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Richard Balet
Written by Richard Balet

Plan or spend resources

What is the difference between planning or spending resources?


In Sinnaps we differentiate between planned and spent resources. This way, the PM can plan resources to make estimates and adjust the planning. Subsequently, each team member can spend the resources he or she has used.

The advantage of doing so is that the PM can then compare the resources that he intended to consume with those that are actually consumed and adjust the planning accordingly.

To plan or spend resources, you must click the resources button in the activity panel of the activity in which you want to assign or spend the resource.

When clicking, you must then decide wether you want to plan or spend a resource. Remember that only Project Managers can plan resources

Plan a resource


PMs are the only ones who can plan resources in a project. They can search for a resource that already exists in the search engine, or if it does not exist, they can create a new resource by typing the name of the resource in the search engine and pressing the create button

If the resource doesn´t exixst we can create it by selecting the CREATE option in the selection menu. If it does, we just need to select it and Sinnaps will display a menu that allows us to assign one or more resource quantities. This resource estimation can be total, daily, weekly, monthly, etc., or combine several options in different inputs. You can also add a description every time you plan a resource for different purposes.

When doing so, Sinnaps will automatically estimate the total costs and consumptions in the activity in the upper right corner of the pop-up window.

 

Spend resources


Unlike when planning resources, everyone in a project can spend resources. To do this we will select the resource and click on the resource button ones more, and then select the option Spend resource in stead of create. Add as many individual notes as you need every time you want to justify the expense.

When selecting the resource that we want to spend, the menu that is displayed in a pop-up window will give us all the options. When spending resources we are able to describe a specific date, or concept to explain how and when the resources has been spent. This way we control what and when we have spent each resource.

Onces your resources have already been planned, use the resource graph to manage their consumption and make sure everything makes sense. María shows you how to in this video.



Important: Take into account that all this added info can apear in the spent resource report.

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