10 Best Resource Management Software
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.
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Human resources are at the core of resource management software. Project managers use it to keep tabs on what the team is doing and if they are free to take on more tasks. This is especially useful, considering most project managers are running 2-5 projects at the same time!
However, if you are currently on the fence about whether you should invest or not in software like this, let me give you a quick thought. Resource management software can help you create a culture of retention. How? It gives you information on the workload of your team. Having a view that shows you allocation percentages can help you control workloads and make sure your resources are not on the brink of burnout.
So keep your team at healthy (not 100%) levels of allocation, give them time to develop their skills, and enjoy a more committed and efficient team.
How We Picked The Best Resource Management Software
I evaluated and compared the most popular resource management tools on the market, both for their reviews and user interface. Then I weighed factors that make workforce management software a good option for resource management specifically, such as the ones that follow.
- User Interface (UI): The amount of information related to resources can be overwhelming, especially as our projects grow. Therefore, the software we use must make good use of white spaces and have easy-to-navigate toolbars and menus so we can find our way through the tool.
- Range of features: I looked at all the different angles from which you can see your resources. Whether that is from a timesheet, workload view, capacity hours, time reports, or project views by resource.
- Integrations: Some software on this list might not have the level of depth required to be excellent resource management software, but they use integrations to compensate for that. Integrations extend the functionality of a platform by connecting it to external tools.
- Pricing: I searched through pricing information to find if there are free versions of the software, free trials, and the starting price of paid plans. There should be a balance between price and value.
The Best Resource Management Software Comparison Chart
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the baffling array of resource planning software out there. Below, we’ve put together a reader-friendly table neatly summarizing basic info about the tools described in this article.
Tools | Price | |
---|---|---|
monday.com | From $8/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
Kantata | Pricing upon request | Website |
Runn | From $10/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
Float | From $6/user/month | Website |
Resource Guru | From $4.16/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
MRPeasy | From $49/user/month | Website |
Hub Planner | From $7/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
Silverbucket | From $9.50/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
Productive | From $9/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
Saviom | Pricing upon request | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareReviews Of The Best Resource Management Software
Have a look and sign up for some trials to test-drive and find the best resource management software for your case.
monday.com is a flexible work platform to help teams communicate in context and get a big picture of outstanding projects, available resources, and projected timelines.
Why I picked monday.com: I chose monday.com primarily for its smart design and straightforward interface. In my opinion, even team members who are lacking resource management experience can quickly get started planning timelines, assigning project ownership, and managing projects. The monday.com app also gives you the flexibility and power to run your team on the go, which I think is a great feature for busy managers. You can organize your daily work, projects, and teams as well as establish workflow automations, share documents, and create Gantt charts for further clarity.
monday.com Standout Features & Integrations
Features that I think really set monday.com apart from the crowd include their 5+ views so you can see your project information the way you want to. For example, with the workload view, you can easily see who’s able to take on more work and who’s not. It's easy to visually gain insight into your team’s work capacity and make adjustments to timelines or ownership accordingly, and in real-time.
Integrations include apps like Slack, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Excel, Google Drive, Gmail, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and thousands more accessible via Zapier.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- New features being rolled out regularly
- Easily create boards dedicated to operational resource tracking
- Color coded status great for resource overviews
Cons:
- Comparatively complex pricing rubric
- May be too robust for small teams
- Gantt charts locked to mid-level plan
Kantata is a well-rounded tool that bridges the core planning, execution, project accounting, and analysis systems in a single operating environment. It has modules for project management, accounting, resource management, business intelligence, and team collaboration for services teams and agencies.
Why I picked Kantata: What appeals to me about Kantata is their system of dashboards, live time and expense tracking features, and their great documenting system. The resource management module offers real-time utilization and margins at the project and even the task level. From what I've seen, Kantata truly offers a comprehensive RM suite that even includes accounting tools like project costing, budget management, and invoicing. Despite requiring time to really master, Kantata has been widely recognized as being easy to use and learn and I believe that Kantata's benefits are worth the time.
Kantata Standout Features & Integrations
Features that are particularly impressive include Kantata's professional services. The platform makes its Kantata BI Consultants available to users, meaning you have access to a team who can build reports specifically for your business and provide training to your resources to help mitigate the risks and costs of implementation. Further worthwhile features include resource forecasting, capacity management, skills management, scenario planning, and role-based planning.
