Projects were managed in a 50-tab spreadsheet that occasionally broke and dropped formula. Each failure meant lost time, and employees having to keep separate logs while it was being fixed.

Projects, budgets and people connected with finance in one system. From a project management perspective, it has transformed the way information flows, with a true system that supports confident decision-making.

People’s time was assigned to projects without the opportunity for real-time approval. Managers couldn’t easily see who changed what, which made following up on alterations difficult.

Every time entry and cost is auditable. Approvals happen in the system, keeping projects compliant. Project managers can now review and reject time entries against budgets, preventing overspend. Any errors or accidental approvals are traceable and easy to correct.

Capacity planning relied on constant manual updating to assign hours and monitor how staff time was divided between funded and nonfunded work. There wasn’t a way of capturing people’s overwork or underwork.

The resource board updates automatically providing a live snapshot of project allocations. Line Managers can balance workloads instantly, and the flex bank helps monitor overwork. A customised Power BI dashboard translates hours into utilisation percentages supporting a healthier balance across the organisation.

Staff logged time manually in one of the tabs of the spreadsheet with no validation. Non-project work sat in a single vague category, hiding how much time went to internal or administrative tasks.

People particularly like the intuitive calendar view for logging hours, which was quickly adopted. While there’s still some work to do to ensure timely submissions, they are now far more aware and accurate in how they record their time.

Producing a single report could take an entire day. Though the cover page of the spreadsheet showed finances and staff hours at a glance, it offered no real data analysis and lacked the detail and reliability of the new system.

Custom Power BI dashboards give senior management live insight into capacity and performance. After some setup, they now update automatically. Built-in analysis tools let users drill into data, filter by project or theme, and save custom views for future use. Budgets, timelines and performance can be explored in real time.

As the team grew, the lack of granularity prevented effective forecasting. Future workload and funding projections were estimated by switching monthly forecasts to actual making it difficult to predict capacity or funding needs accurately.

Accurate, granular data supports better staff and funding planning. Project managers can forecast workloads even before funding is confirmed, track project costs confidently, and see when hours or funding decline, allowing timely adjustments and balanced workloads. This keeps capacity steady and impact continuous.

Each new project had to be added to the spreadsheet by hand, with limited visibility for fundraising or project managers. There was no consistent process to forecast future work, making it difficult to plan resources or understand how upcoming funding would affect capacity.

New initiatives are now created as quote-level projects when funding looks likely, enabling early staffing forecasts that take into account unconfirmed grants and their associated future workloads. These projections feed into the resource board, showing upcoming workloads so everyone can prepare.