A consultant has two days booked on one client project and another two days on a second. A third project manager asks for a day of support. On paper, everything fits.
Except the consultant works four days a week. And half a day is already reserved for internal work.
Each project plan looks reasonable on its own. Put them together, and the same person has more work than time.
Resource planning in Excel needs to make that combined workload visible. This guide walks through a practical way to do it, using an illustrative consulting team. We’ll build the weekly view, resolve a booking conflict, and look at how the same assignments translate into Teambook.
Start with each person’s availability
Before allocating project hours, establish how much time each person actually has that week.
Use their agreed working schedule as the starting point. Then subtract public holidays and leave that fall on their working days. Someone who normally works Monday to Thursday doesn’t lose another eight hours because Friday is a public holiday.
Keep internal work visible too. Team meetings, recruitment interviews and proposal writing all take time, even when they aren’t billable.
For our example, the team’s week starts like this:
| Consultant | Scheduled hours | Leave and holidays | Internal work | Hours left for client projects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anna | 32 | 0 | 4 | 28 |
| Marc | 40 | 8 | 4 | 28 |
| Léa | 40 | 0 | 6 | 34 |
These are fictional people and illustrative allocations.
Anna’s four-day schedule leaves 28 hours for client work after internal commitments. Marc works full-time, but a day of leave brings his available project time down to the same amount.
Use this calculation consistently:
Available project hours = scheduled hours − leave and holidays − internal work
If internal work is deducted here, don’t also count it in the client-project allocations you subtract later. That would deduct the same hours twice.
Keep project assignments in one table
A separate tab for each project may feel organised, but it makes checking shared people harder. Anna’s name might appear on four tabs without anyone seeing her total.
Instead, keep one allocation table with a separate row for each person, project and week. For example:
| Week commencing | Consultant | Project | Status | Planned hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 November 2026 | Anna | Atlas implementation | Confirmed | 16 |
| 2 November 2026 | Anna | Beacon support | Confirmed | 12 |
| 2 November 2026 | Anna | Cedar discovery | Tentative | 8 |
| 2 November 2026 | Marc | Atlas implementation | Confirmed | 20 |
| 2 November 2026 | Marc | Beacon support | Confirmed | 8 |
| 2 November 2026 | Léa | Beacon support | Confirmed | 18 |
| 2 November 2026 | Léa | Cedar discovery | Confirmed | 8 |
Use actual dates for the week column, with the same starting day throughout. Add dropdowns for people, projects and status so inconsistent names don’t split one person’s bookings into separate totals.
Turning the range into an Excel Table also helps keep the structure consistent as you add assignments.
The status column matters. Cedar may need eight hours from Anna, but the dates aren’t agreed yet. Recording that request as tentative keeps it visible without presenting it as a commitment.
Add a weekly workload summary
The allocation table records the detail. A second view should show whether the plan fits.
For each person and week, total confirmed hours separately from tentative hours. Then compare both against available project time.
| Consultant | Available project hours | Confirmed hours | Tentative hours | Remaining after confirmed work | Remaining if tentative work proceeds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anna | 28 | 28 | 8 | 0 | −8 |
| Marc | 28 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Léa | 34 | 26 | 0 | 8 | 8 |
Now the staffing issue is clear. Anna can deliver her confirmed work, but Cedar’s request would put her eight hours over capacity. Léa has eight hours unallocated.
In Excel, use SUMIFS to total bookings by person, week and status, or build a PivotTable from the allocation table. Keep the capacity figures in a separate table with one row per person and week, so availability isn’t counted again for every project assignment.
The remaining-hours calculations are:
Remaining after confirmed work = available project hours − confirmed hours
Remaining including tentative work = available project hours − confirmed hours − tentative hours
Apply conditional formatting to highlight negative balances. Use a separate warning where confirmed work fits but tentative work would create an overload.
A blank status or missing capacity record should also be flagged. Missing information mustn’t quietly look like spare time.
Resolve the conflict before accepting more work
The summary suggests that Léa could take Cedar’s eight hours. It doesn’t tell you whether she is the right person.
