What is capacity planning?
Capacity planning is the process by which a manager ensures the team has enough resources for the planned workload — and that nobody is overloaded or underutilised. In service companies and agencies, where the same employees work on multiple projects for multiple clients simultaneously, this is one of the most demanding operational challenges.
Without a capacity planning tool, managers make decisions based on gut feeling — "I think Ivan has space this week." That feeling is often wrong, and the mistake is only discovered when it is too late.
Problems without capacity planning
An employee works 10+ hour days for weeks, and the manager does not see it because there is no schedule overview.
While one person is swamped, another has spare hours that nobody uses because there is no visibility.
A project is late because a key employee was busy on another project — information that was known, but not visible.
Overtime hours arise because nobody saw that the schedule was unrealistic. A cost that could have been prevented.
Companies with formal capacity planning deliver projects on time 2× more often and record 35% less overtime annually compared to those that plan informally.
How UnitLook solves capacity planning
Weekly and monthly scheduler
Visual schedule per employee — every free and booked hour visible at a glance.
Overload alert
Red signal the moment an employee exceeds daily capacity. Managers react immediately, not a week later.
Top-down and bottom-up planning
Manager allocates team tasks, each employee plans their own week. Both views synchronised in real time.
Planned vs. actual
One click compares how much was planned and how much was actually delivered — by employee, project or client.
Per-employee Kanban
Alternative task view in Kanban style — see what is in progress, waiting and done for each team member.
Leave integration
Approved holiday and sick leave automatically visible in the scheduler. Plan only against genuinely available capacity.
Who is it for?
- Agencies and consulting firms — managers who need to know if they can take on a new project
- IT companies with service contracts — balancing project work and reactive support
- Teams of 5 to 100 employees — where manual tracking is insufficient but an ERP is too expensive
- HR managers — who want to control overtime and resource budgets
Frequently asked questions
What is capacity planning?
The process by which an organisation ensures it has enough resources for the planned workload — without overload or unused capacity. UnitLook visualises it as a scheduler with weekly and monthly views.
How do you prevent employee overload?
Through visibility. UnitLook displays capacity visually: green = available capacity, red = overload. An alert appears as soon as an employee exceeds their daily limit — managers can react immediately.
Can an employee plan their own work?
Yes. UnitLook supports both top-down (manager schedules the team) and bottom-up (employee plans their own week) planning. Both levels are synchronised in real time.
How is planning different from time tracking?
Planning refers to future work; time tracking records what was actually done. UnitLook provides both integrated — compare planned vs actual for any employee with one click.
Know who is free next week
Scheduler, overload alerts, planned vs actual — all on one screen.