The Best Resource Management Software
Resource management software is crucial for businesses to ensure profitability without overworking their employees. We’ve reviewed the top systems on the market for various industries, including professional services, software development, and construction.
- Project management integration
- Workload capacity management
- Drag-and-drop interface
- Extensive reporting capabilities
- Customizable dashboard
- Drill down into timesheets to view specific tasks
- Detailed time tracking
- Optimized crew management with scheduling
- Adjust shifts proactively for proper labor allocation
We’ve ranked the top resource management systems based on how they supported various industries like professional services and manufacturing. Also, we factored in their affordability for small businesses and advanced functionalities like capacity planning.
| Industry or Functionality | Recommended System and Feature | Starting Price |
|---|---|---|
| Professional Services | BigTime’s utilization dashboard | $20/user/month |
| Consulting | BQE CORE’s reporting module | Quote-based |
| Construction | Deltek Replicon’s workforce management module | $12/user/month |
| Affordability | Float’s “Starter” plan with extensive functionality | $6/user/month |
| Capacity Planning | Kantata’s capacity planning tool for large businesses | Quote-based |
| Manufacturing | MRPeasy’s master planning tool | $49/user/month |
| Software Development | Wrike’s integrated project management | Free (first paid plan is $10/user/month) |
- Wrike: Best for Software Development
- BQE CORE: Best for Consulting Firms
- Deltek Replicon: Best for Construction
- Float: Most Affordable
- BigTime: Best for Professional Services
- Kantata: Best Capacity Planning Tools
- MRPeasy: Best for Manufacturing
Wrike - Best for Software Development
Wrike’s project resource management module can help software developers allocate the appropriate resources for complex projects. This integrates resource and project management to ensure project budgets and timelines align with available labor resources. For example, new high-priority coding tasks can be allocated to the top developers, while their previous tasks can be shifted to other team members to ensure proper use of skills.
The system lets you easily view your team’s workloads for each day, week, or month. If a UI designer on your team has several projects they’re working on per day, you can reallocate one of them to another designer with a lighter workload to prevent burnout. The tasks are even color-coded on a drag-and-drop interface for easy editing.
Wrike also has built-in time tracking that integrates with the resource management module. This allows you to adjust capacities and project timelines based on actual hours worked for each task. This helps you stay flexible when tasks take longer or shorter than expected, and you need to adjust to meet tight product or update launch deadlines.
While Wrike doesn’t lack functionality, it does fall on the pricier side. It offers a free version, but the project resource management module is only available in the “Business” plan, which is $24.80/user/month. That said, it’s a highly effective tool for mid to large-sized software development teams.
View our full Wrike review.
BQE CORE - Best for Consulting Firms
BQE CORE offers an extensive reporting module to help consulting firms gain real-time insights into workloads and resource utilization. The personal dashboard view lets you view your favorite reports in real time to view performance across different projects and clients quickly. This helps track resource utilization across the entire company in a broad view.
BQE CORE lets you generate several different resource-based reports, including:
- Utilization reports: View how effectively resources (financial, personnel) are used within your company. These often compare actual usage vs. available capacity.
- Employee performance: Analyze each employee’s billed hours within a certain timeframe to ensure their workload isn’t too large or small.
- Project performance: Track client profitability and project timelines to determine whether more or fewer resources are needed.
- Employee timesheets: Generate weekly timesheet reports to see a breakdown of hours spent on different tasks to potentially adjust workload capacities.
While other systems like Kantata and BigTime also have reporting capabilities, BQE CORE’s is more streamlined. All pre-built reports are ready to use and customizable, as you can change the size and color of graphs and edit data fields to get the insights you need.
Learn more about BQE CORE in our full review.
Deltek Replicon - Best for Construction
Deltek Replicon includes a workforce management module for construction companies to allocate costs accurately. Within each large construction project, you can set up tasks, jobs, and sub-jobs to better track costs and allocate resources. This is especially useful for companies using progress billing, as each task in a project can be tracked for more accurate invoicing and better resource allocation for similar projects.
The workforce management module also lets you set cost budgets and track actual costs in real time. This is crucial for the construction industry, as margins for projects like residential buildings or public infrastructure can be extremely tight. Deltek Replicon lets you easily track hours worked and the cost of labor, helping you identify areas of inefficiency or poor labor allocation.