Integrations include pre-built integrations with tools like Expensify, G Suite, Netsuite, Jira, Hubspot, Xero, Salesforce, Slack, Concur, Qualtrics, Dynamics 365, and Quickbooks. They also provide an integration platform called M-Bridge to help you build your own integrations.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Resourcing fully integrated with master planning
- Good reporting functionality for resource data
- Distinguish between soft and firm allocation
- Easy capacity management
Cons:
- Advanced features are available only in the Premier and Enterprise editions of the application
- Proofing solution is an add-on
- Custom reports can be difficult to create without training
Runn is a real-time resource, demand, and capacity planning tool with integrated time tracking and powerful forecasting capabilities. I think it is a great tool for getting a bird’s-eye view of all projects and people to instantly spot over-bookings and identify resourcing patterns.
Why I picked Runn: I chose Runn for this list because of how easy it is to create project phases and allocations. You can drag and drop assets, as well as toggle between monthly, quarterly, and 6-month views to plan for the short and long term. If you don’t have the right person at the right time, you can use placeholders instead, which I think is an excellent way to visualize when projects or teams will need to scale up and hire more team members to meet workload requirements. Planning out tentative projects also allows you to see how your resourcing plans might change if the work gets confirmed.
Runn Standout Features & Integrations
Features that make Runn stand out include its impressive visualizations of capacity, workload, availability, and billable and non-billable utilization. You can drill into different roles, teams and tags to compare trends and understand which groups are overbooked. Runn lets you track projects, view forecasts, utilization, project variance, and overall financial performance. And its built-in timesheets will help you understand how much time was worked compared to what was planned.
Integrations include apps like Harvest, WorkflowMax, and Clockify for importing project, client, and people data and syncing time entries. With Runn’s API, you can build your own integration to send data across your favorite tools.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Powerful API
- Over-budget predictions
- Easily identify overbooked/unavailable employees
- Intuitive utilization reporting and forecasting
- Drag-and-drop resource scheduling
Cons:
- Limited number of integrations
- No offline or mobile time tracking
Float is a resource management, planning, and scheduling software that helps teams manage shared work schedules.
Why I picked Float: Float deserves its spot on my list because its scheduling functionality is so easy and intuitive. You can create new projects quickly, and assign them to your team within seconds. The schedule view gives you an accurate, high-level overview of your team’s availability and capacity, and you can drill down deeper using Float’s search and filter functionality. I especially love that you can set custom work hours, import and assign public holidays, schedule time off, assign custom tags like location and skills to your people and projects, and set a scheduled status to let everyone know when you’re working from home or remotely, or what you’re up to on a particular day.
Float Standout Features and Integrations
Features that elevate Float's offering include time tracking functionality. When added, you can access pre-filled timesheets and compare your team’s scheduled hours with the actual time spent on tasks to maximize future resource allocation. Real-time reporting lets you track your resource utilization, monitor project budgets, and forecast your team’s capacity. Further features that I think are notable include right-click menus for splitting tasks, an activity timeline to track changes, capacity management, multi-project planning, forecasting, and reports.
Integrations include Jira, Asana, Teamwork, Trello, Google calendar, Outlook Calendar, Slack, and thousands more through Zapier.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Mobile app for iOS and Android
- 99.5% uptime
- 24-hour support with 30 min response time
Cons:
- Time tracking requires you to get a higher plan
- Updating staff/personnel list takes time
Resource Guru is a dedicated resource management software that aims to make resource management user-friendly with quick scheduling tools.
Why I picked Resource Guru: I chose Resource Guru for this list because of its conflict resolution capabilities. Resource management and team collaboration are built in to make resource booking more straightforward, with clash management, leave management, and a waiting list to prevent over-booking. It helps project managers make bookings simultaneously with no chance of stepping on each other’s toes. Clashes are automatically prevented, which I hope will save you a huge headache.
Resource Guru Standout Features & Integrations
Features that really stand out to me for Resource Guru include individual resource dashboards that allow each staff member to log in and know exactly what they should be working on. To monitor business performance, powerful reports help identify which projects and clients are being over-serviced and assist you with monitoring team utilization and future capacity planning. Other notable features include drag-and-drop scheduling, equipment management, meeting room booking, capacity planning, and forecasting reports.
Integrations include calendar apps like Outlook calendar, Calendly, and Google calendar. Thousands of additional apps are accessible through Zapier.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Daily resource summary emails
- Attractive and flexible UI
- Very affordable per-user rate
- Availability bar for capacity planning
Cons:
- No copy-paste of resource tasks
- Unable to sort resources by experience level
MRPeasy is a cloud-based MRP software tailored to the unique demands of smaller manufacturers. It offers an all-in-one solution for managing various aspects of production, including inventory oversight, customer relationship management, procurement, and financial workflows.
