Resource management software for a 20 to 100 person firm

Whether you need a separate scheduler

Search results for resource management software are mostly vendor listicles and software directories. Those pages rank tools. A 20 to 100 person professional firm still has to settle a buying question those pages skip: keep people-planning inside the ERP or PSA you already pay for, or add a separate resource management tool.

The same words also match products you can ignore for this decision. HR suites that hire and review employees, and ERP modules that plan stock, machines and purchase orders, both use the phrase resource management. This guide is about project resource management software: who is booked on which job, which skills are free, and whether next quarter's proposals will collide with work you have already promised.

A June 2025 listicle still shows Float at USD 6 and USD 10 a person. Float's own pricing page, as of November 2026, lists Starter at USD 7 and Pro at USD 12 per scheduled person per month. Use the vendor page, dated below, when you build a budget. Older roundups are useful for the feature vocabulary and stale for the dollars.

What resource management software does

Resource planning software for a professional firm does five jobs. Capacity is the hours a person can take after working time and time off. Allocation is the booking of those hours onto a project, a phase or a role. Utilization is the share of available hours that were registered, and the share that were billable. Forecasting is the forward view of demand, including work that is likely and work that is confirmed. Skills, tags and disciplines are how you find the one structural engineer or the one specifier who is already on three jobs.

Engineering and architecture firms feel those jobs when several project managers book the same short list of people. A civil team may have one bridge reviewer, one CAD lead and a rotating set of inspectors. If those names live in each manager's spreadsheet, the collision shows up when the timesheet is already late. Resource scheduling software puts the bookings on one calendar so a change on Monday is visible to the other managers the same day.

Two extras decide whether the cheaper plan is enough. Tentative pipeline is the question Float's own pricing page puts in a customer's mouth: how much time you can hold for a proposal without blocking confirmed work. Runn Lite includes tentative projects for that hold. Float Pro, Resource Guru Blackbelt and Productive Professional are where rate cards and budgets start, and finance uses those figures when the schedule is also the estimate. Runn includes project financials on Lite and timesheets on Standard.

• Capacity and time off, so a vacation week is not sold twice.
• Named allocation by project or phase, plus skills and tags for scarce disciplines.
• Utilization that finance can defend, split into total hours and billable hours.
• A forward view that keeps tentative proposals off the confirmed book.
• On the paid step up: time tracking, rate cards, budgets and stronger reports.

How utilization is calculated

Runn's 24 April 2026 guide for professional services defines two formulas. Total utilization is (total registered hours / total hours available) times 100. Billable utilization is (total registered billable hours / total hours available) times 100. Available hours are the denominator in both, so a week of approved time off lowers the denominator and can raise the rate even when billed hours stay flat.

The same guide states a target of 80 to 100 percent for that total-utilization formula, and 70 to 80 percent for billable utilization. It also treats sustained utilization above 90 to 100 percent as a burnout signal. Those bands are Runn's own targets in that article, dated April 2026. They are a planning reference for a services firm, and they are a weak score for an individual's productivity. Runn says utilization matters for revenue and profitability, and it separates that figure from productivity.

Worked figures, with the assumptions stated. A discipline has 160 available hours in a month after the calendar the firm uses. Engineers register 144 hours, of which 120 are billable. Total utilization is 144 / 160, or 90 percent, inside Runn's 80 to 100 percent band. Billable utilization is 120 / 160, or 75 percent, inside the 70 to 80 percent band. If the same people register 152 billable hours on 160 available, billable utilization is 95 percent, which sits in the range Runn flags when it lasts.

For an engineering firm, read the rate by discipline before you read the firm average. A 75 percent billable rate can hide a specifications group at 100 percent and a drafting group at 50 percent. The scheduling tool earns its place when that split is visible while the month is still open, in time to move work or to slow a proposal.

When a separate resource management tool earns its cost

A separate scheduler earns its license when four conditions show up together. Several project managers book the same people. A few skills are scarce enough that a double-booking delays a submission. The sales pipeline is real enough that someone must ask how much time can sit in a tentative state. Finance will ask for a utilization number and will argue about the denominator.

Price that against the list rates as of November 2026, before you talk to a salesperson. Forty scheduled people on Float Pro are 40 times USD 12, or USD 480 a month. Forty resource seats on Runn Standard are 40 times USD 11, or USD 440 a month. Forty people on Resource Guru Blackbelt are 40 times USD 8, or USD 320 a month, before the annual term that includes two months free. Those three products are the cost of a shared calendar with skills, capacity and a path to time or budgets. They are list-price arithmetic from the vendor pages, and each vendor's quote can differ once you add equipment records, annual billing or a higher tier.

The license is wasted when nobody maintains the calendar. If project managers still plan in email and the tool is a picture someone updates on Friday, you have added a seat fee and kept the collision. Assign one owner for the schedule, decide which projects are allowed to be tentative, and agree the utilization definition with finance before you turn the subscription on.