Check the work involved. If Cedar needs expertise that only Anna has, moving the booking to Léa won’t solve the delivery problem. You may need to move some of Anna’s existing work, change Cedar’s dates, or agree a smaller initial scope.
Suppose Léa has the required experience and the client agrees to the assignment. Transfer the tentative eight hours to her and confirm them once the dates are agreed.
Anna stays at 28 booked project hours. Léa reaches 34.
The weekly totals now fit. Before treating the plan as finished, check the days.
A balanced week can still contain an impossible Tuesday
Eight available hours across a week don’t necessarily mean someone can attend a full-day workshop on Tuesday.
Léa might have four hours free on Monday and four on Thursday. If Cedar needs her all day Tuesday, other bookings still need to move.
Use the weekly summary to find potential availability, then check daily allocations for the near-term schedule. If you need daily precision, record assignments by date and calculate the weekly totals from those records. Avoid maintaining independent daily and weekly plans that can disagree.
Also look at how fragmented the work is. A consultant with short gaps between several client meetings may struggle to use those gaps for a piece of work that needs sustained attention.
Give tentative bookings an owner and a review date
An unconfirmed project can occupy the plan long after its original start date has become unrealistic.
For each tentative assignment, record who owns the decision and when it needs reviewing. A short note such as “Client to confirm workshop by Thursday” is more useful than leaving a coloured cell unexplained.
Keep the full requested hours visible when checking whether the work can fit. An eight-hour workshop with a 50% chance of going ahead still needs eight hours if confirmed. Treating it as four hours may help with a separate forecast, but it doesn’t reserve enough time for the actual booking.
When the decision arrives, confirm, move or remove the assignment.
Review changes across every affected project
Imagine Atlas is delayed by a week. Anna’s 16 hours move into the following week, where she already has 24 confirmed project hours and only 28 available.
The delay creates a 12-hour overload. Moving the original booking fixes one week and breaks the next.
Before agreeing to the new dates, review Anna’s complete workload in the destination week. Check which commitments can move and which are fixed. Only then update the assignment.
Give one person responsibility for resolving competing requests, even if several project managers contribute to the workbook. A shared file helps everyone access the plan, but someone still needs authority to decide which project gets the time.
A regular review should focus on changed availability and unresolved conflicts. Update major changes when they happen, rather than waiting for the next planning meeting.
Where maintaining the Excel plan becomes difficult
Excel can support this method. The challenge grows when changes affect several people and projects at once.
A postponed workshop might require a new date, a different consultant and an update to another client commitment. The spreadsheet can calculate the revised totals, but someone still has to check the consequences and communicate the agreed plan.
The warning sign is repeated reconciliation. Project managers keep checking whether bookings are current. Someone rebuilds a summary because new rows weren’t included. A consultant’s leave appears in one view but is missing from another.
There is no universal team size at which Excel stops being useful. A small team sharing specialists across fast-changing projects can have a harder planning job than a larger team with stable assignments.
Pay attention to how much work it takes to keep the plan trustworthy.
How the same plan looks in Teambook
The planning decisions stay the same in Teambook. You still need realistic hours and someone to resolve competing priorities.
The difference is how you view and update the assignments. Teambook’s planning board shows bookings against people and dates, with a separate grouped view for looking at the plan by project.
For our example, you would enter Anna’s Atlas and Beacon assignments on the relevant days. Cedar’s proposed work can be marked tentative until agreed. Time off is entered as a booking too.
Once Léa is confirmed for Cedar, reassign the booking and place it on the agreed date. Teambook supports dragging bookings to another person or date, as well as editing their duration and tentative status.
If Atlas moves, reschedule its bookings and review Anna’s other work in the destination period. To consider another consultant, use skill tags to narrow the planning view to people with relevant experience.
That gives you a direct way to work with the same staffing problem, without maintaining a separate set of spreadsheet summaries.
Try your next planning review in Teambook. Add a few active projects and the people shared between them, then recreate their upcoming assignments. Use a real scheduling change to see how it fits your team’s way of working.
