Utilization Calculations
More about the home page.
- In the View section, select an appropriate list view from the drop-down list to go directly to that list page, or click Create New View to define your own custom list view. List views let you display a list of records that match specific criteria.
- In the Recent section, select an item from the drop-down list to display a brief list of the top records matching that criteria. The choices are listed in the table.
- From the list, you can click any utilization calculation name to go directly to its detail.
- Click New to create a new utilization calculation.
| Recent Choice | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Recently Viewed | The last 10 or 25 records you viewed, with the most recently viewed item listed first. This list is derived from your recent items and includes records owned by you and other users. | |
| Recently Created | The last 10 or 25 records you created, with the most recently created item listed first. This list only includes records owned by you. | |
| Recently Modified | The last 10 or 25 records you updated, with the most recently updated item listed first. This list only includes records owned by you. |
What is Utilization?
Utilization is a measure of how effectively an organization uses its billable resources over time. It's generally a key indicator to determine billings, profitability, employee compensation, and capacity required to deliver pipeline opportunities. Utilization reporting requirements vary greatly between different organizations.
PSA calculates utilization for billing purposes as a percentage: the number of billable hours available in a given time period divided by the number of hours resources have billed. Utilization calculations for the purposes of employee compensation also consider time credited hours (for example, time spent on training). The work calendarA calendar that defines the working days, hours and public holidays for a resource, region, practice or group. determines the hours for each working week for the RPGAbbreviation of region, practice, group. and resources to be included in utilization calculations. Timecards and work calendars are used to calculate utilization for a resource.
You can run utilization reports on a regionA level of hierarchy used in PSA to which other objects belong such as resources, opportunities and projects., practiceA level of hierarchy used in PSA to which other objects belong such as resources, opportunities and projects., groupA level of hierarchy used in PSA to which other objects belong such as resources, opportunities and projects., or resourceA contact that works on a project..
How does it Help My Professional Services Business?
You can use the utilization fields in an RPGAbbreviation of region, practice, group., projectA collection of activities and related items to be managed over a defined time range, such as timecards, expenses, milestones and budgets. or resourceA contact that works on a project. to monitor compliance of time booked against time scheduled. The result of utilization calculations help explain operational realities and why variances have occurred. For instance:
- Were more hours credited than scheduled?
- Did resources complete scheduled work?
- Were resources assigned enough work?
- Were some resources over allocated?
- Are certain resource roles in the organization under staffed?
About Utilization Calculations
Whenever you calculate utilization, either historical or scheduled, for an RPG or resource, PSA creates the following records in your organizationA deployment of the Salesforce/FinancialForce applications with a defined set of licensed users. Your organization includes all of your data and applications, and is separate from all other organizations.:
- A parent utilization calculation record.
- A number of child utilization detail records.
- A number of utilization summary records, if your administrator has configured PSA to calculate capacity by resource role.
These records are available to add as related lists on the RPG or resource. Actual utilization percentages and calculation fields are shown in the fields on the RPG record, usually in the Utilization section—see Region, Practice and Group Fields.
When you change the target utilization for a resource, a resource change record is created to track when the change was made and allow accurate utilization processing to take place.
Including the Hours for a Resource
To include the hours for a resource in utilization processing:
- Ensure the Include in Financials checkbox is selected on timecards for resources to be included in calculations. For more information, see Timecard Fields.
- Ensure the Exclude From Time Calculations checkbox is deselected on resources that you want to include in utilization calculations. For more information, see Resource Fields.
Your administrator can refine the utilization processing strategy for your organization—see Utilization Settings.
You can compare target, scheduled and actual utilization back through time and analyze the root causes of performance problems. You can create dashboards in Salesforce to analyze variance by comparing the various scheduled and actual utilization fields for a particular resourceA contact that works on a project., resource role, projectA collection of activities and related items to be managed over a defined time range, such as timecards, expenses, milestones and budgets., regionA level of hierarchy used in PSA to which other objects belong such as resources, opportunities and projects., practiceA level of hierarchy used in PSA to which other objects belong such as resources, opportunities and projects. or groupA level of hierarchy used in PSA to which other objects belong such as resources, opportunities and projects. across your entire organization.
For information about analyzing utilization calculations, see About Utilization Calculations.
Excluding Roles from Utilization Calculations
When calculating and grouping hours by role for assignments, timecards, and held resource requests, the role set on the related resource record is always used, and not the role set on the assignment or resource request record. For unheld resource requests, the role set on the resource request record continues to be used, as there is no resource selected.
An Excluded Roles picklist is available on the Utilization Calculation object and on the Visualforce pages used by the Utilization Calculator. This picklist enables you to select any roles that are not relevant for capacity planning. Although utilization summary records are not created for the selected roles, these roles are still included when generating details for normal utilization metrics.
For more information, see Utilization Calculation Fields and Utilization Calculator Fields.
Previous Releases and Upgrading to Newer Calculation Methods
In previous releases, utilization calculation worked in different ways. In some cases you can keep an older calculation method. For detailed information about utilization calculations in older releases, see the documentation for that release.
If you used an older calculation method in a previous release, your administrator can configure PSA to use the newer calculation method. For more information, see Utilization Settings.