Why I picked MRPeasy: I chose MRPeasy as the resource management software because of its comprehensive capabilities, which include precise production planning, real-time inventory overview, and seamless integration with various platforms. These features allow you to manage and plan resources months in advance, including materials, equipment, and human resources required. With a customizable central dashboard, you can access a clear view of where you're spending your resources and how you can optimize workflows for production.
MRPeasy Standout Features & Integrations
Features that make MRPeasy stand out include tools for estimating costs and lead times to help plan resources more effectively. The platform also offers customer relationship management (CRM) and sales tracking to allow you to manage customer interactions, orders, and quotations. Additionally, real-time shop floor reporting allows for live insights into the entire production process.
Integrations include Amazon, BigCommerce, Crossfire, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, HubSpot, QuickBooks, ShipStation, Salesforce, Shopify, Zapier, and more.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Integrates all aspects of the manufacturing process in a single platform
- Automated production planning features
- Forecasting of materials and human resources
Cons:
- May lack advanced features due to the simple platform
- Technical support can be lacking
Hub Planner is a resource management software with a full suite of scheduling, time entry, and reporting features. The core feature that caught my attention is the simple and usable Scheduler, which allows for project and resource planning and visualization. Users can drag and drop to plan projects and schedule resources. The tool also offers a multi-function menu, powerful filtering, and a dynamic team capacity bar. I particularly like how Hub Planner's multiple view modes allow for both high-level birds-eye views and granular views of projects.
Hub Planner has a powerful reporting engine with 70+ pre-formatted templates that I think is a great resource for teams. If you can't find what you're looking for in a template, you can create reports from scratch.
Hub Planner also has a number of inline workflows for timesheets, requesting vacation time, and a slick resource requesting & approval option. Their Unassigned Work feature is great for scheduling and forecasting ahead of the pipeline, and users can create custom fields at the resource or project level. Users can also customize schedule notifications and reminders.
They've taken a modular approach so you have the option to add or remove extensions to the base product, allowing teams to increase functionality or turn off bits they don't need. Inline integrations with Basecamp, Slack, iCal, REst API, and Zapier are available.
Hub Planner offers a 14-day free trial with everything included. There is an extensive knowledge base with tutorial videos, and their customer support is excellent.
Licenses begin at $7 per month, per resource with annual discounts available.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easy toggle between user/group
- Powerful & precise built-in reporting
- Search filter for available resources with skill sets & location
- Excellent capacity planning & forecasting
Cons:
- Need an API or intermediary for MS Teams
- Editing Custom Fields requires manual input or help from Hub Planner support
- Need to click into modal for more details on events/projects bookings
Silverbucket is a project resource planning software that helps businesses manage their project allocations effectively. Silverbucket is easy to use and allows users to view and compare resource plans and actual hours to get insights into the success of resource management activities, which I think makes it a great tool for those managing resources for projects
Why I picked Silverbucket: I chose Silverbucket because it not only helps you schedule your projects but also helps you delegate work to the right people. The software offers a clear view of your company’s resource allocations, including conflicts, workloads, and capacity levels. Its Gantt chart visualization can help you plan and view project timelines easily while skill management offers a way to find the right competencies for your project team.
With Silverbucket, the drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to move allocations from a role to a person or vice versa. Additionally, allocation features such as the max function help prevent overbooking by ensuring you can reserve a person’s capacity ahead of time. Employees can also log their hours in the system, giving you the opportunity to compare actual hours to planned hours.
Silverbucket Standout Features & Integrations
Features include utilization and optimization, heatmap, absence management, time tracking, resourcing request, soft bookings, filtering and search options, gantt chart management, tasks, risk and conflict management, skills mapping, and forecasting and reporting tools.
Integrations include HubSpot, Microsoft Azure, Deltek, ValueFrame, PlanMill, Millnet, Power BI, Visma Severa, Marathon, Parm AG, and more.
Pricing starts from €10/planned person/month.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Competency management for finding right people for the project team
- Soft booking can be used to create tentative allocations
- Easily compare resource plans to actual hours
Cons:
- No ability to create “what if” resource planning scenarios
- No mobile application available
Productive is an all encompassing agency management tool. This online resource management tool supports time tracking, employee cost rate management, budgeting and profitability reporting (among other features). You also get progress reports which show you the future revenue on every project.
