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The 10 Best Resource Management Software & Tools Of 2023

Best Resource Management Software

I’ve selected these as the best resource management software for 2023.

  1. monday.com

    Best for simple workload and capacity planning

  2. Kantata

    Best all-in-one resource planning for services teams and agencies

  3. Parallax

    Best for professional services companies looking to aggregate functionality through integrations

  4. Float

    Best for digital agencies and production teams

  5. Silverbucket

    Best for project-based work

  6. Hub Planner

    Best for midsize and large companies

  7. Smartsheet

    Best for advanced and custom workflow automations

  8. Runn

    Best for managing and tracking resources in real-time

  9. Saviom

    Best for enterprise resource and workforce management

  10. Resource Guru

    Best low-cost option for beginners

Human resources are at the core of resource management software. Project managers use it to keep tabs on what the team is doing and if they are free to take on more tasks. This is especially useful, considering most project managers are running 2-5 projects at the same time!

However, if you are currently on the fence about whether you should invest or not in software like this, let me give you a quick thought. Resource management software can help you create a culture of retention. How? It gives you information on the workload of your team. Having a view that shows you allocation percentages can help you control workloads and make sure your resources are not on the brink of burnout.

So keep your team at healthy (not 100%) levels of allocation, give them time to develop their skills, and enjoy a more committed and efficient team.

How I Picked The Best Resource Management Software

I evaluated and compared the most popular resource management tools on the market, both for their reviews and user interface. Then I weighed factors that make software a good option to manage resources, such as the ones that follow.

  • User Interface (UI): The amount of information related to resources can be overwhelming, especially as our projects grow. Therefore, the software we use must make good use of white spaces and have easy-to-navigate toolbars and menus so we can find our way through the tool.
  • Range of features: I looked at all the different angles from which you can see your resources. Whether that is from a timesheet, workload view, capacity hours, time reports, or project views by resource.
  • Integrations: Some software on this list might not have the level of depth required to be excellent resource management software, but they use integrations to compensate for that. Integrations extend the functionality of a platform by connecting it to external tools.
  • Pricing: I searched through pricing information to find if there are free versions of the software, free trials, and the starting price of paid plans. There should be a balance between price and value.

The 10 Best Resource Management Software Overviews

Have a look and sign up for some trials to test-drive and find the best resource management software for your case.

1

monday.com

Best for simple workload and capacity planning

monday.com is a flexible work platform to help teams communicate in context and get a birds-eye view of outstanding projects, available resources, and projected timelines.

Why I picked monday.com: Its smart design and straightforward interface mean teams can get started planning timelines, assigning project ownership, and managing any project in minutes.

monday.com offers various views to represent data so that each team member can work according to his preferences. With workload view, you can easily see who’s able to take on more work and who’s not. Gain insight into your team’s work capacity and make adjustments to timelines or ownership accordingly—no matter where you are. The monday.com app gives you the flexibility and power to run your team on the go. You can organize your daily work, projects, and teams all in one place.

monday.com Standout Features & Integrations

Features include automations, file management, dashboards, shared documents for real-time collaboration, Gantt charts, and 5+ views so you can see your project information the way you want to.

Integrations include apps like Slack, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Excel, Google Drive, Gmail, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and thousands more accessible via Zapier.

monday.com Plans & Pricing

Pricing starts at $10 /user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 6745

14-day free trial + freemium plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)

Pros

  • New features being rolled out regularly
  • Easily create boards dedicated to operational resource tracking
  • Color coded status great for resource overviews

Cons

  • Comparatively complex pricing rubric
  • May be too robust for small teams
  • Gantt charts locked to mid-level plan
2

Kantata

Best all-in-one resource planning for services teams and agencies

Kantata is a well-rounded tool that bridges the core planning, execution, project accounting, and analysis systems in a single operating environment. It has modules for project management, accounting, resource management, business intelligence, and team collaboration for services teams and agencies

Why I picked Kantata: It offers a system of dashboards, live time and expense tracking features, and a great documenting system. Kantata ticks off all the boxes when it comes to RM features. The resource management module offers real-time utilization and margins at the project and even the task level. Some key features include resource forecasting, capacity management, skills management, scenario planning, and role-based planning.

I could go on and on about Kantata's features because there really are too many to list—it’s a comprehensive RM suite, that, despite requiring time to truly master, has been recognized as being easy to use and learn. What’s more, the company leverages its professional services expertise as part of its offering, making available its Kantata BI Consultants. They can build reports specifically for your business and provide training to your resources to help mitigate the risks and costs of implementation.

Kantata Standout Features & Integrations

Features include built-in reports, custom reporting and trend analysis, resource management features like real-time utilization, resource forecasting and capacity management, and accounting tools like project costing, budget management, and invoicing.

Integrations include pre-built integrations with tools like Expensify, G Suite, Netsuite, Jira, Hubspot, Xero, Salesforce, Slack, Concur, Qualtrics, Dynamics 365, and Quickbooks. They also provide an integration platform called M-Bridge to help you build your own integrations.

