Plan in Hours, Not Percentages
Allocate people to projects in hours per week. A percentage quietly changes meaning the moment somebody drops to four days; hours do not.
Real Availability
Capacity minus approved leave — never raw capacity. Working patterns record which days somebody actually works, so a Mon–Wed part-timer is not charged for a Thursday they never work.
Leave & Public Holidays
Book time off, approve it, and set workspace-wide holidays. Pending requests do not reduce availability, because a request is a question, not a fact.
Soft vs Committed
Pencil somebody in for work that might land. Tentative allocations are visible in the plan but excluded from committed totals, so a maybe never reads as staffed.
Find Someone Free
Search by availability in a date range, narrowed by skills from the Employee Directory when you have it. Answers "who can take this?" without a spreadsheet.
Planned vs Actual
Utilization compares logged billable hours against available hours, and the page always names the denominator — because "utilization" unqualified means three different things.