Vendor pages publish customer lines you should treat as marketing, not as a benchmark for your firm. Float's pricing page carries a statement that resourcing efficiency rose by 50 percent, and that margin became easier to see at estimate time. Smartsheet's Resource Management page carries a statement that utilization rose by 25 percent and staffing timelines fell by four weeks. Use those lines as a picture of what the vendors want the product to change. Build your own case from the seat math and from the double-bookings you can already name.

When the ERP or PSA is enough

The ERP or PSA is enough when one delivery team books the work, projects rarely share a specialist, and the firm already lives in that system for time and invoices. Adding Float or Runn on top then means a second calendar, a second login, and a weekly argument about which booking is true. Pay the scheduler when the shared-people problem is expensive. Stay put when it is occasional.

Odoo Planning is a shift scheduler, and it is part of Odoo rather than a separate paid product. It can be the single free app on Odoo Online. It schedules shifts for employees or materials, by role or by project, and it can link a shift to a sales order line when Sales is installed. Time off and working hours affect allocation. Timesheets can show a progress bar on a shift. The app also covers open shifts, auto-plan, recurring shifts, conflict warnings and equipment. That scope is wider than placing a named engineer on a design phase, and Planning on its own is a thin PSA: rate cards and project margin live in other apps.

Project and Timesheets are those other apps. If you are comparing Odoo as the system of record, read the Odoo Project and Odoo Timesheets guides for how work and time are recorded, and keep this page for the scheduling decision. Installing those apps beside Planning moves the database off the one-app free plan and onto Standard or Custom. A firm that already runs both, and whose projects do not fight over the same five people, can plan inside Odoo and skip a specialist seat fee.

Dynamics 365 Project Operations is the other stay-put option, and it is priced as a PSA. The United States pricing page lists USD 135.00 per user per month, paid yearly, as of November 2026. The Canada page lists CAD 183.20 per user per month, paid yearly, plus applicable tax. Microsoft says the displayed prices are informational and the checkout price can differ by currency, country and region. The pricing comparison includes a Resourcing section next to deal management, work planning, project execution, subcontracting, and billing and proforma. Forty users at the US list price are USD 5,400 a month, about ten times the specialist schedulers above, because you are buying the delivery and billing system. A free trial is offered. If the firm is already on Project Operations and the resourcing views cover the bookings, a second tool has to beat a process you have already paid for.

A wider PSA comparison, including how these systems sit next to other professional-services products, is on the PSA software comparison. Use it when the question has moved from the people calendar to the billing model.

Resource scheduling software: four specialist tools

Seat rules change the bill more than the headline rate. As of November 2026, Float charges people added to the schedule, and guests who are not scheduled can be added without a scheduled-person seat. Runn prices by resource seat, and its page gives a 50-resource example: USD 350 a month on Lite and USD 550 a month on Standard. Resource Guru bills every person added to the account, whether or not they log in, plus placeholders above a free allowance and all non-human resources. Productive's page is controlled by a user count. None of Float, Runn, Resource Guru or Productive published a CAD price on the pages reviewed.

Float fits a studio that wants a visual schedule and is willing to pay only for people who are on it. Starter, at USD 7 per scheduled person per month, includes resource scheduling, capacity and time off, project scoping, and skills and tags. Pro, at USD 12, adds time tracking, client rate cards, project cost estimation and advanced reporting. Enterprise is talk-to-sales and an annual contract only. The page shows a Monthly and Annual toggle and prints those dollar amounts. A 30-day Pro trial needs no credit card. The limit is the step from Starter to Pro if finance wants rates and time in the same product, and the absence of a published CAD price for a Canadian firm.

Runn fits a project-management group that wants tentative work, utilization charts and a clear seat price. Lite is USD 7 per resource seat per month and includes scheduling, tentative projects, capacity and utilization charts, skills and tags, and project financials. Standard is USD 11 per resource seat per month and adds timesheets, a limited set of custom fields, integrations and an API. Saved scenarios are 3 per user on Standard and unlimited on Advanced. Resource requests and SmartMatch are on Advanced, which is contact-us. Volume discounts start at 100 or more resource seats. A 30-day Standard trial needs no credit card. The limit for a firm under 100 people is that the scenario and request features many multi-office practices want sit on the quote tier. The pricing page prints one dollar amount beside the billing-period toggle.

Resource Guru fits a firm that will put every person record in the tool and may also schedule rooms or equipment. Grasshopper is USD 5 per person per month, Blackbelt is USD 8, and Master is USD 12. Other resources are half those rates: USD 2.50, USD 4 and USD 6. Annual plans include 2 months free. Prices on the page are USD, GBP is available on request, the pricing page lists no CAD amount, and Enterprise pricing is available only by contacting sales. Placeholder allowances before extra charges are 1 on Grasshopper, 5 on Blackbelt and 10 on Master. Blackbelt adds timesheets, reports, project dates, milestones, rates and budgets. Master adds an approval workflow, SSO and phone support, and the product has an engineering industry page. The limit is that you pay for people who never log in, and for equipment, so a firm that creates a record for every past employee will overpay relative to Float's scheduled-person rule.

