Plan agency capacity from actual commitments
By Tristan Doehl · · Updated
Before accepting a delivery date, an agency needs to know whether the right people have enough time to do the work. A capacity forecast connects their availability with existing commitments. Recent time records help estimate the effort, while staffing and pipeline records supply what is still ahead.
Start with people, dates, and skills
Choose a horizon that covers the next delivery milestone and gives you time to arrange additional help. In this example, a six-week view includes the next launch and a four-week lead time for a contractor. Update it when dates or staffing change so there is still time to respond.
List the people needed for delivery and their scheduled working hours in the period. Keep skill constraints visible. Fifty spare design hours cannot automatically cover fifty hours of a database migration, even if both appear as unused team capacity.
Remove known absences first
In an illustrative team of five people working thirty-five hours per week for six weeks, scheduled capacity is 1,050 hours. Suppose planned leave and public holidays remove seventy hours across the team. The remaining available time is 980 hours.
Use actual staffing or leave records for that adjustment. A time-tracking label can help classify past absence, but creating a project called “PTO” does not itself create an automatic staffing forecast. Future availability needs a maintained source that reflects the people and dates involved.
Allow for internal work without subtracting it twice
Estimate the part of the remaining working time needed for administration, sales, coordination, and development. Recent time records can inform that estimate if those activities have been classified consistently. Exclude leave from that overhead sample if you already removed leave from capacity.
Suppose internal work uses twenty-five percent of the 980 available hours in the example. Expected delivery capacity is 980 × 0.75 = 735 hours. The percentage is an illustrative assumption, not a target for every team.
The 735 hours already allow for internal work. Applying another seventy-five-percent utilization adjustment to that number would deduct the same allowance twice. Write the calculation beside the forecast so everyone can see which exclusions are already included.
Compare commitments before adding uncertain work
If confirmed delivery requires 620 hours, the example leaves 115 hours of capacity at team level. Check when those hours are needed and who can supply them before accepting another 100-hour project. A weekly bottleneck or missing skill can make an apparently comfortable total unusable.
Keep likely pipeline separate from signed work. Show a scenario where a proposed project starts on time and another where it slips. A probability-weighted total may help financial planning, but a person cannot deliver two conflicting projects simply because each was assigned a fifty-percent probability.
The capacity calculator takes team size, weekly hours per person, and one utilization percentage. It has no separate absence or overhead fields. To reproduce this example, enter 5 people, 35 hours, and 70%: 735 ÷ 1,050 = 70%, which already combines leave and internal work. The exact result is 122.5 delivery hours per week, which the “Weekly capacity” field shows rounded to 123. Across six weeks that gives 735 hours, a figure the calculator does not display itself. Do not deduct leave again. Keep the person-by-person schedule alongside this aggregate calculation.
Respond to the specific gap
A short specialist gap may be suited to a contractor. A recurring shortage across confirmed work may justify examining a permanent role. Compare the actual rates, expected demand, recruitment time, and onboarding effort rather than assuming a universal break-even point.
Sometimes changing a start date or narrowing a deliverable is a better fit than adding someone. Discuss that option while there is still time for the client to choose. A forecast is useful because it makes those constraints visible before they become missed commitments.
Update the estimate from completed work
Compare actual delivery effort with the forecast and record why it differed. A scope change, a missing dependency, and an optimistic estimate each teach something different. Use the next forecast to reflect that information while retaining the same treatment of leave and overhead.
The agency guide connects capacity with the recording process, and the profitability guide explains how utilization relates to invoicing and cost. Together, the records let you assess both whether the work fits and whether the agreement supports its delivery.
Frequently asked questions
What is a capacity forecast?
It compares people’s available delivery time with upcoming commitments, including the dates and skills required. It needs staffing and project information as well as historical time records.
Do I need a six-week horizon?
No. Six weeks is the worked example. Choose a horizon that gives enough notice for your staffing and client decisions, then refresh it when the inputs change.
How do I avoid counting overhead twice?
Remove leave once and define whether your delivery-capacity figure already excludes internal work. Do not apply a second utilization allowance that represents the same internal time.
Can I use a team total to accept a project?
Check the total, but also inspect availability by person, skill, and week. Spare hours in one role or a later week may not cover the work required by the promised date.
When should I hire rather than use a contractor?
Compare the duration and certainty of the gap with actual hiring and contractor costs, lead time, and onboarding. There is no single utilization percentage that settles every case.