The Resource Plan is where you add people to work on a job or opportunity in Metis. It allows People to be able to charge time and expenses to the Job/Opportunity. In the Resource plan you can define:
- Who will work on the job and what their role will be
- How long they will work for
- Their internal hourly cost rate
- Their external hourly charge rate
This article contains:
- How can I access the Resource Plan?
- How do I assign someone to a role?
- How do effort days work?
- Assigning an hourly cost rate/hourly charge rate
- What is an effort-driven job/opportunity?
- Why can't I unassign/remove someone from the Resource Plan?
How can I access the Resource Plan?
The Resource Plan for both Jobs and Opportunities lives on the Budget page.
To edit any information on this page you need to be in Edit mode. Click Edit in the top right-hand corner to enter edit mode.
At the bottom of this page, you'll find the resource plan.
Below the areas of interest on the resource plan are detailed:
- Role name
- Total Effort Days Spread (green cell is calculated from orange spread)
- Role Duration
- Who is assigned to this role
- Their internal hourly cost (freelancers only as staff cost will be populated from Profile)
- Their external hourly charge (Time & Materials jobs only)
- The Add Role button
You cannot edit the person selected for the Job Lead and Job Exec directly. If you want to change these, that can be done from the Details tab.
How do I assign someone to a role?
To assign someone to a role, click the round + icon as shown below.
Don't forget to enter a Role Name, you won't be able to save without it
Press assign to role if you're happy that this person has suitable availability.
How do effort days work?
Effort days is the total number of working days which you expect the person assigned to this role to work for this job/opportunity. You don't have to enter effort days to use the resource plan, however if your job/opportunity type is Time & Materials, or you're using the effort-driven style to drive your revenues and costs, then adding Effort Days is a must.
Click the edit pencil against a role to open the Metis effort spreading wizard. You have 3 options to choose:
If you want to use manual mode, you can enter the number of days per week the assigned person should work into each week box. For any given method above, Metis automatically calculates a total number of effort days, and therefore a total cost for that person for the period defined as the Duration.
Spreading resource takes into account public holidays when calculating available working time. If you've spread your effort with a maximum of 5 days per week, you may notice some weeks have 4 days. This is because there is a public holiday during this week so less available working time, so Metis has added 4 days instead.
If a job or role duration starts on a day that's not considered 'available working time' (i.e. a weekend or bank holiday), you won't be able to add effort to this week's effort cell. The cell will be greyed out.
Assigning an hourly cost/hourly charge
Hourly Cost Rates
Against each Role, you'll see an Hourly cost and an Hourly charge. For staff, hourly cost is automatically populated from the Person's Profile, so you'll need to update their profile if this is incorrect.
For freelancers, you can edit the hourly cost as this may differ by job/opportunity.
Hourly Charge Rates
The ability to input hourly charge rates depends on the job/opportunity type. If the type is Fixed Price, then you won't be able to add this as the fees are already agreed. If the type is Time & Materials, you'll be able to add an hourly charge rate here. To read more about Fixed Price vs Time & Materials jobs and opportunities, click here.
What is an effort-driven job/opportunity?
If you press Change on a job/opportunity to make it effort-driven, it will use the Resource Plan to drive certain aspects of the job/opportunity, depending on the type.
If your job/opportunity's type is Fixed Price, cost totals will be derived from the resource plan. If it is Time & Materials, both Revenue and Cost totals will be driven by the resource plan. To see more about the difference between these types, click here.
You'll then see a pop-up box, with the details of your existing Budget set-up and figures. This is the same wizard you see when editing the People/Time Revenue and Costs on your job.
If you decide to drive the Budgets from the Resource Plan, previously added totals will be overridden by effort driven values.
Why can't I unassign someone from the Resource Plan?
If you're struggling to unassign or remove someone from the Resource plan, that may be because they have previously submitted time or expenses against this job. You'll see an error message telling you why you can't unassign/remove them, for example:
Or if by changing role duration for a job, the timesheets already submitted conflicts with the new duration dates you are trying to enter:
Didn't find what you need in this article? You can submit a support ticket or send an email to support@getmetis.com.