Matti Parviainen

The consulting domain concepts that underpin Operating

Key Concepts

Comparing what was allocated and what actually happened

Understanding planned vs. actuals

Allocations are the building blocks of resource planning in Operating.

How to manage allocations

Starting point: A brand new project appears. If you're using a CRM integration, the project may already exist as a tentative project synced from a deal.

How to staff a project from scratch

When do you earn the revenue? Who deserves what? 

How revenue recognition works for fixed-price projects

Search our documentation to find articles about how to set up & use Operating.app

Feedback

Roadmap

Changelog

Developer & API Documentation

Lauri Eurén

Explore Your Trial Account

Explore your trial account and learn how Operating can help you with resource planning.

Your trial account comes pre-loaded with sample data so you can explore the platform right away. This guide walks you through the key areas. If you'd like a trial account, sign up for a free trial on our website.

Getting Started With Resource Planning

Explore your trial account and learn how Operating connects resource planning with time tracking, so you can plan work on the timeline and compare it against actual hours logged by your team.

Your trial account comes pre-loaded with sample data so you can explore the platform right away. This guide walks you through the key areas.

Getting Started With Resource Planning And Timesheets

Explore your trial account and learn how Operating connects resource planning, time tracking, and invoicing to manage the full professional services workflow from staffing through to billing.

Your trial account comes pre-loaded with sample data so you can explore the platform right away. This guide walks you through the key areas.

Getting Started With Resource Planning, Timesheets, And Invoicing

A step-by-step guide to getting started when you log in to Operating for the first time with a blank account.

When you first sign up for Operating, your account is empty. This guide walks you through the recommended steps to set up your organization, add your first data, and start planning.

Getting Started With An Empty Trial Account

First time here? Read through our setup guide to get started.

Operating Setup Guide

Step-by-step Operating Setup Guide (Start Here)

In the tutorial video we'll go over how to add data into Operating and how to make sense of it. We will go over the necessary steps to create an Operating setup that will help you demo the platform to your team members.

Video: A guide to adding data in Operating

This is a great first article to skim through as an admin.

How to roll out Operating to your organization

Mikko Karjalainen

Admin Guide

How your organization is structured: from sites and groups to roles and seniority levels

Organization

How to start the Operating setup

Introduction to the organizational structure

Sites, Groups, Tags

Site-based public holidays that are non-working days for everyone

Holiday Calendars (Public Holidays)

Roles and seniority levels

Skills

In depth dive into how project and allocation statuses work in Operating

Statuses in Operating

What’s the difference between a User and a Person in Operating?

Operating helps you plan the work for both in-house employees and externals.

In-house employees and external team members

Individual Working Hours & Part time employees

Use internal and non-billable work to distinguish between client projects which bring in money and internal work.

Internal and non-billable work in Operating

Reporting structure (reports to)

Approval Flows

Projects

Projects are the basic concept in Operating. All work is related to a project. This document explains how to use the different metadata fields.

Projects in Operating

Understanding Positions and Allocations

Project Phases let you structure a project into distinct stages, such as Design, Implementation, and Launch. This phased view works like a Gantt chart, making it easier to visualize how work progresses over time.

Project Phases

Guide to all-things financial planning-related in Operating

Financials & Monetary Planning

In this section, you’ll set up the rates and costs that power your consulting firm’s financial insights in Operating.

Introduction to Financials

In Settings > Financials > Rates you can create new Rate cards.

Rate cards

Set cost rates to track project margins and profitability.

Cost Rates & Project Profitability

There are things to pay attention to when planning fixed-price projects.

Fixed price projects

How to add expenses to a project – billable from the client or not.