Some other, standard resource management software features include multiple views (per project/person/team). Booking indicators tell you who’s overbooked or underbooked at a glance. You can also schedule people on custom events (vacation, sick leave, education, or anything else). It also factors in overheads and employee costs when calculating profitability, ensuring you can focus on improving your metrics without getting burdened by non-billable work.
One of the best things about this resource planning software is that Productive has very active development and a well defined roadmap. It was built to replace a non-integrated tool stack agencies usually struggle with, both in terms of cost and quality of reporting. All in all, Productive gives you an amazing, top-down view of your people’s capacity that also reflects on the rest of your business (reports, time tracking, profitability).
Productive’s integrations include an assortment of accounting tools such as QuickBooks Online and Xero. A Zapier integration is available too, along with an open API anyone can use.
Productive costs $9/user/month (billed annually). They also offer a fully-featured, free 14-day trial.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Built-in time management can bill multiple business entities
- Plenty of custom tags to choose from
- Quite easy to set up collaborative tasks
Cons:
- Invoicing and quotation features are limited
- Mobile app could be faster/more responsive
- Roles/user rights are not as customizable as they could be
Saviom is a resource management software that I believe is best suited to large enterprises. It's equipped to provide a visual overview of complex team needs and scheduling for projects with multiple moving pieces.
Why I picked Saviom: I chose Saviom for this list because it allows you to quickly identify which resources should be allocated where, based on factors like cost, availability, location, and competency, across the enterprise. You can easily gain high level visibility even in the presence of complicated matrices (for example, when you have verticals like domains, regions, teams, and departments, in addition to individual projects). Their project forecasting functionality helps to identify future vacancies, while keeping an eye on financials like profit margin, revenue, and costs.
Saviom Standout Features & Integrations
Features of Saviom that I find particularly impressive include their real-time BI, which allows you to meet changing demands. You can build portals, analytics, reports, and dashboards that are tailor-made for your needs, since Saviom is highly expandable and configurable. You can also control the visibility of data with filters. Other notable features include a multidimensional resource scheduler and planner, advanced forecasting and capacity planning, and real-time business intelligence.
Integrations include Outlook, Google, Salesforce, Jira, and custom integrations you can build using its data exchange framework.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Seamless integration with other enterprise applications
- Highly flexible real-time reports, analytics & dashboards
- Real-time resource optimization, modeling & simulation
- Highly configurable & customizable RM solution
- Multidimensional resource forecasting & capacity planning
Cons:
- Pricing is available only on request
- More suitable for medium to large enterprises
- There is a learning curve as the tool comes with extensive features
Other Resource Management Solutions
None of the above work for you? Check out the below list of additional tools:
- Acuity PPM
For project portfolio resource management
- Microsoft Project
RM software for Microsoft users
- Paymo
RM tool for remote teams
- Anaplan
For scenario planning
- ActiveCollab
For built-in invoicing
- Planview Clarizen
Enterprise-grade resource management tool
- Schedule It
For scheduling work shifts & client bookings
- KeyedIn
For resource management at the PMO level
- PSOhub
RM that integrates with CRMs
- elapseit
For its features that support kickstart to invoice
Check out our video on resource management software here:
Resource Management Software FAQs
Find answers to common questions about resource management and resource management software.
What is resource management?
How do you create a resource plan?
What is a resource forecast?
How do you calculate project resources?
Do I need resource management software?
Should I still be using spreadsheets?
What is resource management software?
What are the benefits of using resource management software?
What features should I look for when evaluating resource management software?
What's an example of an effective resource management system?
Other resource management lists
- Enterprise resource planning software for resource management at large companies.
- Resource planning software to help you forecast required resources and their utilization on your projects.
- Resource scheduling software to help you schedule equipment, rooms, staff, and other resources.
- Resource allocation software, which is specifically designed to help you alllocated the right resources to the right projects and tasks.
- Free resource management software, in case you need a less expensive option that will still cover your primary needs.
- Marketing resource management software (MRM software) which is designed specifically for marketing teams.
- Resource tracking software, which combines resource planning with tracking to help you monitor and adapt your plan as you go.
- Open source resource management software for extra flexibility and (often) cheaper pricing.
- Web-based resource scheduling software, in case you require a SaaS solution, rather than an on-premise option.
What's Next?
Now that you know some of the best resource management tools, you might want to read our complete guide to workload capacity to get the most out of your team, boost morale, and improve output.
However, if you want to explore what you can do with Excel a little longer, here's an example and free template on resource allocation.