Kantata Plans & Pricing

Kantata offers plans to meet your needs. Choose from resource management to complete PSA with advanced BI. To receive accurate pricing information, contact Kantata directly.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.1 715

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Resourcing fully integrated with master planning
  • Good reporting functionality for resource data
  • Distinguish between soft and firm allocation
  • Easy capacity management

Cons

  • Advanced features are available only in the Premier and Enterprise editions of the application
  • Proofing solution is an add-on
  • Custom reports can be difficult to create without training
3

Parallax

Best for professional services companies looking to aggregate functionality through integrations

Parallax is a robust resource planning and forecasting solution that is designed to help increase utilization and is natively built for integrations. It is best suited for digital services firms and software development teams looking to take full advantage of modern predictive resourcing and active forecasting to discover measured growth, higher revenue rates, and stronger margins.

Why I picked Parallax: One of its strongest features is the predictive resource management software, which is purpose-built for project and resource managers, providing you with the tools you need to efficiently evaluate and optimize supply and demand. With better resource optimization, you should be able to keep teams happy and satisfied, your projects and resources on track, and everyone in the team and the organization perfectly aligned on common goals.

Additionally, Parallax’s resource planning software facilitates resource optimization for digital services companies. The tool gives you the ability to balance workloads, analyze utilization, and match the best available resources to the most suitable projects. This approach helps optimize team performance and improve overall productivity.

Parallax Standout Features & Integrations

Features include planned capacity, utilization, balanced workloads, skills tags with an advanced database search of employees, customizable billing models, real-time project P&L reporting, and project accounting.

Integrations include Hubspot, Slack, Tempo, Salesforce, Jira, Harvest, Microsoft Teams, Asana, and Oracle NetSuite. The integrations approach of the platform ensures you can aggregate the best features of each tool in your current tech stack under one roof.

Parallax Resource Planning has quote-based pricing that is available only upon request. There is no free trial available, although you can book a demo.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.5 2

Free demo

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Responsive customer service support team
  • No additional cost for integrations
  • Excellent predictive reporting capabilities

Cons

  • Non-Agile teams may struggle with it
  • No tracking for billable vs. non-billable hours
4

Float

Best for digital agencies and production teams

Float is a resource management, planning, and scheduling software that helps teams manage shared work schedules.

Why I picked Float: Scheduling in Float is easy and intuitive. Create new projects quickly, and assign them to your team within seconds. The schedule view gives you an accurate, high-level overview of your team’s availability and capacity, and you can drill down deeper using Float’s search and filter functionality. Set custom work hours, import and assign public holidays, schedule time off, assign custom tags like location and skills to your people and projects, and set a scheduled status to let everyone know when you’re working from home or remotely, or what you’re up to on a particular day.

Real-time reporting lets you track your resource utilization, monitor project budgets, and forecast your team’s capacity. Add time tracking to access pre-filled timesheets and compare your team’s scheduled hours with the actual time spent on tasks.

Float Standout Features and Integrations

Features include right-click menus for splitting tasks, an activity timeline to track changes, pre-filled timesheets based on your schedule, capacity management, multi-project planning, forecasting, and reports.

Integrations include Jira, Asana, Teamwork, Trello, Google calendar, Outlook Calendar, Slack, and thousands more through Zapier.

Float Plans and Pricing

There are two plans available and pricing starts at $7.50 /user/month.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2 1067

30-day free trial

From $7.50/user/month

Pros

  • Mobile app for iOS and Android
  • 99.5% uptime
  • 24-hour support with 30 min response time

Cons

  • Time tracking requires you to get a higher plan
  • Updating staff/personnel list takes time
5

Silverbucket

Best for project-based work

Silverbucket is a resource planning tool for project-based businesses, and is designed for use by architects, engineers, and IT professionals. Silverbucket is easy to use and allows users to view and compare resource plans and actual hours to get insights into the success of resource management activities.

The tool provides clear views of a company’s resource allocation activities, including conflicts, workloads, and capacity levels. Project managers can allocate team members to tasks and projects, and make allocations to unassigned roles if needed.

Skills tracking features such as tracking competencies and abilities are also included, as are reporting tools such as performance dashboards, insights on past resourcing plans, and forecasting for future resource management plans.

Silverbucket gives different parties, such as project managers, team leaders, and company management, information about resourcing and how it affects the success of projects, as well as monitor sales forecasts, cash flow, and utilization rates.

Silverbucket offers a variety of APIs for integrations, which also allow automation of data flows.

