User Guide

The Capacitor is a single-page web application that connects your team's availability, project workload, and financial rates into one live view. Data is saved automatically as you type — there is no separate Save button.

How the pages connect

Pages at a glance

Understanding these six terms makes all the numbers across the tool instantly clear.

Utilization color thresholds

All thresholds are fully configurable in ⚙ Settings.

Follow these six steps in order to get meaningful utilization and cost numbers on the dashboard. The whole process takes about 10–15 minutes for a team of 10–20 people.

The row of summary boxes across the top of the dashboard gives you an instant read on operational health. Each team box is clickable and opens a detailed breakdown modal.

Team Breakdown Modal

Click any team KPI box to open a full-screen modal. It contains three sections:

Use the navigation tabs below the KPI row to switch between views. The year/month selector on the right controls which period you're viewing across all views simultaneously.

The most granular view — one row per staff member with fully editable capacity cells. This is where you fine-tune individual availability and enter overhead/admin hours.

Editing capacity inline

Click any value in the Avail Hrs, PTO Hrs, or Sched Hrs columns to enter edit mode. Type the new value and press Enter or click elsewhere to save. Changes persist automatically within a second.

Scheduled hours breakdown

The Sched Hrs cell shows two separate components side by side:

Filtering and grouping

• Use the Team dropdown to show only one team at a time
• Use the Role dropdown to filter by specific roles
• Enable Group by Role to organize rows by role type with colored section headers
• The footer row always shows totals for the currently filtered set only

Travel status indicator

Staff members marked as on-site in a Gantt assignment show a ✈ travel badge next to their name. This is informational only — it does not automatically reduce available hours.

Breaks the selected month into individual week segments so you can see short-term loading patterns and identify bottlenecks before they happen.

Each week is weighted by its number of actual working days — a 3-day holiday-shortened week gets proportionally fewer hours than a full 5-day week. The Weekly View includes:

• Bar chart — Scheduled vs. Available hours side by side for each week
• Utilization % cards — One card per week, color-coded, showing hours breakdown and working-day count
• Weekly team table — Each team's Sched and Avail hours per week with sub-column labels
• Staff weekly detail table — Per-person hours per week; use the team dropdown to narrow the list

Shows longer-range utilization patterns across months and quarters. Use this view for quarterly reviews, annual planning, and spotting seasonal capacity cycles.

12-month utilization line chart

One line per team (colored by team color) plus an Ops Total line. Reference lines mark your Target %, At-Risk %, and Over-Capacity % thresholds. Use the year selector on the right to view any historical year.

Quarterly bar chart

Aggregates quarterly utilization across multiple years. Each bar cluster shows per-team utilization with an Ops total line. Useful for year-over-year comparison at the quarter level.

Quarterly summary table

Tabular view of the current year's quarterly data: per-team utilization %, total scheduled hours, and total effective capacity hours. A totals row aggregates the full Ops picture per quarter.

The system auto-generates alerts for the selected month. The alert count badge on the nav tab updates in real time as you change capacity data.

Your pipeline management hub. Access it from the 📋 Projects button in the dashboard header. All projects here feed directly into the Gantt timeline, capacity utilization, and financial calculations.

Adding a project manually

Project statuses

Filtering the project list

• Use the status filter pills at the top to show only projects of a specific status
• Use the search bar to find projects by name or client
• Use the Team dropdown to show only projects with hours assigned to a specific team
• Use the Sort dropdown to order by Start Date, Name, or Estimated Hours

Import a batch of projects directly from Asana's CSV export in four guided steps. Click ↑ Import from Asana in the top-right corner of the Projects page.

Step 1 — Export from Asana

Step 2 — Column mapping

The importer auto-detects standard Asana columns. A ✓ auto-detected badge confirms each match. For any field the importer missed, use the dropdown to manually assign the correct CSV column.

Step 3 — Preview & select rows

Review every parsed row before committing. The preview table shows:

• Checkbox — check/uncheck individual rows to include or exclude them
• ⚠ Duplicate warning — rows with the same name as an existing project are flagged in amber and deselected by default; re-check to import anyway
• Warnings column — flags rows missing a start or end date
• Auto status mapping — Asana stage names are automatically translated (e.g., "Done" → Completed, "In Progress" → In Progress, "Backlog" → Backlog)
• Select All / Deselect All buttons for batch control

Step 4 — Done

After clicking Import Selected, a results screen shows how many projects were imported and any per-row error messages. A ← Back to Preview button lets you retry failed rows. Successfully imported projects immediately appear in the pipeline with status Scheduled (unless Asana mapped to a different status).

The Gantt page is where project timelines are visualized and staff hours are allocated. This is the primary driver of utilization numbers on the dashboard.

Reading the Gantt chart

Each row represents one project. The colored bar spans the project's start-to-end dates. The bar color reflects the project's status. Hover over a bar for date details and estimated hours. Projects are sorted by start date by default.

Assigning staff to a project

Budget progress bar

The assignment modal shows a progress bar comparing total assigned hours vs. the project's estimated hours. Going over budget turns the bar red. This is a visual indicator only — it does not block saving.

Access via the 💰 Financial tab on the dashboard nav bar, or click the Labor Cost KPI box. The Financial view has six sub-tabs covering different angles of cost and revenue data.

Annual KPI strip

Always visible at the top of all Financial sub-tabs for the selected year:

The default Financial sub-tab. Shows annual trends and a role-type breakdown for the selected month.