Productive fits a firm that wants planning, time, expenses and invoicing in the same subscription and will accept a pricing page that is hard to multiply. With the control at 10 users, as of November 2026, Essential is labeled USD 10 per month billed monthly and the card also states a total of USD 90 per month. The yearly Essential label reads USD 12 per month and still states USD 90 per month. Professional is labeled USD 29 per month billed monthly and USD 25 per month billed yearly, and both labels state a total of USD 240 per month for 10 users. Ultimate is a conversation. The per-user labels and the 10-user totals do not multiply cleanly, so budget from the stated 10-user totals and ask Productive for a 40-user figure. Essential includes budgeting, resource planning, project and task management, time tracking, expenses, reporting and time off. Professional adds teams, rate cards, skills, billable time approvals, and invoicing and HRIS integrations. Ultimate adds revenue forecasting, a scenario builder, multiple subsidiaries, and enforced SSO or 2FA. The public trial is 14 days. The limit is that skills and rate cards, which an engineering firm usually needs, start on Professional, and there is no published CAD price.

Kantata, Smartsheet, Odoo and Project Operations

Kantata is the professional-services suite on this list with no public list price as of November 2026. The pricing page says plans are tailored to company size, goals and how the team works, and pricing is collected through a form. It fits a firm that wants a PSA conversation and will spend the sales cycle to learn the number. The limit is that you cannot finish a license comparison on the public page. Treat any margin or utilization claim on that page as Kantata's marketing until you have their quote beside your own baseline.

Smartsheet is two products in one buying decision. The main pricing page publishes member prices in USD and CAD and includes workload tracking on Business. The dedicated Resource Management product centralizes who is available and what they are working on, shows workload and capacity, matches skills and availability to demand, includes time tracking, and offers scenario planning. That product page offers a demo and does not publish a price. Scenario Planning on the main platform, described as viewing timelines alongside capacity and exploring what-if cases without changing live plans, is on Enterprise, which is custom pricing. The page says Enterprise goes further on Resource Management with placeholders, roles and disciplines.

Smartsheet's pricing markup concatenates two figures per plan. The USD pairs are Pro 12 and 9, and Business 24 and 19, per member per month. The CAD pairs are Pro 16 and 12, and Business 33 and 26, per member per month. A June 2025 ProjectManager roundup read the higher figure as monthly billing and the lower as annual billing, which matches a monthly-then-yearly reading of the live page. Workload tracking is on Business, and the Business card has a minimum of 3 members. Pro is the wrong plan if the reason you are here is capacity. For a firm that already runs sheets for project lists, Business workload tracking can be enough. For skills matching, scenarios and a shared people calendar, ask for the Resource Management quote and compare it with Float or Runn at your headcount.

Odoo's US pricing page, as of November 2026, shows no CAD amount. One App Free is USD 0 for one app and unlimited users on Odoo Online, and Planning can be that app. Standard and Custom include all apps for one fee. Standard is USD 24.90 per user per month on yearly billing for the first 12 months on the initial users ordered, or USD 31.10 monthly. Custom is USD 49.00 yearly or USD 61.10 monthly. Light users are priced by quote. Odoo.sh hosting on Custom is extra. Planning fits a firm that will schedule by role and project inside the same database as finance. It is a weak fit if you need a specialist scenario planner and you will never use the rest of the suite. Once you need Project and Timesheets, you are on Standard or Custom for every user, which is the moment to compare that stack with a scheduler plus the accounting system you already have.

Project Operations, recapped for the shortlist, fits a firm that will run sales, delivery, subcontracting and billing in Microsoft's project product and can justify USD 135.00 or CAD 183.20 per user per month on yearly billing. The limit, beside the license, is that you should confirm the resourcing behavior in a trial against your own disciplines. The public pricing comparison names a Resourcing section and does not, on the page used here, spell out a feature checklist you can score line by line.

List-price math for 40 people

Assumptions for this comparison: a US or Canadian firm, 40 people who are all scheduled, no equipment or room resources, monthly list prices as published in November 2026, and no volume discount. Runn's volume discount starts at 100 resource seats, so it does not apply. Annual free months are noted and are left unconverted, because Resource Guru's page states two months free on annual plans and does not print an effective monthly rate you can multiply with confidence. Float and Runn show a billing-period toggle and a single printed dollar amount each, so this math uses the printed amount.

