Workforce planning software
How much work can this team take on, when does capacity run out, who should be on what, and what will it cost to deliver. Four questions every services business answers in a spreadsheet, answered instead from the attendance, leave and project records Employee Desk already holds.
Where this lives. Admin area → Planning → Forecast, Capacity, Scheduling, Cost and Scenarios. It reads the attendance, leave, holiday and project records already in your account, so there is nothing to import and nothing extra for your team to maintain.
The four capabilities
Each has its own page, because each is a different question with a different answer and a different set of inputs.
Capacity planning
Available hours per person and per team after leave, holidays and committed project work come out. Answers: can we take this on, and with whom?
Capacity planning → 02Forecasting
Projected demand from committed and pipeline work against projected availability. Answers: when do we run out of people, and by how much?
Forecasting → 03Scheduling
Assigning people to projects across a horizon, with over-allocation visible before it happens rather than after.
Scheduling → 04Cost planning
Cost of delivery per project and per client from hours and a cost rate per role. Answers: is this retainer actually profitable?
Cost planning →Where it fits in the product
Two pillars are live and have been collecting the inputs. The third is the planning layer on top of them.
| Pillar | Covers | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Employee management | Attendance, leave, shifts, holidays, employee records | Live |
| Work management | Projects, tasks, work reports, time tracking | Live |
| Workforce planning | Capacity, forecasting, scheduling, cost | Live |
| Scenario comparison (what-if planning) | Live | |
| Workforce intelligence | Insights, risk signals and department comparison across all three | Live |
The output of all three together is the thing worth having: a planning conversation that starts from your own records rather than from somebody’s recollection of how long the last one took.
Why this is arithmetic, not a new system to maintain
Planning products usually fail for one reason: the data underneath them is estimated. Somebody types in that a project took 200 hours, and every forecast built on that number inherits the error.
Here the inputs already exist, collected as a by-product of running the company:
- Availability from the leave calendar, holiday calendar and shift assignments — maintained already, because payroll depends on them.
- Actual effort from tracked hours and daily work reports attributed to a project — recorded already, because clients are billed from them.
- Historical duration from task completion against estimates — captured already, because projects are run in the product.
So the planning layer asks your team for nothing new. That is the whole reason it is worth building here rather than as a separate tool, and the reason it has to come after the modules that collect the data rather than before them.
Scenarios
Model a decision before you make it.
Compare plans side by side — what if we hire two developers in March, lose the biggest deal, or cut the non-billable allowance — without editing the real plan and losing the previous version.
- Headcount changes from a chosen month, positive for hires and negative for exits, priced at a role rate so the added cost is shown.
- Deal changes: override any project’s pipeline probability to 0 (lost) or 100 (won).
- Extra demand: a prospective client or internal initiative, in hours per month, weighted by probability.
- Assumption changes: hours per day, non-billable share and an allowance for unplanned leave.
Every scenario is read against the live forecast at the moment you open it, so it never goes stale, and the output is the comparison a decision turns on: shortfall months resolved or created, capacity added, and what it costs. Scenarios never change real allocations, projects or people.
What this will not become
Stated now, because planning modules have a way of growing into everything.
- Not payroll. Cost planning means cost of delivery for a project. Salaries are run in the separate payroll module, not in planning scenarios.
- Not demand forecasting from external signals. No predicting retail footfall or call volume to generate rosters. The forecast is of your committed and pipeline work.
- Not an AI that decides staffing for you. It shows the arithmetic and the trade-off; a manager who knows the team makes the call.
- Not a reason to monitor people more. Capacity planning works on attendance and reported hours. Nothing here needs screenshots.
Tell us what is missing
All five are live. If what you need is something none of them cover, this is the fastest way to influence what comes next.
What registering gets you
- Input into the order. We build what customers asked for ahead of what sounded good in a planning meeting.
- A walkthrough of scenarios. Bring the decision you are weighing and we will model it with you on your own data.
- Help getting value from what exists. All five are live. If you cannot get the number you need out of them, that is a gap worth knowing about.
Workforce planning questions
What is workforce planning software?
It answers how much work your team can take on, when that capacity runs out, who should be assigned to what, and what the delivery will cost. It works by comparing available hours — contracted time minus leave, holidays and committed work — against the demand coming from projects you have won and projects you expect to win.
Is Employee Desk workforce planning available today?
Capacity, forecasting, allocation and cost of delivery are live in the admin area under Planning. Scenario comparison is live too: model hiring, exits, winning or losing a deal, or extra demand, and compare it against the baseline forecast without touching the real plan. Admin area → Planning → Scenarios.
How is this different from the reporting that already exists?
The current reports are historical: they tell you what happened. Planning is forward-looking: it projects availability and demand, and shows where they diverge before the gap arrives. Same underlying data, opposite direction in time.
Do we need the desktop tracker for workforce planning?
No. Capacity, allocation and forecasting run on attendance, leave, holidays and project records. Cost of delivery uses the hours on daily work reports. The desktop tracker is not required for any of it, and the planning layer is not a reason to increase monitoring.
Who can see workforce planning?
Administrators only. It exposes team-wide availability and cost of delivery, which is management information rather than something every employee should browse. The server enforces this, not just the menu.
Which companies is this for?
Services businesses that sell their team time: software companies, digital agencies, staffing firms and consultancies. If your main constraint is people-hours rather than inventory or machines, this is the shape of the problem it solves.
Forecast
Committed and probability-weighted pipeline demand against real capacity, month by month, with the first month that runs short called out.
What-if scenarios
Model a decision before making it: hires, exits, winning or losing a deal, extra demand. The comparison shows capacity added, demand changed and what it costs.
Use what exists, and tell us what is missing
The reports that ship today answer more planning questions than most companies expect. Start a 7-day trial, or call +91 70095 93522 and describe the decision you are stuck on.
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