Forecast billable capacity

The Forecast view looks four weeks ahead and estimates how much of your team’s upcoming capacity will be billable, so a revenue gap shows up before the hours are lost, not after.

Open the forecast

1. Select Timesheet in the sidebar and switch to the Capacity Planner tab.

2. In the view toggle at the top right, select Forecast (next to Weekly and Monthly).

You get a summary card for the next four weeks, a projected billable mix percentage, and a per-person table. Each week’s cell stacks the person’s capacity, the estimated billable hours, and what is already committed to assigned work in that week. Three columns close the table: Total capacity, Billable est. and Committed.

How the estimate works

The forecast is intentionally simple:

• Capacity comes from the availability you set per person, per week, in the Capacity Planner’s Weekly view. Future weeks you have not filled in yet have no capacity to forecast.
• Billable estimate assumes each person’s billable share for the coming weeks matches their actual mix over the last 4 weeks of logged time. Someone who logged 60% of that time to billable projects is projected at 60% of each forward week’s capacity.
• People with no history of their own fall back to the organization’s average mix over the same 4 weeks.
• If nothing was logged anywhere in that window, there’s no basis for an estimate, and the view shows “No billable estimate yet” instead of a number.

Committed is the exception to all of that: it is not an estimate. It counts the hours already assigned to that person across these weeks, so it is the one column here reporting a fact rather than a projection. Someone whose billable estimate looks healthy can still be committed past their capacity, and the summary says so directly when they are. Any assigned work that carries no estimate or no dates cannot be placed in a week and is counted beside the person’s name instead. See Plan team capacity for how the figure is built.

Tip

The forecast is only as good as the capacity rows behind it. If the view is empty, populate availability for the upcoming weeks first; see Plan team capacity.

What to do with it

Two patterns make the forecast actionable:

• Projected billable mix dropping over the four weeks usually means upcoming vacation weeks or a project rolling off. Line up the next engagement, or expect the dip in revenue.
• One person’s billable estimate near zero while their capacity is full means the last 4 weeks were spent almost entirely on internal projects. If that is not intentional, rebalance their assignments now, while the weeks are still ahead of you.

Whether a project counts as billable is controlled by the project’s Billable flag; reclassifying a project changes both this forecast and the billable utilization views.

Best practices

1. Use Forecast in weekly capacity planning, not for hard commitments. It’s an extrapolation, not a promise. Combine with project plans and sales pipeline to commit deliverable hours.
2. Populate forward availability before reading the forecast. Empty future-week capacity = empty forecast cells. Set known vacations, conferences, and leave first.
3. Read trends, not absolute numbers. A billable mix dropping from 75% to 60% over four weeks is more actionable than the absolute 60%. Trend = signal; single number = noise.
4. Compare Forecast to bookings pipeline. Forecast says “65% billable next week.” Pipeline says “you’ll book project X next week.” The two together inform staffing decisions.
5. Don’t try to forecast past 4 weeks. Beyond the 4-week window, the sampled logged history is too stale to be a useful predictor. The view’s deliberate limit is a feature, not a bug.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• Forecast cells are empty. Future-week capacity isn’t set. Go to Weekly view and populate availability first.
• Billable estimate looks too high or low. The last 4 weeks of logged mix are what’s used, summed rather than averaged per week, so one unusual week (all internal, post-vacation) has less pull than it would on a shorter lookback. It keeps shifting as older weeks roll out of the window.
• A new hire has no billable estimate, or shows the org average. With no logged history of their own, they fall back to the organization’s average mix over the last 4 weeks. If nobody in the org has logged anything in that window either, the view shows “No billable estimate yet” instead of guessing.
• Mix is 0% for everyone. No projects are marked Billable, or no hours were logged to billable projects in the last 4 weeks. Check the Billable flag on projects and the recent logged hours.
• The Forecast tab is missing. Pro+ + Owner/Admin/PM role required.

How this combines with other features

• Forecast + Pipeline. Sales pipeline tells you what’s expected next; Forecast tells you what capacity you have to deliver it. Mismatches signal hiring or staffing actions.
• Forecast + Billable flag. A project’s Billable flag drives whether hours logged to it count as billable in the lookback. Reclassifying a project changes the forecast on the next refresh. See Mark projects billable or internal.
• Forecast + Capacity Planner. Forecast builds on the Weekly view’s availability. Without availability, no forecast. See Plan team capacity.
• Forecast + Revenue at Risk. Forecast is forward-looking; Revenue at Risk is current. Both feed the same revenue conversation. See Track revenue at risk.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
Microsoft Project Online Forecast	Direct concept
Float	Float’s “schedule” view ≈ Forecast
Resource Guru	Direct
Smartsheet Resource Management	Direct
Custom spreadsheet	Onplana automates the math

FAQs

Why does the forecast differ from what actually happens? It extrapolates the last 4 weeks of logged history, summed rather than averaged. A person who had an unusual stretch (all internal work, or a holiday) carries some of that mix forward until those weeks age out of the window and newer actuals replace them.

Can I forecast further than four weeks? Not in this view. Four weeks keeps the extrapolation honest; beyond that, the sampled logged history stops being a useful predictor.

Why can’t my team members see the forecast? The Capacity Planner tab, including Forecast, is limited to Owners, Admins, and Portfolio Managers.

Can I adjust the lookback window the forecast uses? Not today. The forecast samples the last 4 weeks of logged time; that fixed window is the algorithm’s simplifying assumption.

Does the forecast take exceptions into account? Yes, via the Capacity Planner’s availability. Exception weeks have zero capacity; the forecast row shows zero.

Can I export the forecast? Not from this view today. Use Reports for forward-looking billable utilization in tabular form.

Related

• Plan team capacity, set availability the forecast reads
• Track revenue at risk, current revenue risk
• Mark projects billable or internal, what counts as billable