Pricing starts from €10/planned person/month.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 15

30-day free trial

From €9 /planned person/month (volume discount available)

Pros

  • Soft booking can be used to create tentative allocations
  • Easily compare resource plans to actual hours

Cons

  • No ability to create “what if” resource planning scenarios
  • No mobile application available
6

Hub Planner

Best for midsize and large companies

Hub Planner is a resource management software with a full suite of scheduling, time entry, and reporting features. The core feature is the simple and usable Scheduler, which allows for project and resource planning and visualization. Users can drag and drop to plan projects and schedule resources. The tool also offers a multi-function menu, powerful filtering, and a dynamic team capacity bar. Multiple view modes allow for both high-level birds-eye views and granular views of projects.

Hub Planner has a powerful reporting engine with 70+ pre-formatted templates. If you can't find what you're looking for in a template, you can create reports from scratch.

Hub Planner also has a number of inline workflows for timesheets, requesting vacation time, and a slick resource requesting & approval option. Their Unassigned Work feature is great for scheduling and forecasting ahead of the pipeline, and users can create custom fields at the resource or project level. Users can also customize schedule notifications and reminders.

They've taken a modular approach so you have the option to add or remove extensions to the base product, allowing teams to increase functionality or turn off bits they don't need. Inline integrations with Basecamp, Slack, iCal, REst API, and Zapier are available.

Hub Planner offers a pretty extensive 60 days free trial with everything included. There is an extensive knowledge base with tutorial videos, and their customer support is excellent.

Licenses begin at $7 per month, per resource with annual discounts available.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2 16

30-day free trial

From $7/resource/month (billed annually)

Pros

  • Easy toggle between user/group
  • Powerful & precise built-in reporting
  • Search filter for available resources with skill sets & location
  • Excellent capacity planning & forecasting

Cons

  • Need an API or intermediary for MS Teams
  • Editing Custom Fields requires manual input or help from Hub Planner support
  • Need to click into modal for more details on events/projects bookings
7

Smartsheet

Best for advanced and custom workflow automations

Resource Management by Smartsheet, a high-level project and resource management software, helps teams make confident decisions about project planning, team capacity, budget forecasting, team utilization, and hiring needs in real-time.

Why I picked Resource Management by Smartsheet: The tool's unique project and resource matching feature allows users to match team members to project requirements according to different criteria like disciplines, skills, availability, and more. Resource Management by Smartsheet also offers built-in timesheets, mobile time tracking, and expense tracking. Users can create project reports by filtering project data, get insight into historical data, and see forecasts on team utilization, actual vs. planned time reports, budget tracking, expense reports, and projects in the pipeline.

RM by Smartsheet Standout Features & Integrations

Features include project and resource matching, dynamic reporting, time tracking, a resource management panel, and a resource timeline for projects.

Integrations include apps like Slack, Brandfolder, Workplace, Microsoft Teams, and Facebook Ads. It additionally has a flexible API you can use to build custom integrations with the tools you use and automation through Zapier where you can connect to 1000+ apps.

RM by Smartsheet Plans & Pricing

Pricing starts at $9/user/month and offers a 14-day free trial. Resource management is a premium add-on that you need to purchase on top of your Smartsheet plan. Pricing is available upon request.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 7399

Freemium version available

From $7/user/month

Pros

  • Intuitive for keeping timesheets and assigning hours
  • Skills database helps resource allocation
  • Able to forecast resource utilization
  • Combines time tracking and resourcing

Cons

  • Bulk project edits don’t apply to resource field
  • Needs better data visualization
  • Initial resource set-up is time consuming
8

Runn

Best for managing and tracking resources in real-time

Runn is a real-time resource, demand, and capacity planning tool with integrated time tracking and powerful forecasting capabilities. You can get a bird’s-eye view of all projects and people to instantly spot overbookings and identify resourcing patterns.

Why I picked Runn: Scheduling allocations is easy and intuitive in Runn. Simply drag-and-drop to create project phases and allocations. Flick between monthly, quarterly, and 6-month views to plan for the short and long term. If you don’t have the right person at the right time, you can use placeholders instead.

Additionally, you can see visualizations of capacity, workload, availability, and billable and non-billable utilization. Drill into different roles, teams and tags to compare trends and understand which groups are overbooked. Plan out tentative projects to see how your resourcing plans might change if the work gets confirmed.

Finally, Runn lets you track projects, view forecasts, utilization, project variance, and overall financial performance. Its built-in timesheets will help you understand how much time was worked compared to what was planned.

Runn Standout Features & Integrations

Features include resource scheduling, project planning, capacity management, project forecasting, timesheets, and reporting.

Integrations include apps like Harvest, WorkflowMax, and Clockify for importing project, client, and people data and syncing time entries. With Runn’s API, you can build your own integration to send data across your favorite tools.

Runn Plans & Pricing

Pricing starts at $10/user/month and has a 14-day free trial. There is also a free plan for up to 5 people.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
3.7 41

14-day free trial and free plan

From $10/person managed/month

Pros

  • Powerful API
  • Over-budget predictions
  • Easily identify overbooked/unavailable employees
  • Intuitive utilization reporting and forecasting
  • Drag-and-drop resource scheduling

Cons

  • Limited number of integrations
  • No offline or mobile time tracking
9

Saviom

Best for enterprise resource and workforce management

Saviom is a leader in powerful and configurable resource management software.

