Resource planning tools for UK professional services: Your team's time is your core inventory

What are Resource Planning Tools for Agencies?

Managing team availability with a patchwork of spreadsheets and shared calendars feels manageable at first. But as an agency grows, this system quickly begins to show its cracks. Projects get overbooked, deadlines slip, and the question of who is actually available becomes a constant source of friction. Your team's time is your core inventory, and without a clear system to manage it, you risk burning out your best people and leaking revenue. Finding the best resource planning software for UK agencies is about regaining control over this core asset to build a more sustainable, profitable operation. For related metrics and tools, see the commercial performance hub.

Foundational Understanding: The Job of Agency Resource Management Software

A resource planning tool’s primary job is to connect three critical data points: your team’s total time capacity, the demands of current and future projects, and the actual time spent on work. For growing agencies, the pain of disconnected systems is often the first sign that manual methods are failing. Disconnected time-tracking and accounting systems force manual spreadsheet work that introduces errors and hides true project profitability. This makes it impossible to know which clients or projects are actually making you money.

In practice, we see that the trigger point for needing a dedicated resource planning tool is typically between 5 and 15 employees. Moving beyond entry-level tools like Toggl, Harvest (free tier), spreadsheets, and shared calendars is a sign of operational maturity. A dedicated agency resource management software provides a single source of truth, turning guesswork into data-driven decisions about staffing, project quoting, and hiring.

The Three Key Questions Your Tools Must Answer

Before selecting a tool, it is essential to identify which business problem is most urgent. Effective resource planning provides answers to three distinct questions, each looking at your business from a different perspective. Each question points to a different job, and often, a different type of tool.

1. Profitability: Are our projects profitable? This is a backward-looking question, answered by comparing tracked time against project budgets. It is essential for understanding which clients are valuable and which services are priced correctly. Without this data, you are flying blind on project quoting.
2. Capacity: Who is available to take on new work? This is a forward-looking question, essential for scheduling, preventing over-commitment, and managing team wellbeing. It allows you to confidently commit to new projects without overloading your team.
3. Forecasting: Can we predict future revenue and hiring needs? This is a strategic question that combines profitability and capacity data to plan for long-term growth. Answering this is fundamental to capacity planning for service firms, helping you decide when to hire your next specialist or salesperson.

The Contenders: Matching the Best Resource Planning Software to the Job

The market offers a range of options, but for most professional services firms, the choice comes down to a few key players. The specific tools analysed here are Harvest, Float, and Forecast, as they represent two distinct philosophies for solving agency challenges.

Harvest is primarily a time tracking tool. It excels at answering the profitability question. As one of the most common time tracking solutions for UK agencies, it helps you understand where time went and whether projects were delivered on budget. It provides the historical data needed for accurate future quoting.

Float is a resource scheduling tool. It is designed to answer the capacity question, showing you who is working on what and when they will be free. It is one of the leading project scheduling tools for agencies focused on preventing burnout and managing future workload with a clear, visual interface.

Forecast aims to be an all-in-one platform, combining time tracking, scheduling, and project management. The trade-off for its unified approach can be less specialised functionality in each area compared to dedicated tools.

This leads to a core strategic choice: a 'best-of-breed' approach (e.g., combining Harvest and Float) versus an 'all-in-one' platform. Whichever path you choose, remember that key accounting software integrations to verify are for Xero and QuickBooks. Integration quality varies by vendor, so check QuickBooks integration details with your shortlisted vendor before committing.

Which Tool is Right for Your Agency, Right Now?

The right tool depends entirely on your agency's current size and most pressing pain point. Agency size thresholds for tool recommendations are: 2-10 people, 10-30 people, and 30+ people.

For Agencies with 2-10 People

The primary focus should be on building habits. At this stage, simple spreadsheets, shared calendars, or the free tier of Harvest are often sufficient. The goal is to establish consistent time tracking across the team, not to invest in complex agency operations software. This foundational discipline is crucial for future growth.

