Setting a role's demand

A role's demand is what the work needs, stated separately from who is doing it. It is the number the Resourcing grid measures every booking against, and it is the reason an unfilled job shows up as a gap instead of as nothing at all.

Demand is set per role, per project, and it does not change when you staff the role. Booking someone answers who; demand answers how much, and the difference between the two is the shortfall the grid draws for you.

Declaring what a role needs

On the capacity grid, every role row carries a people icon at its right-hand edge. Select it to open the role's demand.

The dialog asks three things:

People needed — how many full-time people the role calls for. Whole numbers are the common case; 0.5 means half of one person's week, so 2.5 is two full-time people and a half.
Needed from and Needed until — the period the demand covers. If the role already has demand, these start on the period it already runs over; otherwise they start on the period currently on screen.

Instead of people, the amount can be given in Hours or Days, with a toggle for how it is counted: hours Daily, Per month or For the period, and days Per week or For the period.

Per month suits work that needs a set number of hours each month, such as 30 hours a month. A person booked on that need gets the figure every month, spread over their working days and leaving out their leave, so a month with leave still carries the full figure. A month the need covers only in part carries its share. On the grid it reads as the equivalent weekly share: 30 hours a month is about 17%, or 6.9 hours a week.

Below the fields, the dialog states what your number becomes: Open slots: 3 · 250% in total. That line matters, because demand is stored as one slot per full-time person — 2.5 people is three slots — and those slots are what the grid counts. Nothing appears on the grid that the dialog did not name first.

Select Save demand, and the role's cells update: the target line moves, and any week where the people booked fall short of it reads as a gap.

Declare a need at the top of the page opens the same dialog for any project. With the Projects grid filtered to one project, it opens with that project already chosen, and you can still change it.

Adjusting demand later

Open the same dialog on a role that already has demand and the fields arrive filled in with what it currently says. Change the number, the period, or both.

Saving keeps the slots the role already has wherever it can and adjusts them, rather than tearing the role's demand down and rebuilding it. Raising demand from two people to three adds one slot; lowering it from three to two removes one. This is why the ids behind a role's demand stay stable across an edit, and why an adjustment is a small change rather than a large one.

If the role's existing slots run over different periods — because the role was declared more than once with different dates, or its demand arrived from an imported plan — the dialog says so before you save and offers two ways on. Apply to all slots, the default, gives every slot the single period above. Leave the existing periods alone keeps each slot on its own period: the period above then only dates the slots the save adds, and lowering the number removes the most recently added slots first.

Withdrawing demand

Set People needed to 0 and save. The role stops declaring anything, and its cells stop reporting a gap.

The dialog warns you before this happens, and the warning names the one thing worth knowing: anyone already booked on the role stays booked. Withdrawing demand retires the requirement, not the people. If you meant to remove the bookings too, remove them separately — see The bench and draft bookings.

What to expect

A role with no declared demand is treated as one full-time person. That is the sensible default, not a statement you made. If the work genuinely needs half a week, say so here and the grid will stop reporting a shortfall that was never real.
Demand can exceed anyone's capacity, on purpose. A role may need four people; that is a statement about the work, not about a person, so nothing refuses it. The capacity limit applies to individuals — see capacity by project.
One role can take at most 20 people per save. Beyond that, the work is better described as several roles, and the plan is easier to read that way too.
The end date cannot fall before the start date, and the dialog will not save until that is fixed.
Demand is not a booking. It never appears on anyone's own capacity, and it never makes someone look busy. Only real bookings do that.
A save covering several roles is one change, not one per role. Either every role you declared is recorded or none of them is. There is no outcome where some roles took and others did not, so a save that reports a problem has left the plan exactly as it was.
A save is refused outright if someone else has moved the same roles while you had the editor open. Nothing is written, so their change is not overwritten and yours is not half-applied. Reopen the role's demand to see where it now stands, and make your change again on top of theirs.

Who can do this

Setting demand requires the Resourcing approver role — a narrower permission than the Resourcing manager role that covers most of the grid.

This catches people out, because declaring demand does not feel like an approval. The reason is that a demand is a statement rather than a proposal: saying this project needs two developers commits the plan to a requirement immediately, with no draft stage in between and nothing for anyone to confirm later. It is therefore held to the same permission as confirming a booking. Proposing and committing explains the split.

This changed recently. Declaring demand used to come with the Resourcing manager role. If you have been setting demand and find you can no longer save it, that is why — ask whoever administers your Flowtly account for the Resourcing approver role. Administrators already hold it.

Withdrawing demand needs the Approver role as well, and so does raising or lowering the number of people, for the same reason: retiring a requirement or changing its size is as much a commitment as declaring one.

Moving or resizing a confirmed need does too. Once a need is confirmed, changing its amount or its period (Needed from and Needed until) is also approver work. When every open slot of the role is confirmed and you do not hold the Approver role, the amount and the period are locked in the dialog, with the reason beside them: This need is confirmed. Changing its amount or period needs the Resourcing Approver role.

A need that is still a draft or a request stays open to a Resourcing manager. Moving its period or resizing it adjusts a requirement nobody has committed to yet, so the manager can still do it. This is worth knowing, because re-periodising is the common edit when a project slips. Where a role holds both draft and confirmed slots, the dialog stays open and checks each change: an edit that would reach a confirmed slot needs the Approver role, and an edit to the draft slot does not.

The dialog works this out from what you have actually typed, not from the role alone. It opens for anyone who can reach the grid, and Save demand stays available while your change is one you are allowed to make; it greys out, with an explanation, only once the values in front of you add up to a change that needs approval. So you find out before you commit to the edit rather than after.

If a save is refused, nothing is half-written. The check runs before any part of the change is sent, so a role's demand is never left partly rewritten — you get the message and the demand stays exactly as it was.

Reading the grid needs nothing beyond the Resourcing manager role that gets you onto the page — or, for read-only access, the Resourcing viewer role.

Example use cases

Declare that a project needs two backend developers from September, months before either of them is hired.
Turn a role that was quietly reading as under-covered into an accurate half-time role, and clear a false gap off the plan.
Raise a role from one person to two after a scope change, and see immediately which weeks are now short.
Withdraw the demand on a role a client cancelled, without disturbing the people still finishing their work on it.
Declare demand for a whole quarter, then filter to Open roles only to hand the result to recruitment as a brief.
Plan a support role at 30 hours a month, so the person on it keeps that figure in a month with leave.