• Monthly Labor Cost vs. Est. Revenue chart — Dual bars (amber = cost, purple = revenue) for all 12 months, with a green Margin % line on the right axis
• Role-type breakdown table — For the selected month: headcount, scheduled hours, labor cost, est. revenue, gross profit, and margin % per role type

Project-level financial breakdown for all projects with assigned hours. Sorted by labor cost descending.

The horizontal bar chart shows each project's Labor Cost and Estimated Revenue visually. The table below provides the full detail:

Shows how labor cost and revenue are distributed across your teams, both monthly and in a summary table.

• Stacked monthly bar chart — Each team's cost as a colored segment per month, plus an Estimated Revenue bar for comparison
• Team summary table (selected month) — Team name, staff count, scheduled hours, labor cost, est. revenue, gross profit, and margin % per team

Use this tab to identify which teams have the highest cost concentration and whether revenue tracks cost at a team level.

Focused entirely on profitability — where margin is strong, where it's at risk, and which projects are consuming budget.

• Gross margin % area chart — Monthly margin trend with reference lines at 30% (target) and 15% (warning)
• Project margin ranking — Horizontal bars showing each project's gross margin %, sorted from highest to lowest. Red bars indicate projects below your target margin.
• Budget health panel — Progress bars showing what % of each project's budget has been consumed by labor cost. Bars turn red when over 100%.

A detailed snapshot of all labor cost activity for a single selected month. Navigate to it via 💰 Financial → 📅 Monthly.

Use the month selector at the top of this tab to switch months independently of the main dashboard month selector. The tab is organized into five sections:

Month KPI strip

Four metrics for the selected month at a glance: Labor Cost, Est. Revenue, Scheduled Hours, and Gross Margin %.

Team cost cards grid

One card per team showing: Team name, labor cost, estimated revenue, scheduled hours, utilization %, and a colored margin bar. Click a card to focus the chart on that team.

Team bar chart

Side-by-side bar chart comparing Labor Cost vs. Estimated Revenue for each team in the selected month. Makes it easy to see which teams are revenue-generating vs. cost centers.

Staff cost table

Every staff member with scheduled hours for this month, sorted by labor cost descending. Columns include:

• Scheduled hours — with project hours and manual hours broken out
• Rate — cost $/h and bill $/h for their role type
• Labor Cost — their individual cost for this month
• Est. Revenue — their revenue contribution for this month
• Margin % — per-person gross margin

A totals footer row summarizes all values for the selected staff set.

Project attribution table

Which projects were active this month and how much of the month's cost they each drove. Columns include prorated cost, hours, revenue, and a visual % of month cost bar showing each project's share of total monthly labor cost.

Pick any two months and see exactly what changed in labor cost, revenue, margin, hours, and utilization. Navigate to it via 💰 Financial → ⇄ Compare.

Selecting months to compare

Two dropdowns at the top select Month A (cyan) and Month B (amber). Default is previous month vs. current month. Click Reset to prev/current to return to defaults.

Delta KPI cards

Five cards show before/after values with color-coded change arrows:

12-month sparkline chart

All 12 months rendered as bars. Month A is highlighted in cyan, Month B in amber. A green margin % line shows context — are these months typical or outliers in the year?

Team comparison table

Side-by-side columns for Month A and Month B with Δ (delta) columns for Labor Cost, Scheduled Hours, and Utilization pp. Quickly identifies which team drove a change between months.

Staff comparison table

Same format as the team table but at the individual staff level. Only shows staff members who have cost data in at least one of the two months.

Labor rates are set per role type in ⚙ Settings. Every financial calculation in the system derives from these two numbers per role.

Each staff member has a Role Type field. The rates for their role type are applied automatically to all their scheduled hours. Staff without a Role Type use the "Other" default rate.

Manage your organizational structure from the 👥 Staff button in the dashboard header. The page has two tabs: Teams and Staff.

Teams tab

Create and edit teams. Each team requires:

• Name — displayed on all KPI boxes and charts
• Color — used for visual coding on the dashboard, Gantt, and all charts

Deleting a team does not delete its staff members — they retain their team assignment but the team name may appear as unknown on the dashboard until reassigned.

Staff tab

The Clients page is a directory of client organizations. Clients are linked to projects for reporting context and can be used to filter project views.

Each client card shows: client name, type (University, Corporate, Government, etc.), location, number of active projects, and total estimated hours across those projects. Use the search field and type filter to locate specific clients quickly.

Adding a client

Click + New Client and fill in the name, type, and optional contact information. Once saved, the client appears in the Client dropdown on the project form.

Snapshots capture a point-in-time picture of capacity and utilization data so you can compare periods later without losing current data.

Saving a snapshot

Viewing history

Click 🗂 History in the dashboard header. Filter by type or use the search bar to find a specific period. Click any snapshot card to expand the full data record. Snapshots can be deleted or have their note edited at any time.

Click ⚙ Settings in the dashboard header to expand the settings panel inline. Changes apply immediately.

Utilization thresholds

Labor rates by role type

Each role type row shows the role name, a Cost $/h input, and a Bill $/h input. Click any rate field, type the new value, and press Enter or click away to save. See Labor Rates section for the full explanation.

Click ↓ Export in the dashboard header to expand the export panel. All exports are based on the currently selected month and year.

Every calculation used in the system, presented for transparency, auditing, and onboarding new users.

Capacity formulas

Proration formula

Weekly estimate formula

Financial formulas

Click any question to expand the answer.

Quick diagnosis guide for the most common issues users encounter.