Capacity

Capacity Planning & Workload Balancing Software Who is drowning, before they tell you.

Staff availability, workload forecasting and utilization measured as assigned hours over available hours — with load-balancing suggestions across your team that stay advisory until someone accepts them.

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How the forecast is built

Every figure comes from records the practice already keeps. Nobody fills in a capacity spreadsheet.

  1. Stage 01

    Availability

    Each person’s working pattern is recorded. Where none is, a working day defaults to eight hours with weekends excluded, so nobody is missing from the model.

  2. Stage 02

    Assignment

    Jobs and tasks carry an assignee. Assigned hours are the numerator, so the forecast reflects committed work rather than intentions.

  3. Stage 03

    Forward load

    Recurring engagements and future-dated jobs are counted before they arrive, which is the only point at which you can still do something about them.

  4. Stage 04

    Utilization

    Assigned hours over available hours, per person and rolled up per team, measured against the thresholds your firm configures.

  5. Stage 05

    Balance

    Where the platform sees an imbalance it proposes a specific move — who is over, who has room, and which work could shift between them.

  6. Stage 06

    Approval

    Nothing moves until a person accepts it. The suggestion is advice; the decision stays with whoever owns the work.

What it lets you see

Capacity problems are rarely a surprise in hindsight. The value is seeing them while there is still time to act.

Who is over

People carrying more assigned hours than they have available, before the deadline rather than after it slips.

Who has room

Under-utilized staff against your configured threshold — the other half of the problem, and the one that costs money quietly.

Load balancing across staff

Specific proposed moves between employees based on workload, not just a flag saying somebody is busy.

Team roll-up

Utilization aggregated to the team a manager actually plans at, scoped to what that manager is allowed to see.

Forward load

Work already assigned for future periods, including recurring engagements raised ahead of their due dates.

Availability patterns

Recorded working patterns and non-working days, so leave and part-time arrangements reduce capacity properly.

Configurable thresholds

Over- and under-utilization limits set in firm settings, because every practice defines a full week differently.

Utilization reporting

Utilization alongside realization and profitability, so effort and yield are read together rather than separately.

Resource bookings

Bookings recorded against staff and resources, handled as best-effort so a booking failure never blocks the underlying work.

How it behaves, stated precisely

Capacity is the area where software most often overpromises. These are the actual behaviours, including the deliberate limits.

  • Utilization is assigned hours divided by available hours — not a subjective busyness score.

  • Where no explicit availability is recorded, a working day defaults to eight hours and weekends are excluded.

  • Over- and under-utilization thresholds are configured per firm rather than fixed in the software.

  • Load-balancing suggestions are advisory and never take effect until a staff member approves them.

  • What a manager sees is bounded by their data scope, so a team lead forecasts their team rather than the whole firm.

  • Resource booking is a best-effort secondary action: if it fails, the primary business action still succeeds.

Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently asked questions

How is staff utilization calculated?

Assigned hours divided by available hours. Where someone has explicit availability recorded, that is used. Where they do not, a working day defaults to eight hours and weekends are excluded, so a new joiner still appears in the forecast rather than showing as infinitely free.

What counts as over- or under-utilized?

Whatever your firm decides. Over- and under-utilization thresholds are configured in firm settings rather than fixed in the software, because a practice running planned overtime through filing season and one protecting billable-hour targets are not measuring the same thing.

How does load balancing across employees work?

The platform compares assigned hours against available hours per person, finds who is over their threshold and who has room, and proposes specific moves — this job, from this person, to that one. It is a concrete suggestion rather than a red number you have to interpret.

Will the system move work around by itself?

No, and this is deliberate. Rebalancing suggestions are advisory — a staff member has to approve one before anything changes. The platform surfaces the imbalance and proposes the move; a person decides whether it is the right one.

Does capacity account for work that has not started yet?

Yes. Forecasting works from assigned jobs and tasks, including recurring engagements raised ahead of their due dates, so the load you are about to take on is visible before it lands rather than after.

How does this relate to SLA targets?

They answer different questions. SLA asks whether a specific job will hit its promised date. Capacity asks whether the person it is assigned to has the hours to get there. A breach warning tells you something slipped; a utilization figure tells you why.

Can we see this per team rather than per person?

Yes. Utilization rolls up from individuals to their team, which is the level most managers plan at — and a manager with a team data scope sees their own team rather than the whole firm.

What happens if someone is off?

Recorded availability drives the denominator, so leave, part-time patterns and non-working days reduce available hours rather than quietly inflating everyone else’s apparent spare capacity.

Explore the platform

See Praxio on your own engagements.

Book a walkthrough and we'll configure it around the way your firm actually works — your engagement types, your review steps, your billing model.

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