Why I picked Saviom: Its ERM solution enables agile resource scheduling with a Gantt chart-style view using simple drag-and-drop functionality. Besides, the enterprise-wide visibility of the tool helps you identify and allocate the right resource to the right job. Additionally, using modeling and simulation techniques, the tool helps select an optimized resource plan and enhance ROI.

Using the forecasting and capacity planning module, businesses can forward plan pipeline projects and bridge the capacity vs. demand gap proactively. Moreover, you can optimize your workforce by maximizing the profitable utilization of every resource.

Firms can improve their organizational health index using real-time Business Intelligence. They can build customized portals, dashboards, analytics, and reports using the tool's highly configurable and expandable capability.

Saviom Standout Features & Integrations

Features include a multidimensional resource scheduler and planner, advanced forecasting and capacity planning, and real-time business intelligence.

Integrations include Outlook, Google, Salesforce, Jira, and custom integrations you can build using its data exchange framework.

Saviom Plans & Pricing

With a tiered pricing model as customizable as the tool, Saviom’s power and lite licenses operate under role-based access, ensuring you retain full control over data. It also offers a 60-day free trial. 

60-day free trial

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Seamless integration with other enterprise applications
  • Highly flexible real-time reports, analytics & dashboards
  • Real-time resource optimization, modeling & simulation
  • Highly configurable & customizable RM solution
  • Multidimensional resource forecasting & capacity planning

Cons

  • Pricing is available only on request
  • More suitable for medium to large enterprises
  • There is a learning curve as the tool comes with extensive features
10

Resource Guru

Best low-cost option for beginners

Resource Guru is a dedicated resource management software that aims to make resource management user-friendly.

Why I picked Resource Guru: The software makes sense of the gong show that is resource conflict resolution. Resource management and team collaboration are built in to make resource booking more straightforward, with clash management, leave management, and a waiting list to prevent over-booking. It helps project managers make bookings simultaneously with no chance of stepping on each other’s toes. Clashes are automatically prevented.

Helpfully, each staff member gets their own resource dashboard so they can log in and know exactly what they should be working on. And to monitor business performance, powerful reports help identify which projects and clients are being over-serviced and help to monitor team utilization and help with future capacity planning.

Resource Guru Standout Features & Integrations

Features include resource scheduling, resource management, leave management, project scheduling, capacity planning, and forecasting reports.

Integrations include calendar apps like Outlook calendar, Calendly, and Google calendar. Thousands of additional apps are accessible through Zapier.

Resource Guru Plans & Pricing

Pricing starts at $3/user/month.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 173

30-day free trial

From $3/user/month

Pros

  • Daily resource summary emails
  • Attractive and flexible UI
  • Very affordable per-user rate
  • Availability bar for capacity planning

Cons

  • No copy-paste of resource tasks
  • Unable to sort resources by experience level

Need expert help selecting the right Project Resource Management Software?

We’ve joined up with Crozdesk.com to give all our readers (yes, you!) access to Crozdesk’s software advisors. Just use the form below to share your needs, and they will contact you at no cost or commitment. You will then be matched and connected to a shortlist of vendors that best fit your company and you can access exclusive software discounts!

The Best Resource Management Software Comparison Chart

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the baffling array of resource planning software out there. Below, we’ve put together a reader-friendly table neatly summarizing basic info about the tools described in this article.

Tool Free Option Price
1
monday.com

Best for simple workload and capacity planning

14-day free trial + freemium plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) Visit Website
2
Kantata

Best all-in-one resource planning for services teams and agencies

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Visit Website
3
Parallax

Best for professional services companies looking to aggregate functionality through integrations

Free demo

Pricing upon request Visit Website
4
Float

Best for digital agencies and production teams

30-day free trial

From $7.50/user/month Visit Website
5
Silverbucket

Best for project-based work

30-day free trial

From €9 /planned person/month (volume discount available) Visit Website
6
Hub Planner

Best for midsize and large companies

30-day free trial

From $7/resource/month (billed annually) Visit Website
7
Smartsheet

Best for advanced and custom workflow automations

Freemium version available

From $7/user/month Visit Website
8
Runn

Best for managing and tracking resources in real-time

14-day free trial and free plan

From $10/person managed/month Visit Website
9
Saviom

Best for enterprise resource and workforce management

60-day free trial

Pricing upon request Visit Website
10
Resource Guru

Best low-cost option for beginners

30-day free trial

From $3/user/month Visit Website

Other Resource Management Solutions

These are some extra options you can pick from. Even though they did not make it to the top 10, they are still worth considering as your next resource management tool.