If you ever need to adjust crew schedules—proactively to avoid overstaffing or reactively in response to unexpected shortages—the workforce management module has you covered. Easily edit and change shifts whenever you need to, either on the computer or while you’re in the field via the mobile app. This can help you keep projects on track and under budget by always having the right number of crew members for the job.
Visit our Deltek Replicon product page for more info.
Float - Most Affordable
While it lacks a forever-free plan that other systems like Wrike have, Float’s $6 “Starter” plan has much more functionality, offering the best value we’ve seen on the market. It comes with unlimited projects, offers more advanced features like capacity planning, and is highlighted by its easy-to-use scheduling tool.
Float’s scheduling tool lets you view each employee’s daily tasks week by week. With a live view of team availability, skills, and capacity, you can easily allocate work for every project. You can also select a specific timeframe, say this week or month, and it will show each employee’s unscheduled hours without drilling down. This lets you quickly ensure all team members have an appropriate workload and are not under or over capacity.
You can also change views from the scheduler to the project plan to view capacities by project. It keeps the same calendar view, but now you can visualize how many hours each team member is scheduled to work on that specific project within your selected time frame. This helps project managers adhere to strict deadlines and reallocate if necessary. While many other systems have this functionality, Float offers an easy-to-navigate UI at the most affordable cost for small businesses.
BigTime - Best for Professional Services
BigTime’s utilization dashboard allows professional service firms to visualize allocated budgets, input hours, and billable hours vs. actuals. The dashboard displays company or department-wide allocated utilization with the percentage used over a specific time frame. This gives you a quick overview of how many hours your team members put in each month or week, letting you adjust accordingly if there are large disparities between allocated vs. actuals.
You can drill down into specific staff members, where it displays their capacity, along with allocated and utilized hours for each client. Here, you can view if the staff member is going over or under their allocated billable hours for any clients or if they’re hitting workload capacity. This is useful for professional service firms where staff members consistently exceeding allocated billable hours for clients may lead to client relationship problems or indicate potential delays and budget overruns.
If you need to edit allocations, you can simply click on any client hours and change them for each staff member. BigTime’s utilization dashboard even lets you run reports for each employee’s time detail for each client by clicking on the logged hours. This lets you see the tasks they worked on, how many hours they spent on each task, and any notes they had for full timesheet visibility.
BigTime is best suited for midsize professional service firms. While it does offer more affordable plans, the resource planning module is only available in the “Premier” plan, which is $45/user/month. For smaller budget-conscious businesses, Float or Wrike may be better options.
View our BigTime product page for more.
Kantata - Best Capacity Planning Tools
Kantata (formerly Mavenlink) offers an effective capacity planning tool that helps resource managers allocate projects and tasks effectively. The tool lets you view all of your firm’s projects sorted by client along a Gantt chart, helping you visualize timelines for long-term project phases. Each is color-coded to show if it’s potential or firm work, letting you plan ahead for a future project and ensure current projects are staffed accordingly.
Kantata can auto-match candidates based on the skill set required and availability, which can be configured within the system. It selects the top options for each task and displays their skills, availability, and cost rate, helping you choose the best option for the role.
The capacity planning tool also has a bench view that displays employee availability. Each employee is sorted into their roles, such as contractor, consultant, or general staff, and assigned an availability score. Say the largest client at your consulting firm requires a market assessment strategy for a new product. You can use the capacity planner to view your top strategist’s availability and explore other options if they’re unavailable.
Kantata’s capacity planning tool offers advanced functionality for large professional service teams or consulting agencies. Because of this, the system may have a steeper learning curve compared to other resource management tools like Float or BigTime.
MRPeasy - Best for Manufacturing
MRPeasy is a manufacturing-specific system with a strong master planning tool to better project the supply and demand of production resources. In the master production tab, the system consolidates information to calculate a product’s closing inventory at the end of a period. It considers the projected sales forecast, confirmed orders, and the predicted planned production output to ensure enough inventory to produce the desired amount.
