How can I use allocation % properly to create accurate durations?

Tyson Lambert

Hi there,

My consulting company uses Smartsheet heavily and has been using Resource Management to track budgets, hours, fees, and time entries.

Within that, I've encountered a challenge and I'm hoping that you all can help.

Example: Work item in project Smartsheet takes 16 hours, but the duration of the work item is 21 days or 3 weeks.

We estimate the time the task will take in hours, but then obviously, that throws off the duration of the task in the sheet and in Resource Management.

Is there a way to automatically calculate the allocation percentage so that the duration of the work item is still 21 days, but the hours for the work item (16) are still accurately maintained within the Smartsheet? Can those hours per work item also be tracked within Resource Management? Up until now, I've just been lumping all the hours together and billing against them (once approved by the client) after summing them in the project Smartsheet.

Please let me know and thank you for all of your help!

Image attached of an example where I've been toying with the formula =Duration@row, but that still doesn't achieve what I want. In this example, if I modify the end date, the duration changes to days.

dojones

I do something similar. Maybe this will help. Leave Duration in Days. I usse columns Planned Hours, Actual Hours, Remaining Hours. Then calculate the Allocation %,

Allocation%: =[Remaining Hours]@row / (Duration@row * 8)

Or use Actual Hours depending on what you want Allocation% to represent, Remaining or Actual.