For Agencies with 10-30 People

This is where poor visibility into billable capacity leads to over-commitment and staff burnout. A scenario we repeatedly see is a 15-person agency struggling with this exact issue. They adopt the Harvest + Float model. Harvest tracks time for profitability analysis, connecting directly to their Xero account. Float provides a visual plan for all future work, ensuring no single person is over-allocated. This solves the immediate pain. The monthly cost is easily justified when weighed against the cost of losing a key employee due to burnout. Finding the best resource planning software for UK agencies at this stage means solving this capacity problem directly.

For Agencies with 30+ People

The conversation shifts towards consolidation. The administrative overhead of managing multiple tools, subscriptions, and logins can become a burden. An all-in-one platform like Forecast becomes more attractive, offering a single point of data entry and unified reporting. However, this move requires careful evaluation to ensure it doesn’t compromise the clarity and specialised functionality your teams rely on from their existing tools.

Practical Takeaways for Implementation

Making the right choice is about pragmatic, stage-appropriate decisions. Do not buy a tool for the agency you want to be in three years; solve the most significant problem you have today.

1. Identify Your Most Urgent Question. Is it profitability or capacity? If you do not know if your projects make money, start by analysing client and project profitability with a time tracker. If your team is constantly overworked, start with a capacity planner like Float.
2. Prioritise Seamless Integrations. For UK-based agencies, a native, reliable Xero integration is non-negotiable. Manual data exports create hidden costs and defeat the purpose of the software. Check international transfer rules if your vendor stores data outside the UK.
3. Think About Adoption. A simple tool that your team uses consistently is far more valuable than a powerful platform they ignore. The best resource planning software for UK agencies is the one that gets used. The rollout plan and internal training are just as important as the feature list. The goal is clarity, not complexity.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid in Workflow Management

Selecting a tool without a clear understanding of the job to be done can lock your agency into costly licences and future migration headaches. Here are the most common mistakes to avoid.

Buying an All-in-One Platform Too Soon

These tools often promise a single solution for everything but can be complex to implement and may not excel at any single function. This is a classic workflow management for professional services challenge. You risk paying for features you do not need while getting a suboptimal solution for the problem you actually have. Start with a focused tool that solves your most pressing issue first.

Ignoring Team Adoption

If a tool is difficult to use or the benefits are not clearly communicated, people will revert to spreadsheets. The best software is useless if it is not adopted. Appoint an internal champion, provide clear training, and start with a pilot group to ensure the tool fits your agency's workflow before a full rollout.

Underestimating Accounting Integration

A frequent mistake is choosing a tool with a poor or non-existent link to your accounting system. If your resource tool does not sync cleanly with Xero, you are simply creating a new silo of data that requires manual reconciliation. This reintroduces the risk of errors and wasted time, negating many of the efficiency gains you sought in the first place.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the difference between resource planning and project management software?
A: Project management tools like Asana or Trello focus on tasks and deadlines within a single project. Resource planning software provides a higher-level view of team capacity across all projects, helping you schedule work, prevent burnout, and forecast future hiring needs across the entire business.

Q: How much should a UK agency budget for resource planning software?
A: Costs vary, but a 'best-of-breed' approach using tools like Harvest and Float for a 15-person team typically costs between £150 and £250 per month. View this as an investment in efficiency and staff retention, not just a software expense. All-in-one platforms are often more expensive.

Q: Can I just use my accounting software for this?
A: While accounting software like Xero can track project profitability after the fact, it lacks forward-looking capacity planning features. It cannot tell you who is available to work next month, which is a core function of dedicated agency resource management software.

Q: Is it difficult to switch tools later on?
A: Migrating historical time tracking and project data can be complex and time-consuming. This is why it is crucial to choose a tool that solves your current problems and has a clear upgrade path, avoiding the need to switch frequently as your agency grows. The initial choice has long-term implications.