Allocation Manager

The supply-side planning board: assign employees, machines, vehicles, equipment and attachments to projects (or off-project work), see it all on a drag-and-drop timeline, and reconcile moves that come in from the field.

Who can use it — Anyone with "manage asset allocations" permission. This single permission gates the whole page — there's no separate read-only view, so if you can open Allocation Manager you can also create, edit and delete allocations. See Roles & Permissions.

Where to find it — Fleet & Assets → Allocation Manager in the sidebar.

Before you start — a few things need to exist first:

The projects you're allocating to, set up in Project Planner (or the Projects list).
The assets (machines, vehicles, equipment, attachments) you're assigning, set up in Asset Manager.
Employees you assign must be active tenant users who aren't excluded from allocations (contractors/managers can be flagged out of the picker elsewhere).

How to use it

The page is split by resource type along the top: Employees, Machines, Vehicles, Equipment and Attachments tabs, each showing a live count badge. Everything below — the timeline, the KPI cards and the table — reacts to whichever tab is active.

At the top right, a toggle switches the whole page between:

Overview — a coverage summary card plus the drag-and-drop timeline (the default).
Table view — just the sortable/filterable allocation table, full width.

You can also collapse the table into a "Show full table (:count allocations)" accordion under the timeline in Overview mode, so you get the visual planning view first and the record-by-record detail on demand.

Coverage summary

The card above the timeline shows a Next 7 Days Coverage headline with KPI tiles (things like on leave, unallocated, or changed since publish, depending on the tab). Tiles with a number greater than zero are clickable — View list opens a modal with the underlying records. View details opens a fuller slide-over breakdown by project.

If a possible prestart-flagged mismatch is outstanding (see below), an amber banner appears above everything with a count and an Open allocation table shortcut.

The timeline

The timeline groups bars by project (or by leave/administrative buckets) across a date window you control:

Window controls — step backward/forward, or jump to Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow, This week, Next week, 14 days or 30 days. Your window is saved in the URL so you can share or bookmark a specific view, and the table below stays filtered to the same window.
Drag to move or resize — grab a bar's edge to change its start/end date, or drag the whole bar to shift it; releases are validated server-side the same way the edit forms are (overlap checks, tenant checks).
Drag to reassign — drop a bar onto a different project row to move that allocation to another job, keeping (or updating) its dates.
Click a bar to open View, Edit Allocation, Reallocate, Approve (if pending), Record Leave, Send Update or Delete, depending on what's allocated and its state.

Bars are coloured by billing intent — Contract (slate), Day Works (amber) and Mixed (sky) — shaded darker for night shift, with a small legend under the timeline. Employee bars also carry small on-bar signals: an acknowledgement dot (acked vs pending), a note icon when a dispatcher note is attached, and the working-pattern badge. Assets are coloured by kind (machine, vehicle, attachment, equipment) rather than billing, since they aren't billed directly.

Allocating assets to a project

Use Assign Machine / Assign Vehicle / Assign Equipment (the label matches the active tab) in the page header:

Pick the asset.
Choose Assign To — Project, User (vehicles and equipment only — a machine or attachment can't be handed to a person directly), or Administrative (no project) for off-project work.
Set the From date. To is optional — leave it blank for an open-ended allocation (shown as Open in the table), or use the quick-end chips (This week / Next week / This month / Custom) to set one.
Set the Working pattern (which days of the week the allocation covers, and day/night shift).
For machines and vehicles, set Planning Status — Allocated (confirmed) or Pending Approval (a draft/forward plan that doesn't block or conflict-check against other allocations until someone approves it).
A Readiness panel appears once you've picked enough fields — it flags things like an attachment that needs to be unpaired from the machine, and may require you to tick Confirm pairing change before saving.
If you're moving a machine between projects, an optional Transport Booking section lets you book a float in the same step (company, date/time, cost, contact) — this creates a booking that shows up in Float Manager for you to send to the transport company.

Choosing Administrative (no project) relabels the notes field to Location / Description and requires it — you can't file an off-project asset without saying where it actually is (e.g. "In workshop for repair", "Dry hire – Smith & Co").

