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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2024-03-08
Concept: Resource Forecast Calculations

Concept: Resource Forecast Calculations

Workday generates resource forecasts for your projects using calculations that distribute forecast hours over a specific date range on weekdays (Monday through Friday). These calculations vary, depending on your selections for:
  • Forecasts for the project or the project plan tasks.
  • Forecasts at the daily, weekly, or monthly level.
  • Forecast hours based on either the percent allocation or the estimated work hours.
  • Forecast hours based on whole numbers or decimals.
Workday rounds forecast hours throughout the calculation process. Depending on the rounding variance, Workday might add extra hours to the beginning of the forecast or remove extra hours from the end of the forecast.
The Resource Forecast report will be retired in a future release. Workday recommends that you use the Resource Forecaster for a more streamlined resource forecasting workflow.

Date Ranges for Resource Forecasts

Workday sets the date range for your resource forecast by using the start and end dates of the:
  • Resource plan line, for forecasts at the project level.
  • Project task resources, for forecasts at the project plan task level.
By default, Workday only calculates forecast hours for dates in the future, not current or past dates. If you don't specify both the start and end dates, the forecast hours are zero.

Example Calculations

In the example calculations that follow, the resource forecasts have:
  • Project-level forecasts.
  • Weekly frequencies.
  • Whole numbers.
  • One assigned project worker, Allison Hunter, who is a Consultant.
Example 1: Percent Allocation
The date range is 4 weeks for these dates: 2020-11-1 to 2020-11-30.
Calculation steps:
  1. Workday obtains the scheduled weekly hours for Allison from their primary position. Value: 40 hours per week.
  2. Workday obtains the percent allocation for Allison from the resource plan line. Value: 50%
  3. Workday calculates the weekly availability for Allison. Result: 20 hours per week.
  4. Workday calculates the daily availability for Allison. Result: 4 hours per day.
  5. Workday populates the weekly resource forecast for Allison with:
    • 20 hours for the first 4 weeks of November.
    • 4 hours for the last day of November, which falls on a Monday.
Example 2: Estimated Hours
The date range is 5 weeks for these dates: 2022-10-31 to 2022-12-2.
Calculation steps:
  1. Workday obtains the estimated hours for Allison from the resource plan line. Value: 160 hours.
  2. Workday calculates the number of working days (Monday through Friday only) between the start and ends dates on the resource plan line. Result: 25
  3. Workday calculates the daily hours per worker (160/25 = 6.4). The calculation rounds the daily hours to 6 and then evenly distributes the hours across the resource forecast plan. For hours that Workday can't evenly distribute, it adds more hours at the start of the forecast than at the end.
    In this case, Workday multiplies 6 daily hours by 25 days for a total of 150 hours. Workday then distributes the hours evenly across the resource forecast. For the remaining 10 hours, Workday distributes an additional 1 hour per day. The distribution starts at the beginning of the resource forecast and continues towards the end until the forecast reaches a total of 160 hours.
  4. Workday populates the weekly resource forecast for Allison with:
    • 35 hours for the first 2 weeks.
    • 30 hours for the last 3 weeks.