What is the best tool for capacity planning?

The best capacity planning tools provide real-time visibility into resource availability, projects, and workloads across teams. Time tracking tools with built-in AI-powered workforce analytics help you allocate resources efficiently and keep projects profitable.

What is capacity planning software?

Capacity planning software enables you to allocate available team resources to meet project demands. It ensures schedules and project scope are optimized to prevent burnout, reduce bottlenecks, and deliver work on time and within budget.

Does Jira do capacity planning?

Jira is primarily a project management tool with basic capacity planning features, but its capabilities are limited on their own. When integrated with a time tracking software platform (https://hubstaff.com/employee-time-tracking) , you unlock deeper visibility into team capacity, tracked hours, and productivity for more accurate, data-driven planning.

What is strategic workforce planning?

Strategic workforce planning aligns your current and future staffing needs with the broader business goals. It helps you forecast staffing requirements, close skill gaps, and make proactive decisions to build a high-performing, future-ready team. Effective workforce optimization software (https://hubstaff.com/capacity-planning) tools are designed to help you bridge the gap between business needs and available resources.

Why is workforce planning important?

Workforce planning ensures you have the right skills, roles, and headcount in place to meet business demands. It helps reduce hiring costs, improves project efficiency, and prepares your team for growth or change.

What is the goal of workforce planning?

The goal of workforce planning is to align your talent with strategic business objectives. Effective workforce planning helps teams assess current capacity, forecast future needs, and avoid both overstaffing and underutilization with raw data.

How can analytics improve workforce planning?

Analytics provide visibility into time usage, capacity, and productivity trends. This data enables leaders to make informed staffing decisions, identify inefficiencies, and adjust resource planning to changing workloads or priorities.

Does Hubstaff offer workforce planning features?

Yes. Hubstaff supports workforce planning with workforce and project management tools that provide the features needed for capacity planning. Tools like job-based time classification, project budgeting, AI usage tracking (https://hubstaff.com/employee-app-url-tracking) , and real-time capacity monitoring help you manage workloads, forecast needs, and improve team performance. You can use Hubstaff to forecast resource needs, analyze current capacity through productivity insights, schedule resources, and manage project timelines. This data-driven approach helps identify bottlenecks, prevent burnout, and optimize scheduling for future demands.

Workforce planning software for effective resource management

Plan team capacity with Hubstaff using tracked hours and utilization data. Forecast projects, manage workloads, and avoid overworked teams with time tracking, live budgeting, and reporting — all grounded in actual work data.

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Project budgets

Manage project profitability with live budgeting.

With project cost management features, you can control time tracking, manage client profitability, and ensure every project stays on track and within budget. Set limits by hours and cost, track progress in real-time, and receive alerts when you’re in danger of going over budget.

Hubstaff project budgets report showing monthly spend, budget allocation, remaining hours, and costs for multiple projects.

Utilization

Utilize your team’s full capacity and forecast future needs.

Hubstaff’s utilization rate shows how effectively teams use their available hours: (Tracked Time ÷ Available Time) × 100. Use it to monitor workload, identify inefficiencies, and maintain teams at a healthy, sustainable pace (75–80%).

Meeting and focus time

Stay on top of meeting overload to optimize workflows.

Find the perfect balance between meetings and focused work with Hubstaff’s desktop, mobile, or Chrome extension. Meeting and Focus Time data helps you spot meeting overload, optimize workflows, and keep projects moving forward with greater clarity and balance.

Work time classification

See exactly where time goes and spot inefficiencies.

Gain visibility into how work time is spent with work time classifications for core, non-core, or unproductive. Tweak settings based on industry or job type to spot inefficiencies, optimize workloads, and keep projects on time and under budget.

Hubstaff Insights widget showing a pie chart of core, non-core, and unproductive work.

Leaderboard

Identify utilization gaps With leaderboard reporting

Use leaderboard rankings to uncover underutilization, overwork, or efficiency issues. Sort by time, activity, or core work to guide staffing decisions and targeted coaching.

Attendance tracking

Track attendance for better shift management.

Hubstaff’s attendance tracking capability gives you real-time visibility into attendance so you plan shifts with confidence. Schedule around upcoming PTO and country-specific holidays with the Time-off Balance Report. You can also set reminders for late, missed, or abandoned shifts to make scheduling adjustments on the fly for smarter capacity planning.

Reporting

Capacity planning backed by time & activity reporting

See how time spent translates into billable output across projects. Track spent vs. billed time, billable vs. non-billable work, and project-level profitability to plan capacity with confidence.

