What are Positions and Allocations?

Positions and Allocations are the two layers Operating uses to plan work on a project — a Position defines who holds a role, and Allocations define when and how much they're planned to work.

Written By Lauri Eurén

Last updated 1 day ago

In Operating, work on a Project is organized into two layers: Positions and Allocations. A Position is a role a Person holds on a Project. An Allocation is a block of planned time assigned to that Position for a specific date range. One Position can have many Allocations.

This split is what lets you plan work accurately while preserving history — the Position records who held a role, and the Allocations record when and how much they were planned to work.

The Position: a role on a Project

A Position is an assignment of a Person to a Project, representing their role and responsibilities there. A Position can carry attributes that drive planning and financials:

  • A role, site, seniority, and skills — either as requirements (for an unfilled Position) or describing the assigned Person.

  • A billing rate — either set specifically on the Position, or inherited from the Project's rate card.

  • A Project phase — a Position can belong to a phase, which is how tracked time becomes associated with that phase (a Time entry inherits its phase from the Position it is tracked on).

A Position can be unnamed — it can exist before anyone is assigned, which is how you plan a team shape before you know who will fill each seat. When you're staffing, you pinpoint the role, site, seniority, and skills the Position needs, and Operating uses those requirements to narrow down the people who could fill it. See How to find available people for a project.

The same Person can hold multiple Positions on the same Project, even overlapping, when they play more than one role (for example, project manager and strategy consultant).

The Allocation: planned time on a Position

An Allocation is a planned piece of work, expressed as a percentage of the Person's working time over a date range — full-time, part-time, or down to a few hours on a single day. (The percentage is relative to that Person's own working hours, so 100% means a full day for them.) Allocations belong to a Position, and a single Position can have many of them — so a Person's planned involvement can rise, fall, pause, and resume over the life of a Project.

For example, a Position might have these Allocations:

  • 100% for the first two weeks

  • 50% for the following week

  • a gap (no Allocation) for two days

  • 4 hours on a single day later on

Each Allocation is either confirmed (committed work) or tentative (planned but not yet certain, such as work tied to a deal that has not closed). This distinction drives how the work shows up in capacity and financial reports.

Why the two layers matter

Because the Position is separate from its Allocations, history stays intact when plans change. When you rotate one consultant off a Project and bring another on, you end the first Person's Allocations and add a new Position for the incoming Person — the original Position and its past Allocations remain as a record of what was planned, rather than being overwritten.

This structure makes it possible to plan work accurately while preserving history — a position records who held the role, while allocations record when and how much they worked.

  • How can I remove a person from a project? To remove a person from a project, you can click on the project position they’re assigned to, and in the popover that appears, remove them as the assigned person for the position.

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