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Last Updated: 2024-03-08
Setup Considerations: Resource Forecasts

Setup Considerations: Resource Forecasts

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of resource forecasts. It explains:
  • Why to set them up.
  • How this feature fits into the rest of Workday.
  • Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
  • Security requirements and business process configurations.
  • Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What They Are

Resource forecasts estimate the number of hours that project workers need to complete their work on a project. You can:
  • Generate high-level forecasts from the resource plan.
  • Generate detailed forecasts from the task resources.
    At this time, both the Resource Forecast and Resource Forecaster reports are available for your forecasting needs, but the Resource Forecast report will be retired in a future release.
  • Generate daily, weekly, or monthly forecasts.
  • Use whole numbers or decimals for the forecast hours.

Business Benefits

Resource forecasting in Workday simplifies the process of estimating project work and ensures that project and resource managers can easily:
  • Plan for projects.
  • Schedule project resources.
  • Gain insight into staffing requirements and project progress.
  • Manage project costs by creating project budgets based on a resource forecast.
In addition, project workers can record their forecast project hours to:
  • Increase forecast accuracy.
  • Enable managers to make better staffing decisions for headcount planning.

Use Cases

Resource forecasts enable you to:
  • Estimate the work hours needed to complete a project or project task.
  • Recognize revenue on fixed-fee projects by calculating the percent completion of the project.
  • Gain insight into how many work hours you need to complete a project or project task.
  • Calculate project budgets based on resource forecasts.
  • Use Worksheets to simplify data entry for forecast hours.
  • Enable project workers to update their own resource forecasts and route changes to a manager for approval.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
How do you want to create resource forecasts?
You can create resource forecasts from either the project or the project plan tasks.
For a high-level view, create forecasts from the project.
For a detailed view, create forecasts from project plan tasks.
Project budgets reflect the same level of detail as the resource forecasts that you use to create them. Example: A detailed project budget at the task level requires that you first create a resource forecast from the project plan tasks.
How do you use Worksheets for data entry?
You can enable Worksheets to simplify data entry for forecast hours, reducing manual entry of project hours on the
Resource Forecast
 or
Resource Forecaster
 grid.
How can workers update their own forecast hours?
You can configure resource forecasts so that workers can forecast their project hours and submit them to managers for review and approval.
Do you want to simplify staffing by enabling resource scheduling?
You can enable resource managers to schedule their project resources from 1 location using the
Manage Worker Assignments
 report. This report displays the forecast hours for your assigned project workers, and requires resource forecasts on all your projects.
When you enable resource scheduling, Workday automatically generates resource forecasts for all your new projects. You can also schedule Workday to generate resource forecasts for your existing projects with the
Schedule Workday Generated Forecasts
 task.
These Workday-generated resource forecasts:
  • Don't display in Workday, except for reporting.
  • Don't overwrite user-created forecasts.
  • Are replaced by user-created forecasts.

Recommendations

We recommend that you:
  • Complete your resource plans before you create resource forecasts. Workday creates the first iteration of the resource forecast from the assigned workers on the resource plan.
  • Set up your resource forecasts before work begins on a project. If you configure your resource forecasts early, you can avoid creating an incomplete resource forecast. You can't past-date the forecast hours.
  • Enable Worksheets to view and edit resource forecasts. Worksheets provide a larger view of the forecast and simplify editing.
  • Enable resource scheduling to streamline project staffing.

Requirements

  • Create a project with workers assigned to the resource plan.
  • To generate task-level resource forecasts, create a project with a project plan and workers assigned as task resources.
  • To enable users to update their forecast hours with a Worksheet, you must first configure Worksheets for your tenant.
  • To enable workers to update their own forecast hours, you must first configure the
    Update My Resource Forecast
     business process.

Limitations

  • The Estimate at Completion (EAC) column on the resource forecast displays only the workers with a resource forecast entry. Workday doesn't include hours from workers who log time on a project but aren't in the resource forecast.
  • You can't edit forecast intervals for dates in the past.
  • Workday limits the number of columns that you can view and edit at one-time in the resource forecast.
  • You can't delete a resource forecast when you have:
    • A project budget based on the forecast.
    • A snapshot of the forecast.