  1. Meisterplan

    Best for its role-based resource allocation prior to staffing

  2. Dayshape

    Best resource management software with an AI-generated resource suitability score

  3. Mosaic

    Best for its recommendations based on resource skills and availability

  4. ClickUp

    Best for its workload and box views that help you see what your team is up to and their capacity

  5. Zoho Projects

    Best workload allocation tools

  6. Forecast

    Best AI-assisted RM

  7. Paymo

    Best RM tool for remote teams

  8. Microsoft Project

    Best RM software for Microsoft users

  9. ProjectManager.com

    best for resource monitoring through project dashboards

  10. ActiveCollab

    Best for resource management dashboards

Check out our video on resource management software!

Resource Management Software FAQs

Find answers to common questions about resource management and resource management software.

What is resource management?

In project management, resource management refers to the practice of planning, tracking, and optimizing the utilization of resources (such as human resources, space, and equipment) in order to streamline project work and completion.

This process involves planning and managing: checking the resource’s availability, scheduling start and end dates, managing any resourcing conflicts or dependencies, and monitoring over time to adapt to changes.

How do you create a resource plan?

You can read our full guide to creating resource management plans for more detail, but here are the main steps:

  1. Identify the different types of resources needed to complete the project.
    Resources could include team members, equipment, meeting rooms, or anything that’ll be required as part of the project process.
  2. Quantify the amount of each type of resource required.
    To quantify the resources, you’ll need to consider the resources and estimate their effort on the project.
  3. Schedule the consumption of each resource within the project.
    To schedule the resources, you’ll need a project schedule so you know who to book, when, and for how long.

What is a resource forecast?

Resource forecasting is a plan of the resources required to deliver a project. It often occurs in the initial phases of a project, even as early as the sales process.

A resource forecast is an estimate of the resources and effort that will be required for the project, which helps determine the project hours, project budget, and the project estimate put forward to the client.

How do you calculate project resources?

A simple way to calculate the level of effort required is to look at past project performance and compare it with the current project plan to identify the current project team velocity.

You can then use the formula: current velocity/project estimate = resources required.

It’s important to calculate resources needed for a project so that you take the right amount of the team’s time. Resource too little, and they won’t have enough time to complete the work, and if you resource too much, you might inadvertently be pushing them to waste time or work slowly to fill in the time.

Do I need resource management software?

Not necessarily. When agencies start, it’s usually with a handful of resources. There’s no urgent need for resource management or specialist software. Usually, everyone simply gets together for a quick huddle, agrees on priorities, and works out what everyone is going to work on for the day. Or—if people are feeling really ambitious—for the entire week.

As the agency grows, resource management becomes more formal, and the resource scheduler becomes a whiteboard. Simple, right?

Then, disaster strikes as someone accidentally wipes the whiteboard clean, or the office grows to the extent that people can’t actually see the whiteboard, and everyone realizes it’s time to move to the agency gold standard: the infamous resource scheduler of doom, otherwise known as the resource spreadsheet.

Should I still be using spreadsheets?

Everyone knows resource management by spreadsheet doesn’t really work. It’s not cut out for the job. Everything’s a bit of a hack, they’re clunky, and they’re horribly prone to errors. Months pass by and still, the resourcing spreadsheet somehow just about manages to keep its head above water.

At a push, your spreadsheet might tell you how under-resourced or under-utilized your teams are, or even include forecasting, but does it include budget tracking, time tracking for billable hours, project reporting, sending staff real-time notifications, helping them collaborate, or a built-in process for requesting resources and resource allocation? Without these elements, it cannot be the solution you’re looking for.

But there’s hope. A growing number of tools have evolved in recent years to fix the problem of resource management in Excel and actually create something better than the free resource management tools—stuff that actually brings additional business value on top of keeping everything organized.

What is resource management software?

Sometimes referred to as resource capacity planning software, it’s a type of project management tool that enables you to plan, allocate, and then track who’s working on what project, when, and for how long.

This software makes it easy to see the resource availability and capacity of the organization and the available skills. Then, schedule and provide reporting to show historical and forecasted resource utilization.

Some software also has project management software features. These make it easy to plan, schedule, and reschedule projects, tasks, and resources in the same tool.

Learn more about the use cases for resource management software here.

What are the benefits of using resource management software?

  1. Streamline resource management and deployment to be as efficient and effective as possible, reducing downtime and increasing utilization.
  2. Provide a bird’s eye view of organizational capacity to prevent overbooking and support hiring decisions.
  3. Forecast revenue by providing reports on upcoming projects and planned resource deployment.

Here are 6 other benefits of using resource management software.

What key features should I look for when evaluating resource management software?

  1. Workload resource planning: A view where you can see who is doing what, how much time it will take, and who can handle more tasks.
  2. Timesheet integration: Metrics relating to time spent, time used, and time costs are key to resource scheduling, so a timesheet integration or built-in solution is critical.
  3. Resource allocation automation: Resource allocation is time-consuming, so you want to be able to automate some of the grunt work. Look for automation features that require no coding. Most tools nowadays have drag-and-drop builders.
  4. Resource utilization alerts: Gone too far over time or cost budgets without noticing? You want a tool that monitors the relevant utilization metrics and catches this for you.
  5. Resource manager permissions: The tool should allow you to set different permissions for users depending on their required level of access.

