Forecast when you can take on more

Forecast uses task estimates and dates to show how much of each person's time is already committed. It answers "when could we start a project of this size?"

Steps

1. Open Team and click Forecast. It covers the next 12 weeks unless your studio has changed the forecast horizon.
2. Read the three cards: On track (active projects on schedule), Within budget (projects spending inside budget) and Bandwidth (free hours in the next four weeks).
3. Read the Capacity forecast grid. Each cell is one person's committed hours in one week, against the time they can plan:
   • Available: under 30%.
   • Healthy: 30–70%.
   • Stretched: 70–100%.
   • Overbooked: over 100%.
4. Under When can we take on more?, enter the Project size in hours and the Duration in weeks.
5. Read the earliest start week. If it does not fit, you see the largest project that would.

Include work you have not won yet

Click Include pipeline to add effort from open proposals. A pipeline row appears and the totals include it. Click Exclude pipeline to remove it.

Good to know

• Only open tasks with a start date, an end date and an estimate count. The legend tells you how many tasks were left out for having no estimate.
• A task shared by several people is split equally between them.
• An Unassigned buffers row shows hours on tasks nobody is assigned to.
• If the studio stays above the hire threshold for four weeks or more, a hiring note appears. Set the threshold in Planning settings.
• On track and Within budget cover the whole studio for admins, and only your own projects for managers.
• Forecast and Capacity work things out differently, so they will not agree. Forecast counts task hours; Capacity counts project stages in days.