Hubstaff Work orders view showing open and closed jobs

Task management integrations

Use integrated workflows for smart project management.

Effective capacity planning is about assigning the right people to the right tasks at the right time. Hubstaff integrates with tools like Jira and Asana to help you manage performance across projects, making it easier to effectively plan and monitor workloads.

How capacity planning software works

Download the Hubstaff app and start tracking time
Get your team up and running by downloading the Hubstaff time tracking app on Windows, Mac, iOS, or the Chrome extension. Start tracking time effortlessly across projects to unlock visibility into workloads.
Track time per project and rebalance resources
Monitor how time is spent by team, role, or task in real time. You can also create schedules, spot imbalances, and shift resources as needed to ensure that everyone is working at a sustainable and productive pace.
Process accurate payments and invoices
Track time, automatically generate timesheets, and streamline payroll in one cohesive workflow. You can also create custom invoices with automated line items to keep your projects profitable and your billing transparent.

Asana

Track time to Asana projects and tasks for better project planning.

See integration >

PayPal

Send payments to your team instantly and securely using Hubstaff’s seamless integration with PayPal.

See integration >

ClickUp

Sync with Hubstaff and track time directly to ClickUp tasks, see work in progress, and add budgets.

See integration >

Jira

Use Hubstaff to track time against Jira issues that you are assigned to.

See integration >

Wise

Automatically pay your team members or send payments manually through Wise.

See integration >

Deel

Easily streamline your global payroll by connecting Hubstaff with Deel for seamless contractor payments.

See integration >

Learn more about efficient capacity planning techniques

Essential steps of workforce planning

Discover the secrets to effective workforce planning in this step-by-step guide.

Explore workforce planning

Resource planning in project management

Explore these resource planning tips to move projects forward without bottlenecks.

Learn better resource planning

Workforce planning software guide

Check out our guide to workforce planning software and find the right fit for your team.

Get workforce planning software

Workforce management tools

Understand which workforce management tool best suits your business’ needs.

See workforce planning tools

Analytics-driven workforce planning

Data-driven insights help unlock efficient workforce planning for businesses.

Try data-backed planning

What is workforce planning?

Access everything you need to know about workforce planning in this guide.

Understand workforce planning

cost savings by eliminating wasted tasks

10% - 25%
Project savings

25%
Cost reduction from bad hires

We work in a lot of different industries, so I can’t always know what’s a 45-minute task and what’s a four-hour task. With tools like Hubstaff, you can tell. You then decide if a whole project should’ve taken 16 hours or if someone is just not the right fit.Solomon ThimothyOneIMS President

faster project completion

Bookkeeping reduced from
1 week to 1-2 days

Over 100% ROI
By improving productivity and visibility

My people need to document their work so that I can have visibility into what they did during the day. Using Hubstaff reduces the meeting time I needed and gives me clarity into what was done and what wasn’t.Brian DordevicDirector of Strategic Planning

reduction in check-in meeting time

10% - 25%
Increase in activity level

100% confidence
In running a remote operation

Without Hubstaff, I wouldn’t be confident in running a remote business. We used the platform from the first day we opened the office in India, so I knew it would give me the insights and confidence to commit to remote working.Ross CrawfordManaging Director

4.6 out of 5 stars from 1,500 reviews
4.6 out of 5 stars from 1,500 reviews
4.5 out of 5 stars from 1,300 reviews

Frequently asked questions

Your questions, answered

Yes. Hubstaff supports workforce planning with workforce and project management tools that provide the features needed for capacity planning. Tools like job-based time classification, project budgeting, AI usage tracking, and real-time capacity monitoring help you manage workloads, forecast needs, and improve team performance.
You can use Hubstaff to forecast resource needs, analyze current capacity through productivity insights, schedule resources, and manage project timelines. This data-driven approach helps identify bottlenecks, prevent burnout, and optimize scheduling for future demands.

Get full access to Hubstaff’s user-friendly workforce optimization software for 14 days.

Try Hubstaff now

Workforce planning software for effective resource management

Capacity planning features for optimal resource utilization

Manage project profitability with live budgeting.

Utilize your team’s full capacity and forecast future needs.

Stay on top of meeting overload to optimize workflows.

See exactly where time goes and spot inefficiencies.

Identify utilization gaps With leaderboard reporting

Track attendance for better shift management.

Capacity planning backed by time & activity reporting

Use integrated workflows for smart project management.

Download the Hubstaff app and start tracking time

Track time per project and rebalance resources

Process accurate payments and invoices