Expenses

Billing types (per hour, fixed price)

How to set up a time-and-materials (per hour) project

Filtering

Filtering means narrowing down a set of results – projects, positions, or people

Views (Saved Filters)

Understanding reporting and how different calculations work in Operating

Reporting & Calculations

The Operating reports provide different lenses into your data

Reports (legacy edition with old screenshots)

Operating takes an opinionated stance on how to calculate the amount of work

How capacity, time off, and work allocation are calculated

Utilization (sometimes lovingly called ‘utz’) is the most commonly used KPI for consulting company efficiency. Operating calculates utz like this:

How utilization is calculated in Operating

Reports available in Operating

Articles and guides on timesheets in Operating

Timesheets

Start tracking time where you already plan time. If you're interested in the timesheet functionality, drop us a message to hello@operating.app and we can give you trial access.

How to start using Operating for time tracking

How to create Tasks and Task Lists in Operating

There are two views for entering time in Operating: the timesheet view and the list view.

Timesheet view and time entries list view

Viewing, editing and exporting time entry data

Sometimes the employee can't create or modify their own time entries and an admin needs to step in

Editing timesheets on behalf of someone else

Here's how you can use Sites to specify where the work was done

Location information for time tracking

When you require a review & approval for timesheets from a manager

Approval of locked timesheets

Step by step instructions for how to test, configure and start using Operating Hours

Migration from old time tracking tool to Operating Hours

Track balance of tracked time, going over or under the contract hours

Time balance (flex)

Determine who can track time to which projects

Time tracking permissions and project membership

Time entries against a specific project phase (not yet live)

In Operating you can submit timesheets (or lock timesheets) in the Hours tab, in the timesheet view

Submitting timesheets

Public holidays: create time entries automatically on the day of the holiday

Invoicing

Invoicing Process Using Operating

Creating an invoice from tracked time entries and expenses, reviewing and adjusting it, and sending it to your client.

How to create and send an invoice

How much did we make last month? Are we sure?

How to run a month-end close

User Management And Permissions

Give team members access to Operating

Information on the access and edit permissions.

Permissions Guide (old)

How companies manage access and visibility with Operating permissions


How to Structure Permissions Based on Your Company Culture

How SSO makes controlling access to Operating easy

Single-Sign On and User Management

How to add a new Person

All about permissions and how you may configure them for different users in your company

Permission sets in Operating

Data Management

Merging entities in Operating helps you clean up duplicates, consolidate data across systems, or handle project continuations. This guide walks you through how to merge entities and what to expect during the process.

How to merge clients, projects, and people

How Date Formats Work in Operating

Exporting data from Operating

Archiving and Unarchiving Projects

Sometimes after an import you might need to do this

Merge Time Off projects into the official Time Off

Guides for different user roles and use cases

User Guide

Navigation

The left-hand sidebar and how to make most of it

Sidebar navigation

The legacy (2025) version of Operating had a tab called Horizon. It's no longer there, but this article will explain how to create the same list views for Projects, People, and Positions

Re-creating the Operating Horizon using Pinned items

Timeline View

Resource planning in Operating happens in the timeline view.

Timeline Layout and Settings

The Timeline is an overview of who’s working on what and when.

How to Add and Manage Allocations in the People Timeline

A guide to finding your schedule, managing your profile, and tracking your time.

Getting Started with Operating as a Consultant

See our introductory video on time tracking to get going quickly.

Time Tracking: Quick introduction for users

Weekly rhythm for an effective resourcing process

Staffing Routine with Operating

View Options

Best practices for budgets, allocations, rates, costs and gross margins

Project budgeting & profitability

How to find available people for a project

Guides into working with the pre-built integrations, our REST API, and importing data

Integrations, API, Data Importing

HiBob HR

Import HubSpot deals to streamline your staffing process

HubSpot CRM

Pipedrive CRM

Harvest time tracking

Flowcase

Overview of SSO using Microsoft Entra and setup instructions.

SSO: Entra Id

REST API

A collection of instructions. Consider this a friendly “there’s a lot that can be wrong with your file, let’s investigate” response from the Operating customer support team.

Data import: Handling CSV files

SSO: Google Workspace

Operating Manual

Help Center

Improved

Fixed

operating

In Review

Planned

In Progress

Completed

Rejected

High Priority

Low Priority

<p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="link" href="http://Operating.app">Operating.app</a> roadmap</p>