. When you reallocate this to the next best person to work on that task, you see any difference in their role's rate card and its impact on the overall cost to the project of that change.
• You resource someone to a selection of tasks, but the system flags that that individual is already fully booked for that week, meaning it is unlikely they will be able to achieve both objectives.
• You're halfway through a project. On the whole it's going well, but the team are bogged down in one task — they have already used 50% of the budget for that component but are only 25% complete. You need to resource some additional time to the task; as you do so, the interface flags that you will (by the time of projected completion) likely have used 125% of the budget.

Planning versus Resourcing

Same numbers, different question. Planning answers "who is doing this deliverable and for how many hours." Resourcing answers "on which weeks does that work actually land, and does it fit around everything else that person is doing?" Planning is the intent; Resourcing is the schedule that intent gets pinned to.

This project versus the whole team

This page is one project at a time. When the question is "has anyone got room for this at all?" rather than "does this project fit?", Resourcing reads the same allocations across every project at once, one row per person, and flags the weeks that are over capacity.

What you'll see on the page

The page has two horizontal zones stacked on top of each other, plus a side panel on the right.

• Team rows at the top — one block per project member, showing their allocations and totals week by week.
• Timeline footer at the bottom — a collapsible Gantt strip showing every deliverable's date range and its resourced segments.
• Deliverables panel on the right — the health-check column for every deliverable's Budget, Allocated, Resourced, and Worked figures.

Each week column is headed with its full date range, so you can read the start and end of a week without counting days.

Hours or days

The Hours / Days toggle in the page header sets the unit for every figure on the page — the bars, the weekly totals, the breakdowns, and the allocation card. Figures show in one unit at a time, e.g. 11.3h in hours or 1.4d in days. Hover the toggle to see the day length it converts at (e.g. "1 day = 8h"), which comes from the start and end hours in your calendar configuration. Days stays unavailable until that day length has loaded.

Your choice is remembered in this browser for the workspace, and it's shared with Planning — switch to days here and Planning opens in days too.

Anatomy of a team row

Each project member gets two rows stacked together:

• Their allocation on this project. Coloured bars showing which deliverables they're on, in which week, and for how much time. The bar label shows the deliverable name; the number on the right shows the time in your chosen unit (e.g. 11.3h or 1.4d). Weeks where they have nothing resourced on this project show a muted placeholder, labelled Unresourced when you hover it.
• Total across all projects. Aggregates that person's committed time for the week — their hours across every project they're on in the workspace, plus any booked leave — so 25.5h of work in a week with 17h of leave reads as 42.5h. Even when they have no allocation on this project, you'll see their total from other projects, so it's clear whether they've got room for more work or are already fully booked. Cells are flagged when someone's resourced hours for a week exceed the capacity they have left — and because leave comes off that capacity, a week where they're out for two days is flagged much sooner. Hovering the info icon breaks the total down project by project, then shows the leave and what's actually left available.

On a long project, someone's work often sits outside the weeks currently on screen. Hover a member's row and a chevron appears against whichever edge they have work beyond (on a touchscreen the chevrons are always visible) — Earlier work on the left, Later work on the right. Each click moves to their next block of allocation in that direction, one at a time, rather than jumping straight to the end. When there's nothing further that way the chevron drops out, so the arrows still showing are always ones that lead somewhere. Trellis scrolls to targets already in view and re-loads the calendar around ones that aren't, highlighting the bar it lands on so you can see what you were taken to.

The calendar covers the project's work plus up to two years either side. When this week is off screen, select Go to this week to jump back.

Any booked leave a member has shows on their row as a hatched grey bar, labelled with the leave type (Annual leave, Working from home, and so on). Hover it to see how much time it takes out of that week. It's laid out alongside the resourcing bars rather than behind them, so nothing can cover it, and it can't be dragged. The hatching only covers the days they're actually out, so a two-day leave in a five-day week shows a partial bar and a full week out spans the week end to end. On a short leave the bar is too narrow for its label, so hover it to see the detail. A leave that runs across a week boundary is measured per week, so each week shows its own share. Bank holidays inside a leave range don't count against the member, the same as they don't count against their allowance when the leave is booked. You can still resource around it, but the marker is there so you don't accidentally schedule someone who won't be at their desk. Which leave reaches this view is set per absence type by Deduct from user resource and timesheet. A type that's hidden from members can still block them out here, in which case the bar reads Leave for everyone except Owners and Admins.

