How to Analyze Planned vs. Actual Hours with Operating Integrated to Harvest Time Tracking

Accurately tracking and analyzing planned versus actual hours is a cornerstone of running a professional services business effiicently. Integrating Operating, a robust resource management platform, with Harvest, a leading time-tracking tool, enables organizations to have a clear way of comparing the project allocations and workload estimates in Operating with the timesheets data from Harvest. With the ready-made integration developed by the Operating team, who has multiple years of Harvest use under their belt, you can get going in mere minutes.

Why Analyze Planned vs. Actual Hours?

Asking this question has self-evident answers, but let's list them anyways. The analysis of the deviation between planned and actual hours helps consulting companies:

1. Identify Inefficiencies: Spot where projects deviate from the schedule or exceed resource limits.
2. Refine Planning: Improve the accuracy of future project estimates and timelines.
3. Enhance Accountability: Track performance at the team or individual level against predefined goals. Accountability might be a strong word, but in the end, the consulting company is always at least accountable to the client.
4. Improve Stakeholder Communication: Deliver precise updates, reducing surprises related to costs or timelines, helping with expectation management.

How Operating and Harvest Work Together

The Operating-Harvest integration brings together project planning and time-tracking data for a seamless workflow. Here's how it works:

1. Resource Planning in Operating:
   • Staff projects, set budgets and rate cards, and forecast capacity
   • Assign people to projects while visualizing project timelines and workloads.
2. Time Tracking in Harvest:
   • Capture actual hours worked with Harvest with the timesheet feature
3. Data Synchronization:
   • When you win a project, confirm it in Operating, and create the project in Harvest with one click
   • See the actual hours flow back to Operating from Harvest for client projects, internal work, and leaves (time off data)
   • Compare time spent from Harvest with the project allocation and workloads in Operating
   • Visualize predictive project burnups that combine the planned allocations with time tracking data to anticipate when you'll hit the project budget
   • See which Harvest projects are linked with Operating projects and effortlessly navigate to Harvest to track time
4. Unified Reporting:
   • Generate detailed reports that combine planned and actual hours to monitor deviations
     • Monitor planned and actual hours, utilization, and revenue of consultants
     • Monitor planned and actual hours and revenue for projects
   • Dive into client, project, and task-level discrepancies to uncover trends and areas for improvements
   • Visualize predictive project burnups that combine the planned allocations with time tracking data to anticipate when you'll hit the project budget

Steps to Analyze Planned vs. Actual Hours

To analyze planned versus actual hours, start by planning your projects in Operating. Begin by building teams within the platform and using Operating’s timeline visualization to balance workloads effectively. Next, integrate Operating with Harvest from the Operating settings to sync time-tracking data and ensure all clients, projects and time entries, and people are linked between both systems. The first time you enable the integration, you'll map these entities with one another. Once the integration is in place, encourage team members to log their hours consistently in Harvest and keep an eye on the data for accuracy and completeness in the reports in Operating.

With enough information collected, generate and review reports in Operating to compare planned versus actual hours, drilling down into specific tasks or team members to spot inefficiencies. We recommend to do this weekly, or a couple of times a month. The team leads should review their own teams' data, project managers their on projects, and consultants should review their own use of time. Finally, use these insights to refine resource planning and project workflows, tackling recurring issues such as scope creep, underestimated timelines, or underutilized or overworked consultants.

Metrics to Monitor

To gain the most from the Operating-Harvest integration, focus on these metrics:

• Revenue Leak: The difference between the planned and the actual work causing missed billable hours and hurting profitability
• Variance or deviation: The gap between planned and actual hours resulting in revenue leak or overworked consultants
• Billable Utilization: The efficiency of resource allocation and usage.
  • Follow this on individual, team, competence, and company level
• Overrun Trends: Patterns of tasks or projects exceeding planned hours.

Benefits of the Integration

The integration offers several benefits that enhance the operational efficiency of a consulting firm or an agency business. The ability to compare planned and actual hours has a direct profitability impact as companies are able to improve their billable utilization. It allows users to access data from both planning and execution in one place (Operating), creating a complete view of the project portfolio. It streamlines workflows by eliminating the need for manual double data entry and exporting data to spreadsheets, minimizing errors through automation. The biggest

Operating helps us identify all billable work, improving our profitability

"Last year, pre-Operating, we absorbed $250,000 in unbilled work due to inefficiencies. This year, it's down to $25,000."
James Shaw, COO, Inventive.io

Best Practices for Success

1. Promote Consistent Time Logging: Establish a routine for team members to log hours daily or at least weekly.
2. Regularly Review Reports: Conduct periodic reviews to address discrepancies early. You want to do this before month's end, and optimally mid-month at the latest.
3. Promote transparency over micromanagement: The goal of the reviews is to run a healthier business, if everyone is able to work more efficiently, it creates a healthier working environment. Working efficiently, doesn't necessarily mean "work more".
4. Set forums for learning: Help your company learn from past mistakes and have discussions openly: "these kinds of projects consistently take 10 days longer than planned"
5. Have a systems owner for Operting and Harvest: Someone should know how the integration works so people are able to turn to this person when they have questions.

Conclusion

Integrating Operating with Harvest creates a powerful solution for analyzing planned versus actual hours. This combination helps consulting companies improve resource allocation, refine planning, and directly improve profitability. You can read more about the integration here.

If you got interested, book a demo with our CEO Lauri, or sign up for a free trial!