Bulk Assign Machines/Vehicles/Equipment does the same thing for multiple assets at once (project or administrative only, no user destination), reporting per-asset failures if some assets can't be allocated.

Assigning employees

Assign Employees (Employees tab only) opens a slide-over where you can add several people in one go:

Each row in the Employees & Roles repeater is either an internal employee (searchable picker) or an External / Subcontractor (free-text name and company — no login required), each with its own Job Roles.
Set the destination project, or tick Off-project (administrative) for repair/dry-hire/labour-hire work — a Description / Reason is required in that case.
Optionally pick a Workfront / Location and a Task / Phase (from Project Planner) — picking a task pre-fills the Billing toggle (Contract vs Day Works) from that task.
Set From and To — unlike assets, employee allocations always need an end date; use the quick-end chips or pick a custom date.
Set the Working pattern, Planning Status, and an optional Message to worker (plain text, shown on the worker's Shift Details — no sensitive HR info).
A Readiness panel checks the selected internal workers for leave conflicts and induction status, and may require Confirm induction override before saving.

If a LAFA (live-away-from-home) project is selected, a Travel Arrangement section appears for setting DIDO/FIFO travel dates.

Crew allocations

A crew allocation is several people scheduled as one named group — "Drainage Crew 1" rather than five separate rows that happen to share a job. It stays editable as a group: change its dates, job, workfront, pattern or hours once and everyone moves together.

It is entirely optional. Assigning people separately works exactly as it always has, and always will — a one-off worker or a labour-hire fill-in doesn't need a crew.

Creating one — in Assign Employees, set Assign as to Crew allocation, give it a name, and optionally nominate a Crew lead from the people you picked. Everything else on the form is the same for both modes, so a crew is asked the same questions about induction, travel and double-booking that an individual is.

On the board — a crew is one collapsed rail per crew, showing its name, how many people are on it, and its workfront and task. Click the chevron to expand it and see the individual members with their usual signals — role, acknowledgement, induction, LAFA. In By Resource the board still shows one row per person, with a crew badge on the bar, because that view exists to see individuals.

Clicking the rail opens the crew, showing where it is, when, who's on it, who has read their shift details, and whether it has drifted from its Planner task. From there you can:

Edit crew — change the shared dates, workfront, pattern, hours, lead or worker message. Everyone moves at once.
Send crew update — notify the crew's members. Subcontractors have no login, so they're named as not contactable rather than counted as sent.
Add members / Remove from crew — remove is on the individual's own row.
End crew — closes the crew and everyone on it on a chosen date. The work already recorded is kept.
Delete crew — only offered while nothing has started and nobody has been told.

Editing a crew that has already started doesn't rewrite history. Pick the date the change takes effect and the days already worked stay exactly as they were, because timesheets were filed against them. The crew keeps one name and one rail across the change.

Taking someone out of a crew doesn't un-allocate them — they carry on the same shift on the same job, just on their own. Editing one member's shared fields is offered as Edit (leaves the crew), because changing one person's dates while they're still shown inside a crew would put them out of step with everyone else.

Grouping people who are already allocated — select their rows in the table and use Group selected as crew. Nothing is guessed: you name the crew and state the shared dates, pattern and hours, and the preview tells you which fields the selected rows currently disagree on. Their existing allocations are kept, not recreated, so acknowledgements and timesheet history stay intact.

This is the way off the old workaround of naming a location after a team. Convert the group, give the crew the team name, and the location can go back to being a real workfront.

Attachments — pairing and allocating

Attachments (buckets, rippers, etc.) don't get their own "Assign" action — instead:

Pair with Machine links an attachment to a machine for a date range (Paired From/Paired To, leave To blank for an open-ended pairing). Pairing an attachment automatically ends any pairing it currently has.
Allocate Attachment allocates an attachment directly to a project or off-project (same From/To/notes shape as other assets), for attachments not travelling with a machine.

The Attachments count on a machine/vehicle allocation row shows how many attachments are currently paired to it for that period; click it to see them.