Read more about common features of resource management.

What's an example of an effective resource management system?

An effective resource management system is one that lets you see your resources, the projects and tasks they are assigned to, gives you a visual representation of how busy they are and gives you options to balance the workload. It can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or Google sheet. However, it’s one that enables your organization to deploy the resources at its disposal as efficiently and effectively as possible.

An effective system enables the organization to conduct resource planning in a way that maximizes the utilization of available resources and considers the availability of staff, their skills, their preferences, their location and timezone, and maps them against projects and organizational goals.

Other resource management lists

What's Next?

Now that you know some of the best resource management tools, you might want to read our complete guide to workload capacity to get the most out of your team, boost morale, and improve output.

However, if you want to explore what you can do with Excel a little longer, here's an example and free template on resource allocation.

By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 15 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony.

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52 Comments

  • Really useful content. We started to use the Forecast App and are happy so far with it.

    Reply

  • Hello, I’m looking for resource management software (I think). I work for a department that has construction project managers with different project management levels (PM1, 2, 3, 4) that manage multiple projects at one time ranging from small, medium and large. I’m looking for a software that we can input how many projects each PM is working on, the size/type of the project and estimated time the project will take overall. Then the software would need to be able to tell us based on those 3 categories and PM level when a PM is at 50%, 60%, 100% etc. of their capacity, based on a PM level. I don’t need something that tracks the actual projects and day to day activities, we have other software that does the day to day project tracking / project management piece. Is there anything out there that does something close to this?

    Reply

  • Great post! Thanks for sharing the knowledge and keep up the good work.

    Reply

  • Hello, thank you for the reviews, but I found myself lost, I am looking for a tool for Resource capacity management (Team of 10 QA testers), I am the manager and I will be the sole user of the tool, but I wanted to capture the allocation full or partial once assigned to a particular agile project, Stat holidays and personal holidays for each tester. what is your recommendation ?

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  • Great post! In fact, I hired an enterprise mobility management service recently and will share this knowledge with my team as well. Keep up the good work.

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  • Excellent explanation, it’s simple & focus. Keep up the great work!

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  • I shared this with my quality assurance software testing service and they found this article to be informative and a must share on other platforms. Keep up the good work.

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  • Nice article and help to compare resource management product as per our business need. Guess what download and see which fit our need and use-cases.

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  • Thanks for sharing this Great article I appreciate the valuable time you have used to share this.

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  • Good list, but it would be better if you could also put some open source (GNU) softwere on it.

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    • Do you know of any?

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  • I like how you said it will come down to your studio resourcing workflow to choose a processing software for engineering. I would say that it's crucial to have the right software when working as an engineer to ensure your job is being done correctly and efficiently. My friend is in school to become an engineer, so I'll be sure to mention to him the importance of finding the right software to work with. https://www.epcon.com

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  • Hi Ben - great article, thanks for sharing! I've just released a product called Stitch - www.stitchapp.co - to help people manage their creative networks, so when that moment comes that you've done your resourcing and realise you need a freelancer, you can find them at a seconds notice. It's also being used in production departments as a centralised store of agencies' creative networks. Hopefully that will be helpful to some people! Thanks, Fran

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  • Hi Ben We service 200 clients with a resource of 10 professional business analysts (5 Technical & 5 Financial) where we can view their availability via their outlook calendar. The analysts availability is variable across each month of the year and each client requires two or our analysts (1 Technical & 1 Financial) for one day, once a year. Our forecast suggests growth will be 30% year on year so the number of clients and analysts will grow proportionally. Can you recommend a product that would fit our profile. Thanks and regards - Roger

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    • Can you help me understand what's not working with Outlook?

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  • Ben, Thank you for the list. I feel like all are great options, but I feel like they don't quite meet our needs. We already use Monday.com to track our projects, so we really need a tool that only focuses on resource allocation (our projects vary in length, from same day to a couple weeks). Resource Guru seems to be the one that more closely matches our needs but you can't preview availability (exact times since we have variable hour, part time and full time employees) nor skills prior to assigning a job. Any recommendations? Thanks! Alex

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  • Hi Ben, We use Wrike, but it doesn't allow allocation of cost per resource. It only allocates cost per task, or cost per project. This doesn't work for projects where we want to forecast and allocate folks at different cost rates. They've acknowledged they don't have this functionality. Is there an add-on or alternative solution you can recommend? We need to see labor cost. Was also wondering why Wrike wasn't on your list. Thanks, Bobbie

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    • I'd take a look at Hubplanner, Saviom, or 10,000 ft from the list above.