Tenant Setup

Access the
Projects
 section on the
Edit Tenant Setup - Financials
 task to view project-specific tenant configuration options.
You can select:
  • Enable Worksheets for Resource Forecast (Advanced Projects only)
    .
  • Enable Resource Scheduling
    , and then specify your resource forecast options.

Security

Domains
Considerations
Business Process Administration
 in the System functional area.
Users secured to this domain can edit the
Update My Resource Forecast
 business process.
Manage: Business Process Definitions
 in the System functional area.
Users secured to this domain can manage the
Update My Resource Forecast
 business process.
Manage: Project Resource Forecast
 in the Projects functional area.
Users secured to this domain can use tasks, reports, and web services to create, edit, delete, and view resource forecasts.
Reports: Manager
 in the Staffing functional area.
Users secured to this domain can use the
Project Forecasted Hours - Monthly
 report.
Self-Service: Resource Forecast
 in the Projects functional area.
Users secured to this domain can update forecast hours for their project assignments.
Set Up: Advanced Project Resource Management
 in the Projects functional area.
Users secured to this domain can use the
Schedule Workday Generated Forecasts
 task.
Set Up: System
 in the System functional area.
Users secured to this domain can add the
Resource Forecast
 and
Resource Forecaster
 reports to the project profile using the
Configure Profile Group
 task.
Worksheets
 in the System functional area.
Drive
 in the System functional area.
Users secured to these domains can edit resource forecasts with a Worksheet.
To ensure proper access, review these team member roles and activities:
Domain Security Roles
Responsibilities
Project administrator
  • Configures tenant setup information.
  • Adds the resource forecast report to project profiles.
  • Edits the
    Update My Resource Forecast
     business process.
  • Manages and views resource forecast information.
Project manager
  • Approves forecast hours routed by the
    Update My Resource Forecast
     business process.
  • Manages and views resource forecast information.
  • Uses Worksheets.
Resource manager
  • Approves forecast hours routed by the
    Update My Resource Forecast
     business process.
  • Manages and views resource forecast information.
  • Schedules project resources.
  • Uses Worksheets.
Project worker
Updates their own forecast hours.

Business Processes

You can use the
Update My Resource Forecast
 business process to enable project workers to update their own forecast hours and managers to approve forecast changes.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Forecast vs. Actuals - Project Hours by Month
Compares forecasted hours with actual project hours.
Project Forecasted Hours - Monthly
Displays the forecasted project hours.
Worker Availability - Detailed Allocation
Identifies the weekly availability of workers for a 3-month period, based on:
  • Approved time off.
  • Forecasted hours.
  • Holiday hours.
Manage Worker Assignments
Displays project resource:
  • Assignments.
  • Time off.
  • Holidays.
This report enables you to:
  • Compare workers for project assignments.
  • Drill into and manage project assignments.
Project Forecasted vs. Actual Hours
Project Manager Hub card
Displays the actual hours that surpass or approach the total resource forecast hours.
This card enables you to determine if projects have:
  • An Estimate at Completion (EAC) that exceeds the total forecasted hours.
  • Total actual hours that exceed the total forecasted hours.
  • Total actual hours within 5% of the total forecasted hours.
Worker Forecasted vs. Actual Hours
Project Manager Hub card
Displays project workers over the past 4 weeks from the previous Sunday with:
  • Missing actuals.
  • Missing forecasts.
  • Actuals and forecasts that differ by greater than ±10%.
This card enables you to:
  • Compare the forecasted hours of each project worker to the actual hours that they worked on a project.
  • View the time off, in hours, for the project workers in the details.
You can use these report data sources to create custom reports:
  • Project Resource Forecast
  • Project Resource Forecast Edit Events - All Statuses
  • Project Resource Forecast Line

Integrations

Web Service
Considerations
Get Resource Forecasts
Enables you to retrieve an existing resource forecast.
Import Resource Forecast
Enables you to:
  • Create a new resource forecast.
  • Update an existing resource forecast.
  • Edit the allocations in an existing resource forecast.

Connections and Touchpoints

Resource forecasts interact with these other areas in Workday, including:
Feature
Considerations
Customer Contracts
You can recognize revenue on fixed-fee projects by using
Percent Complete
 for the
Revenue Recognition Method
. Workday calculates this value from the resource forecast.
Project Budgets
You can create project budgets based on a forecast at either the project or the project-task level.
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships across your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.