Read Actuals: plan versus reported hours

Before you start

What you need

• A team that logs its time in Flowtly.
• The separate permission Money mode needs, if you want to read amounts.

1. 1

   Open Actuals and read a row

   Switch the view to Actuals. Each row is a person, and a week cell shows logged hours against the plan, as 28 / 32 h. The Variance column sums up the whole period with a sign, for example +6 h vs plan, or shows plan held when the two numbers match.

   Tips

   • The message that there is nothing to show yet means a period with no planned and no logged hours. Usually that is a period in the future or from before Flowtly was rolled out.
   • Weeks in the future are labelled Upcoming. They are not a variance from the plan, because nobody could have logged time in them yet.

   • Open the Actuals view
   • Knowledge base: Actuals, plan vs reported
2. 2

   Choose how to read it

   The switch at the top has three positions. Hours shows absolute numbers. Utilisation converts them to a percentage of capacity, so a part-time person and a full-time person can be compared. Money turns hours into revenue, cost and margin.

   Tips

   • The percentage in Utilisation is calculated from that person's capacity, not from a full week. Leave lowers capacity, so a week of leave does not look like a missed plan.
   • If Money is not available to you, Actuals falls back to Hours and says so plainly, instead of showing empty amounts.
3. 3

   Break a week down by project

   Click a week cell. The Where the hours went panel splits the logged time by project, with the week's total underneath. It answers the question the number alone leaves open: 28 hours, but on what?

   Tips

   • An empty panel saying this person logged nothing in the period is also an answer: there was a plan, and no time was logged.
   • When you have no access to the time this person logged, the panel says so openly instead of showing zero. The row total stays, but there is no breakdown.

   • Knowledge base: The cell drill-down
4. 4

   Understand Unreported and the reporting cutoff

   Unreported is capacity with no logged hours: time someone had and did not account for. Flowtly counts it only for days that have already ended, in the organisation's time zone, and states that cutoff in the description. Today and the future are excluded and have their own line: Today and future capacity.

   Tips

   • Thanks to this cutoff, Unreported does not grow during the day by hours nobody could have reported yet.
   • High Unreported for one person usually means their time tracking is behind, not that they have spare capacity. Before you replan their week, open the breakdown from the previous step.

   • Knowledge base: The Actuals drill-downs
5. 5

   Turn on Money and read what is measured

   Money mode needs the Resourcing financials viewer permission, and that permission grants nothing on its own. An administrator must give it together with Resourcing manager, which is what opens the module at all. Cost is derived from pay, so planning allocations does not mean seeing what the team earns. Once it is on, the How this figure was arrived at panel splits the amount by project in the columns Hours, Revenue, Cost (allocated), Margin and Share.

   Tips

   • Cost per project is derived, not measured. The total is measured, and Flowtly splits it across projects pro rata to the hours logged, as the panel itself points out. Do not quote that amount externally as the project's actual cost. Hours and revenue are measured.
   • The Unattributed line is the remainder that was not assigned to any project. A positive amount means unallocated contract cost. A negative amount means more was allocated than the contract cost for the period.
   • Missing rates are listed above the table. Hours of a person with no cost rate are excluded from cost, and billable hours with no charge rate are excluded from revenue. The amount is then understated, not wrong.
6. 6

   Narrow the view with filters, and know their limits

   The Role and Project filters narrow what you see. The role filter keeps the people in the chosen role. The project filter restates planned and reported hours for the chosen project, but capacity and utilisation stay empty, because capacity is not allocated to projects. In Money mode, revenue and margin are unavailable under a project filter. How to calculate cost for a single project is still an open decision, and Flowtly would rather say so than show a number it cannot defend.

   Tips

   • The total row repeats this caveat: under a project filter, the totals for capacity, load and unreported time stay empty.
   • Rate gaps are counted for everyone in the period, not only for the filtered role. So the warning can be about someone you cannot see right now.
   • Copy view link saves the period, the filters and the reading. You can pass on a specific view with one link, without explaining what to set.

   • Open the Actuals view