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  • Hi Ben, Would like to highlight below name in the list. Most of the resource management software deals mostly around human and time management. I would like to highlight following page where we manage time, material and capital resource in a project. Currently helping some of the biggest organisation where some of the project are more than $100 ml. Will be thankful if you kindly add up in the list. https://tiemchart.com/resource-management-software/

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  • Hi Ben, This has been super helpful. Looking for a resource management tool that is not cloud based (one that we can host). So far it looks like Saviom might be the best bet! Looking into them currently. Is there any other tool you're aware of that is a native client with an on prem storage solution as well (not just cloud based)? Thanks! Brooke

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    • Hey Brooke, most of the solutions out there are definitely cloud-based but there are a few on-prem worth looking at: - Saviom - Hansoft - Celoxis - Synergist

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  • Hi Ben, it is a useful summary of the tools, a good starting point to find the right solution. Our demand may be too specific; so far I have not been able to find the right tool yet. We use huge Excels sheets that are getting unmanageable by now. Most of our tasks are not suitable for automated scheduling, as they are timed on time slots agreed with our clients. Therefore, we have to schedule our tasks on hourly basis in the day, and we cannot let them automatically scheduled by a PM tool. The fixed hourly schedule is essential, but most of the PM or RM tools are not able to manage it. On the other hand we have to have a quick overlook who is available at a requested time to be assigned to a certain task. On the other hand, our staff (assignees) have to be able to see at any time what tasks are due for them and what time. The wanted solution would be able to synchronize the project calendar with the task holders' calendar at Google or Exhange/Outlook. The Beyond the plans, task holders (assignees) periodically (e.g. end of the day) report the actually spent hours. The wanted tool has to provide them a simple, fast UI to do this job. I would appreciate if you can suggest some directions I can continue the search. Thanks. Gabor Toldi

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  • Hi Ben, I just found this article on my FB feed and quite surprised that you haven't mentioned about Account Sight. I'm sure you're not aware of this amazing resource management tool. I generally outsource lot of my work to freelancers and use account sight https://www.accountsight.com for resource management and project allocation. Initially I started with their free plan and I really impressed with this easy to use tool, later I subscribed their paid plan. I would highly recommend to have a look on their website and read testimonials. You would certainly regret for not including it in your list. Cheers! Rahul

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  • hello sir, i am looking for the resource management software for our institution..our institution offers some training, so students can select the training based on the availability of the staffs..so resource management is our biggest problem. sir, could you suggest the better solution for my concern

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  • Hello! I'm looking for a solution that's more specific to equipment allocation than human resources, where I can track and manage the availability of this equipment and then reserve it on an hourly basis upon request for different locations. The other features like talent management budgeting and reporting are secondary... I'm familiar with a product called Scheduall but don't need something quite that sophisticated. Are any of these solutions something that you would suggest I investigate first?

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  • This is a helpful article. Has there been a way to demonstrate the return on investment or reduced costs from implementing a resource management software tool?

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  • Great article! Could you please tell me which tool is better for a project based company? We have long term projects running at the same time and for periods longer than 2 or 3 years Thank you

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  • Ben, Thanks for this article. One issue I ran into was that Hub Planner’s pricing turns out to be per resource, not per user. So it’s not going to be $8/month for anyone unless you’re only scheduling for one person (in which case you probably don’t need a resource management software). So if you want to figure out workflows for 20 people (even if they are not users themselves), it’s going to be $160/month. They also have a ‘Lite Resource’ feature which discounts each resource by $70%, but for 20 resources, you’re still going to be around $50/month. It’s an excellent, robust, easy-to-use software, and may be worth the money depending on your circumstances, but it’s not $8/month unless you’re only scheduling for one person/resource.

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    • Hi Brit, Thanks for your feedback. Please get in touch with us via our contact form https://hubplanner.com/contact/ and we are more than happy to discuss with you a pricing plan that fits your needs. Best, Mia

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  • Thank you so Much for this Amazing Compilation of consisting helpful softwares.

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  • Hi, I am looking for a tool which manages resources in terms of asset. It should give the availibility of instruments/labs used over different sites globally.

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  • Hello! Thank you for this list - I'm looking for resource management software particularly around ticketing and resource request. I oversee the resource management department but we receive requests from both the sales and post-sales department. Our team of resources are primarily contract staff dispersed across the globe. We are also looking at software that integrates with PSA and FinancialForce. Any recommendations?

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  • nice post and my only comment would be that resource management software is a quite generic and i'm sure collectively we can all come up with a long list of software tools. just to give you an idea what we use at booking live - project management - https://www.zoho.eu/projects/ hr / staff management - https://people.zoho.com/hr development management - https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira this tool via confluence does time tracking too and using zoho reports collates all the data for KPI info Mail / Calendar Availability etc - https://www.google.com/gmail/about/for-work/ and of course for meetings, rooms, or indeed our clients, would use our own scheduling software https://www.bookinglive.com we spent months and months trialling various software so i hope that list helps similar companies to ours! good luck, good post.