The master planning tool also includes a required capacity section that lets you analyze projected workstation workloads after finishing the initial production plan. It automatically calculates total capacity and shows each group’s total and required working hours. This helps you allocate the correct labor hours to each station to meet demand or adjust the production plan if workstations are consistently bottlenecked.
Additionally, the procurement schedule tab ensures you have enough materials for production. It uses the production schedule demand and their BOMs vs. the planned and ordered quantity to determine if material inventory is sufficient. Combined with the other tabs, this helps you control every aspect of the production process to ensure optimal levels of inventory, labor, and materials for production.
MRPeasy offers an affordable solution for small to midsize manufacturers, as its “Starter” plan at $49/user/month. However, the master production schedule tool is only available in the $99/user/month Enterprise plan. That said, that’s still an affordable price with that amount of functionality compared to other MRP software like Fishbowl or Katana MRP.
Learn more about MRPeasy on our product profile.
Systems We Also Like
Resource Guru is a good option for project-based businesses to optimize resource management processes. It offers strong functionality at an affordable price, with features like project scheduling and capacity planning to allocate labor to high-value projects efficiently.
What is Resource Management Software?
Resource management software is a tool designed to help companies plan and optimize the utilization of their resources, including time, labor, and financial assets. This ensures that the correct resources are allocated to the right projects and tasks, boosts productivity, and prevents employee burnout.
These systems combine elements of project management and time and billing software with features like time tracking, project reporting, and scheduling. They’re used across several different project-based industries, including professional services, construction, manufacturing, and software development.
Key Features and Benefits
Resource management software offers several features to help you track utilization and forecast allocation efficiently and effectively.
| Feature | Description | Benefit |
|---|---|---|
| Availability tracking | Track each team member’s availability in real time. | Lets you better allocate new tasks to employees to ensure proper workloads and prevent bottlenecks. |
| Capacity planning | Proactively align resources with demand to meet deadlines. | Helps create more accurate forecasts and maximize productivity. |
| Time tracking | Tracks each employee’s time for accurate billable and non-billable hours. | View employees’ time spent on each task within a project to analyze productivity and ensure the proper billable hours are charged. |
| Scheduling | Drag-and-drop scheduling for project tasks across timelines. Includes calendar views and Gantt charts. | Visualizes work schedules for teams and helps allocate tasks without double-booking. |
| Reporting and analytics | Generate reports on key resource metrics like workload capacity, utilization, efficiency, and budgets vs. actual costs. | Helps analyze utilization and profitability data to help you make more informed decisions when scheduling or creating project budgets. |
| Integrated project management | Manage your projects and the resources allocated to them within the same system. | Lets you better manage projects by giving them the correct amount of resources. |
How to Choose Software
Whether you need integrated project management or better reporting tools, choose a resource management software that meets your industry-specific challenges:
| Industry | Key Features | Recommended System |
|---|---|---|
| Tech | Integrated project management, workload management | Wrike |
| Consulting | Billable hours reporting, accurate time tracking | BQE CORE |
| Construction | Workforce management, cost tracking, mobile scheduling | Deltek Replicon |
| Professional Services | Resource forecasting, detailed budget and hour allocation | BigTime |
| Manufacturing | Materials and labor forecasting, production scheduling, capacity planning | MRPeasy |
Pricing Guide
Resource management software can range anywhere from $5-$150/user/month, depending on what features your business requires. Some systems like Wrike even offer free plans, though these are often limited in functionality and are only viable for extremely small startups.
Usually, products will offer tiered pricing options, with the cost increasing with the number of features offered. For example, Float’s starting plan is $6/user/month and includes unlimited projects and capacity management and forecasting capabilities. The next plan is the “Pro” package that’s $10/user/month and includes more functionality like pre-filled timesheets and built-in time tracking. Finally, the “Enterprise” plan is a custom quote and includes all the features the system has to offer, like personalized onboarding and custom contracts.
| System | Starting Price |
|---|---|
| BigTime | $20/user/month |
| BQE CORE | Quote-based |
| Deltek Replicon | $12/user/month |
| Float | $6/user/month |
| Kantata | Quote-based |
| MRPeasy | $49/user/month |
| Resource Guru | $4.16/user/month |
| Wrike | Free (first paid plan is $10/user/month) |
