Overview
Knowing who is working on what, who has room for more, and whether your resourcing plan actually reflects reality is one of the harder parts of running a project-based company. Project Planner in CORE solves that with a single connected view of your allocations, resource schedules, and Gantt chart across every project. At its core, Project Planner gives you a split-screen layout: a Gantt chart on top showing project allocations and timelines, and a resource schedule below showing who is assigned to what and when. Both sections stay in sync with each other at all times, and no tab switching is required.
| Role | How Project Planner helps |
| Project managers | Visualize workload across projects, identify over-allocation, and keep plans aligned with project delivery |
| Company administrators | Configure company-wide planning settings such as scale, spreading rules, thresholds, and permissions |
| Resource schedulers | Assign hours, adjust schedules, and balance workloads across resources |
- Budget - your internal baseline plan (hours, costs, dates)
- Allocations/Schedule - planned hours for staff distributed into specific weeks or months
- Actuals - real-time entries posted by staff that are independent and unaffected by sync or any planner settings
Pre-Planning Setup
Before any planning can happen, a few settings need to be in place. This is usually done once by the CORE administrator. Getting these right from the start saves significant effort on every project that follows. As pre-requisites, the following information must exist in CORE before you create your first budget or allocation.
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Work Time Settings: Define your company's standard working days and the default hours per day and per week. The capacity indicators in Project Planner, the color-coded cells in the resource schedule, are driven by the standard hours on each individual employee record. Make sure these are accurate across your staff before your team starts planning. Check Settings > Company > Work Time for details.
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Resource Groups: Define the role types that work on your projects, for example, Senior Engineer or Project Manager. Resource Groups allow generic budgeting by role before specific staff is assigned, and they control which employees appear in the allocation dropdown when adding or editing allocations in the Planner.
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Activity Groups: Define the task types for project work, such as Design or Construction. Keep this simple unless detailed reporting is required.
- Fee Schedules: Configure fee schedules before creating your project budget. They drive the billing and cost rates on all budget line items. Use the Rate Source column to verify that rates are pulling correctly. Incorrect fee schedules result in inaccurate cost and margin data across all planning reports. Check Settings > Projects > Fee Schedules for details.
Planning Settings
The Planning settings screen is your company's control panel for Project Planner. Changes here apply to all users, company-wide. You must review each setting before your team starts planning. Check Settings > Projects > Planning for details.
| Setting | What it controls |
| Planning Screens | Enables the Project Planner and controls access to legacy planning screens |
| Planning Scale | Defines whether planning is done weekly, monthly, or both |
| Allocation Spreading | Controls how hours are distributed when created indirectly, such as CSV import, copy from budget, or batch edits |
| Color Thresholds | Percentage ranges for over-allocated, optimal, and under-utilized and are calculated against each employee's standard hours |
Enabling Budget-Allocation Sync
Budget-Allocation Sync is an optional feature that keeps your project budget and resource allocations automatically aligned. When enabled, any change to a phase date, hours, or resource in one record cascades to the other automatically, with no manual re-entry required.
To make sync available, turn on the company-level setting from Settings > Projects > General. New projects will have sync on by default. Sync can also be enabled or disabled per project by a user with permission. Check CORE Help article to learn more. You can also check this article on When to sync budgets and allocations.
Creating Allocations
Allocation Rules
Every allocation in Project Planner must have a unique combination of four dimensions. CORE uses this combination called the PART rule to prevent duplicate or overlapping allocations and ensure your forecasting and reports reflect clean, conflict-free data.
No two allocations can overlap on all four dimensions at the same time. If a conflict is detected, CORE flags it before anything is saved whether you are adding manually, copying from a budget, or importing via CSV.
| What PART enforces | Why it matters |
| No duplicate allocations | Prevents the same person being double-booked on the same task in the same period |
| No overlapping date ranges for the same P-A-R-T combination | Ensures forecasting and reports reflect accurate, non-conflicting data |
| Validation on import and sync | CSV imports and Budget-Allocation Sync both enforce PART rules; conflicts are surfaced for review before anything is saved |
Planning Workflow
Project planning in CORE follows three phases. Each phase builds on the previous one. Skipping ahead can cause issues that are harder to resolve retroactively.