Reallocating and ending an allocation

Every asset row's Actions menu has a Reallocate action — the same slide-over whether you open it from the table or by clicking a bar on the timeline. It ends the current allocation and starts a new one in one step: pick the new destination (project/user/administrative), a start date, and it carries the same readiness/pairing-confirmation checks and optional transport booking as creating a new allocation.

Other row actions (asset tabs):

End today — closes an open-ended allocation as of today.
Edit Allocation — adjust destination, dates, working pattern or notes without ending/recreating the row.
Approve — only shown on Pending Approval rows (see below).
Delete — blocked with a warning if the allocation has a signed vehicle-policy handover attached; end or reallocate it instead so that history stays intact.

Employee rows have their own menu: Edit Allocation, View Calendar (roster calendar), Approve, Record Leave, Send Update, End today, Cancel Future Roster (for roster-generated blocks), and — for leave rows specifically — Edit Leave / Delete Leave instead of the normal edit/delete.

Leave, rosters and updates

Record Leave logs approved or pending leave for one or more workers; approved leave immediately overrides any existing allocation for that window.
Set Roster creates a repeating on/off pattern for one worker (e.g. 14 on / 7 off FIFO) — set Days On, Days Off, a start date, and the Until date auto-calculates 12 cycles ahead (or set it manually). A live Roster Preview lists the generated blocks before you save. Replace existing allocations on conflict is off by default, so overlapping work is left alone and conflicting blocks are simply skipped.
Send Allocation Update notifies workers about their published roster — pick recipients and channels, with a preview of who'll receive what before sending. The header button shows a badge with the number of changes made since the last send. The same action is available per-row, and as a bulk action from the table for a selected batch.

Approvals and prestart-flagged moves

Machines and vehicles carry a Planning Status — Allocated or Pending Approval. A pending row is a draft: it doesn't count as an overlap or conflict against other allocations, and shows an Approve action instead of the usual edit set. Approving it confirms the move and automatically closes out the asset's previous open allocation.

The main source of pending rows is the field: when an operator runs a Start a Prestart and picks a project that doesn't match where the machine is currently allocated, confirming the move creates a Pending Approval allocation here (and unpairs any attachments the operator says came off) rather than moving the machine outright. You'll be notified, and the amber possible prestart misallocation banner at the top of this page counts any of these still awaiting reconciliation. Review and Approve (or reallocate to the correct project) from the Machines/Vehicles tab.

Acknowledgement

The Ack column on the Employees tab shows whether a worker has read and confirmed their allocation (Acked) or not yet (Pending) — leave rows show "—" since they're not acknowledged. This is read-only here; workers acknowledge their own upcoming shifts from My Work Log.

Connected pages

Asset Manager — the machines, vehicles, equipment and attachments you're allocating.
Start a Prestart — where an operator flags that a machine has moved, creating a pending allocation here.
Team Approvals — the separate approvals queue for timesheets and leave; allocation approvals happen on this page directly.
My Work Log — where workers see and acknowledge their allocations.
Project Planner — the tasks/phases you can link an allocation to, which drive its billing type.
Float Manager — where transport bookings created from this page are reviewed and sent.

Tips & common mistakes

Asset end dates are optional; employee end dates aren't. Leaving an asset's "To" date blank is normal — it just shows as "Open" until you end or reallocate it. Employee allocations always need a "To" date; use the quick-end chips if you're not sure.
Off-project work needs a description. Ticking Administrative/off-project on an asset or employee allocation makes the notes field required — say where the asset physically is or why the work has no job number.
Can't delete an allocation? If it has a signed vehicle handover attached, deletion is blocked — use Reallocate or End today instead so the signed history isn't lost.
A "Pending Approval" row isn't a mistake to fix — it's usually a prestart-flagged move waiting on your Approve, or a forward plan someone deliberately left as a draft. Check the Planning Status before editing it as if it were confirmed.
Reallocating an attachment's machine automatically ends its pairing for the old machine as of the new start date — you don't need to unpair it separately first.
Use the timeline for quick date/project tweaks, the table for bulk filtering and review. Drag-and-drop is fast for shifting a bar a few days or between projects; the table's filters (By Project, By User, By Asset, Plan, acknowledgement) are better for auditing a whole tenant at once.