Operating Units

Overview

Operating units represent internal service lines or cost centers used by capacity planning and project profitability. Every workspace has a default unit, so single-unit teams can use planning without additional setup. Multi-unit teams can allocate people and projects across units when needed.

Configure units and capacity

Open Operations, then choose Manage capacity (also available from Team members > Capacity).

From the management view, authorized users can:

• Add, rename, order, activate, or deactivate operating units.
• Set weekly capacity and target billable percentage for staff and resource-only people.
• Assign a person's reporting line of business (Primary LOB) and percentage allocations across units. Changing a project manager's reporting LOB asks which of their projects should switch to the new unit, when you can also edit projects.
• Maintain unit cost and bill-rate inputs when their rate permissions allow it.

Allocations should total the full intended split for a person. The default unit supplies a safe fallback when no specialized assignment exists.

Use units in planning

Capacity, Resourcing, Forecasting, Rates, and Financials Profit filters can show several operating units together. Open Operating unit (or Line of business in Financials), select each unit you want, and clear the selection to return to All units or All lines. A multi-unit filter matches records from any selected unit; it does not require a record to belong to every unit.

The capacity grid shows confirmed and penciled project demand against available hours. Project assignments may specify a unit directly. Otherwise Core resolves the unit from the associated budget line, project, or default planning context. Operations remembers applied unit selections in the browser and user preferences. Unit values in a shared URL take precedence for that visit.

A project's Operating unit is always visible on project create and edit. New projects start empty. When you choose a project manager while the field is still empty, Core fills it from that person's primary LOB, or from their first current allocation when no primary LOB is set. You can change the value at any time. Assignments that inherit from the project read this stored primary operating unit.

Cross-unit projects can also store percent shares across multiple units. Those shares drive planning and reporting; they do not change the customer's contract or invoice by themselves, and they are not what Inherit from project uses.

Permissions

• operating_units:read and operating_units:manage control unit access and setup.
• technician_capacity:read and technician_capacity:manage control capacity targets and allocations.
• projects:update is also needed to move a project manager's projects to a new primary LOB from Manage capacity; without it, the LOB change saves on its own.
• Cost, bill-rate, and rate-management permissions independently protect sensitive rate data.

The Operations capacity workspace also requires project resourcing read access. Users without management permission can review only the scopes allowed by their resourcing role.