Maintaining Your Plan
After your allocations are in place, Project Planner becomes the daily tool for keeping your plan current as projects evolve. Access it from the side menu Projects > Plan > Project Planner.
Navigating Project Planner
- Screen Layout
- Period and Scale
- Filters and Saved Views
- Focus Mode
- Simplified Structure View: Removes extra hierarchy levels from the bottom resource schedule section, giving you more screen space and fewer rows to expand and collapse. Enable from the three-dot menu in the bottom section.
Scheduling in Project Planner
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Schedule Visibility: The resource schedule always shows all of a resource's allocated hours across every project, regardless of what filters are active in the top section. This ensures capacity indicators always reflect the full picture of a person's workload. The Other Allocations row shows a rollup of hours for allocations hidden by active filters or permissions, so capacity is never understated.
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Unscheduled Hours: The Unscheduled Hours column shows hours that have been allocated but not yet placed on the resource schedule. Open the
menu on the allocation row and select Spread Hours to distribute them. CORE protects any period with logged time entries; actual work is never overwritten by spreading.
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Visual Warnings
- Red number: The resource is over- or under-planned for that period relative to their standard hours and your firm's thresholds
- ▲ : Hours are scheduled outside the allocation's start and end date window. Adjust the dates or move those hours back inside the window to clear it.
- Cell fill: The height of the filled bar inside each cell shows the proportion of standard hours scheduled.
- Partially filled = room available. Full but not red = at capacity but within threshold. Use the Warnings filter to surface only the rows that need attention.
Editing Allocations
As projects evolve, you will typically adjust allocations in one of the three ways. Each has a different implication for project scope.
| Action | What it means | When to use it |
| Add Allocation | Increases committed scope; more hours are planned on top of what already exists | When project scope increases |
| Split Allocation | Scope stays the same, and the planned work is shared across more than one resource | When work is shared. Another person is taking on part of an existing task without increasing the total hours |
| Swap Resource | Scope stays the same, one person replaces another on an existing allocation | A team member is unavailable due to PTO or a staffing change |
All three ways are available from menu on any activity row > Edit Resource Allocation. The dialog shows allocated, scheduled, and unscheduled hours per resource before you make any changes. Only employees in the correct Resource Group appear in the dropdown.
You can also edit project status, start and end dates, percent complete, and project manager directly from an allocation row; no navigation to the project screen is required.
Spreading Hours
Spreading distributes allocated hours evenly across the resource schedule between a start and end date.
| Option | How it works |
| Auto spreading | Hours are distributed evenly when allocations are created through indirect actions such as CSV import, copy from budget, or batch edits. Enable at Settings > Projects > Planning. |
| Manual spread | You can click |
| Cell-level editing | Click directly into any week or month cell and type the hours for that period. Best for a localized adjustment. The Unscheduled Hours column updates in real time. |
Note: Spreading requires an end date on the allocation. CORE will prompt you to add one if it is blank. Periods with logged actual time entries are always protected and never overwritten.
Reporting
Project Planner surfaces planning data through the Gantt chart, color-coded capacity indicators, dedicated reports, and in-planner visibility features, giving you an early warning system for budget risk, resource imbalances, and planning gaps.
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Using the Gantt Chart: Show the percentage of hours used on that task (% Used). When a bar turns red, allocated hours have been fully consumed, which is your earliest signal of a potential budget overrun. Compare % Used on allocation bars against % Complete on phase bars to see whether you are ahead or behind on burn. Check CORE help to know more about the Gantt Chart.
Example: A phase that is 40% complete but has used 65% of its allocated hours is a signal to review scope or re-plan the remaining work.
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Project Stage View - Gantt without allocations: If your company is not yet doing resource scheduling, Project Stage View renders phase start and end dates and PM-reported % complete on the Gantt using project dates alone, no allocations required. This is the natural first step before you layer in the fuller planning workflow.
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Exporting the Gantt: Export the Gantt chart to PDF from the