Specialist schedulers at 40 people: Float Pro is USD 480 a month (40 times USD 12). Runn Standard is USD 440 a month (40 times USD 11). Resource Guru Blackbelt is USD 320 a month (40 times USD 8) before the annual two-months-free term. Float Starter at USD 280 leaves out time tracking and rate cards. Runn Lite at USD 280 includes project financials and leaves out timesheets. Resource Guru Grasshopper at USD 200 (40 times USD 5) likewise stops short of timesheets and budgets, which arrive on Blackbelt.

Platform products at the same 40: Project Operations is USD 5,400 a month at the US yearly list price (40 times USD 135.00), or CAD 7,328 a month at the Canada yearly list price (40 times CAD 183.20), plus applicable tax. That gap is the PSA, not a more expensive calendar. Smartsheet Business, if you accept the monthly-then-yearly reading of the concatenated pair, is 40 times USD 24 or 40 times USD 19, which is USD 960 or USD 760 a month, and 40 times CAD 33 or 40 times CAD 26, which is CAD 1,320 or CAD 1,040 a month. That buys workload tracking on the sheet product. The dedicated Resource Management price is by quote. Productive's safer public totals are USD 90 a month for Essential and USD 240 a month for Professional at the 10-user control. Do not multiply the conflicting per-user labels out to 40. Ask for the 40-user total.

Odoo can start at USD 0 if Planning is the only app, for unlimited users on Odoo Online. The cost jumps when Project, Timesheets and Accounting join the database. On Standard, 40 users are USD 996 a month on yearly billing in the first 12 months (40 x 24.90), or USD 1,244 a month at USD 31.10. Custom is USD 1,960 a month yearly (40 x 49.00) or USD 2,444 monthly (40 x 61.10), before Odoo.sh hosting. A Canadian buyer should get the CAD figure on an Odoo quote.

Canada: CAD prices, GST and HST

Two prices on this shortlist are published in Canadian dollars as of November 2026. Dynamics 365 Project Operations is CAD 183.20 per user per month, paid yearly, plus applicable tax, on Microsoft's Canada pricing page. The same informational-price disclaimer applies: checkout can differ by currency, country and region. Smartsheet publishes CAD member pairs of 16 and 12 on Pro and 33 and 26 on Business, per member per month, beside the USD pairs. Workload tracking remains a Business feature.

Float, Runn, Resource Guru, Productive and Kantata did not publish CAD on the pricing pages used here. Resource Guru states that its page prices are USD and that GBP is available on request. A Canadian firm paying those vendors on a USD invoice should budget the card or bank conversion on top of the list price, and should ask the vendor whether a CAD invoice exists before signing an annual term. Kantata's price arrives only through the form, so currency is part of that conversation.

Tax treatment does not follow the scheduler you pick. Canadian businesses that are registered collect GST or HST on taxable supplies and remit it. Microsoft states the Canada Project Operations price plus applicable tax. A resource-scheduling subscription sits beside that obligation. It does not change how the firm charges clients for engineering fees or how it remits tax on its own taxable supplies. Model license cost in the currency you will be invoiced, then hand the tax question to the same process you already use for other software.

For a 25-person Canadian studio the practical cut is this. If people are shared across jobs and you want a scheduler this quarter, shortlist Float Pro, Runn Standard and Resource Guru Blackbelt in USD, and ask each for payment currency. If the studio already runs Odoo Project and Timesheets, price the Standard stack in CAD and the internal time to maintain Planning before you add a USD seat. If the studio is standardizing on Microsoft project operations, start from CAD 183.20 and the trial, and add a specialist tool only when the resourcing section leaves a booking problem you can name.

How to choose a resource management tool

Choose on the booking problem and the seat rule, then on the brand. A 20-person architecture studio with two project managers and a shared specifications lead has a different bill from a 90-person engineering firm with six disciplines and a proposal pipeline that moves every week. Write the names of the people who get double-booked. If you cannot fill that list, you are shopping from a directory, and the ERP you have is the cheaper experiment.

Score the shortlist against the work, not against a feature matrix copied from a listicle. Confirm tentative holds, skills or tags, time off in the capacity math, and whether utilization can be billable rather than only total. Confirm who is billed: scheduled people (Float), resource seats (Runn), every person record plus equipment (Resource Guru), users (Productive and Odoo), or members (Smartsheet). Project Operations bills the named users on that license. A tool that looks cheap per person becomes expensive when empty records count.

How Flectic can help

Flectic implements Odoo for consulting engineering firms of 20 to 100 people in the US and Canada that need discipline budgets, engineer utilization and client change requests tied to each work package and invoice. The Odoo Engineering Services package sets up work packages that carry discipline hours, subconsultant costs and milestones, with planning, timesheets and billing on the same record, and Core is proposed at 12 to 14 weeks. Firms that would rather plan in Dynamics 365 Project Operations can read how Flectic works with professional services firms. Book a free discovery call.

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