If a member has no rate card, Owners and Admins see a warning triangle beside their name — "No rate card set for this member, so costs on this page are misleading" — and a notice in the Deliverables panel with a Manage members button. Assign a rate card to fix the costs.

The Timeline footer

Toggle it open with the collapse arrow at the bottom of the calendar. Drag the footer's top edge to make it taller or shorter — Trellis remembers the height you leave it at. Every deliverable shows here. Deliverables you haven't resourced yet appear as a single bar spanning their planned date range; once you resource one, that bar is replaced by the individual segments you've placed on the calendar. Each segment on the footer is draggable (shift its dates), resizable (change its duration), and splittable via the scissors icon on the bar.

The Deliverables panel

A checklist of every deliverable on the project, with four financial rows per item:

• Budget — the £ you have to spend on this deliverable.
• Allocated — from Planning, the £ cost of the hours assigned to people on the deliverable itself (hours × rate card). Where the deliverable has no figure of its own for someone, it inherits their hours from its tasks, so a deliverable planned entirely through its tasks still shows a cost here and can still be resourced.
• Resourced — the £ cost of the segments you've actually placed on the calendar so far. Turns red with an info tooltip when it exceeds Allocated.
• Worked — the £ cost of time already logged against the deliverable.

Together those four figures give you the health check for a deliverable in a single column: what you have, what you've planned, what you've scheduled, and what you've spent.

Deliverables without Planning data yet appear under a "Not planned/allocated" section at the bottom of the panel with a link to jump back to the task and set them up before you resource them.

How you resource work

Auto-resource multiple deliverables at once. Tick deliverables in the right panel, then click Resource at the bottom. Trellis takes the hours planned per assignee and lays them out on the calendar across the deliverable's date range, one segment per person per week. This is the fastest way to get a project scheduled without dragging every bar by hand.

Resource a single segment by hand. Grab an allocation bar on any member's row and drag it. Drag horizontally to shift the segment's dates; drag onto a different member's row to reassign it. When you reassign, Trellis re-costs the segment using the new person's rate card, and the Resourced £ figure on the panel updates immediately.

Adjust hours or reassign via the allocation card. Click any bar to open the allocation edit card. You can change the assignee, set the Duration in hours or days (following the toggle), pick a preset (2h up to 1w), or delete the segment outright. The card also shows the deliverable's own totals (Budget / Allocated / Resourced / Worked) so you have context while you tweak.

Split a segment. In the Timeline footer, click the scissors icon on a segment bar to break it in two. Drag either half independently — handy for spreading work across two people or breaking a chunky week into a lighter start and heavier finish.

Delete a segment. On a member row, click the bar and hit Delete on the allocation card. In the Timeline footer, right-click the segment for a shortcut delete.

Add someone to the project. Use the kebab menu next to the team count and pick Add members to bring anyone from the workspace onto this project's roster. They'll then be resourceable.

Filter the view. The filter icon narrows the visible member rows so you can focus on a subset while you work. The Members tab starts with everyone ticked; use Select all to tick or clear the whole list at once. Trellis remembers your filter for the project and adds it to the page URL, so you can share the filtered view.

Resetting the timeline

The kebab menu also holds a Reset action. This is a destructive "start over" button: it removes every segment, deletes every allocation on the timeline, and returns each deliverable back to its planned dates.

How Resourcing relates to the rest of Trellis

• Planning is where the hours per assignee are set. Resourcing consumes that and asks when those hours land.
• Timesheet and My leaves feed back in. Logged hours turn into the Worked £ figure on the panel; booked leave surfaces as the leave overlay on the calendar.
• Timeline shares the same mental model but at the deliverable level (dates only, no per-person allocation). Resourcing is Timeline + who + how many hours.
• Profitability on the project Overview reads Resourced and Worked from here to calculate margin projections in-flight.

Who can do what

Viewers don't see Resourcing at all.