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  • Hiya, I am looking for a resource planning tool for my design studio and I have found a few I like from a scheduling pov however I need to have this provide me with the financial information too. Estimate vs actual and so on, I know a few do them but it seems to be a separate system and I would like an all in one? help!

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    • Take a look at https://hubplanner.com/ or https://www.10000ft.com/.

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      • Hi Ben, There is a lot of useful info in the earlier posts and one common thread seems to be that no one software package seems to be flexible enough to meet the needs of any one situation... I manage an engineering department of approx 200 people in an Oil & Gas services company where we have multiple clients being serviced from 4 locations and need to ensure that there are the correct resources in the right places based on current & forecast work. I've been trying to find some software where the inputs are: - Proposal hours (what has been bid) - Project hours (actual work on the books) - Weekly timesheets (what has actually been done by each person) and the required outputs are: - Overall resource loading based on actual & forecast work in hand (projects) - The same with any bid work added into the equation (projects + bids) - Resource loading broken down to a number of levels based on office location, project, office location, engineering discipline and individual staff member. I know it seems like a tall order but to a non-IT person like myself it seems like there should be some database driven system that can accommodate these requirements. Any assistance on the best way forward would be appreciated....

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        • Hi Grant, a couple of tools which might help that I'd recommend would be liquidplanner.com or possibly workfront.com - they both have functionality which aligns well I think with what you're looking for. Cheers, Ben

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        • Hi Grant, we at PDP over a scheduling solution which includes the kind of functionality you are asking (scheduling, time sheets, planning and the related reporting). www.people-do-projects.com

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  • Hello Ben, do you know if any of these tools offer Portfolio Management functions? For example, as a portfolio manager, I would like to see a consolidated view of 5 departments, managed by 5 different managers, however each of the department managers would not need to see what the other ones' plans. Thanks!

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    • I suggest you look at our article on project management tools - thedigitalprojectmanager.com/best-project-management-software-tools/. Some of the more enterprise level tools include such as Liquid Planner and Workfront have that capability.

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    • Ganttic.com does offer project portfolio management functions! Each manager can easily see what each resource is working of with each project, and you can set up different views to manage the information load. You should definitely check it out!

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  • Hi Ben, I'm not sure if it exists but we're looking at a tool that will pull live project info from a portal or project schedule and update the schedule automatically. Most of the Project Management/Scheduling is done in Primavera and MS Project so what I wanted to know is if there is a tool that can sit across both portal and update as soon as the project schedules drags out or changes.

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    • That's an interesting use-case. I'm not aware of any middleware or tools that do that probably because the rules around the source of truth (what to copy and what to not copy) might get a hard to manage!

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  • Great article, thanks. I know there is no perfect solution out there, but I have a consistent problem - each tool is based on hourly scheduling but I need to schedule at a weekly level. Within that week I don't care when my resources do any task, so all I need is that they have a certain number of productivity units - e.g. 5 days or 10 half days. The overhead of fitting into an hourly paradigm feels very high, but I could still really use some of the benefits of these tools over Excel worksheets - are there any tools or workarounds you can recommend for my needs?

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    • Hi Ben - thanks for your comments. I'm not sure I understand your problem though of 'fitting into an hourly paradigm'. Can't you just convert your productivity units into hours i.e. instead of 5 days, just put the task duration as 40hrs?

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      • Hi Ben - thanks for the reply! The problem that I have is that all the solutions I've seen force you in the end to put a task into a particular time of the week eg. Monday 9-11am - and maintaining that detail when all I need to do is know what someone is doing in any week feels a burdensome overhead. I don't care what hours someone keeps, or whether they are free on Thursday afternoon, just that they have 16 of their 40 hours free in a week. Does that make sense?

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        • Hi Ben - I understand the frustration of pegging quantity of time to specific hours of the week. At Timesheets.com we have the option for tracking project time the way you need it - not associated to specific time blocks. You can have weekly tracking also. All the best, Raya

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        • Hi Ben Im having the same problem! Did you end up finding a solution?

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          • I still don't understand the problem! If you don't really care when your team does the work, only that the work is scheduled to be done sometime in the week, can't you just schedule the tasks across the week and tell people to do it when suits them?
          • Hi Peta, in our scheduling tool, you only need to allocate an amount of hours to weeks or days and schedule accordingly. This should solve you problem. www.people-do-projects.com
  • Hi Craig - are you asking about resourcing scheduling tools or more generally, project management toos? I don't think I've seen resource scheduling tied directly into Jira; but I'm sure there are some plugins that enable it. The other tools you mention too - while they're project management tools, they're not really resource scheduling tools.

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  • Very useful list thank you. Jira seems to be a rather de-facto standard although not often rated very highly. What's your views on https://www.scrumwise.com/ , https://www.axosoft.com/ , https://asana.com/ , https://leankit.com/ and https://trello.com/ ?

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