Scheduling? What the hell for?

Too much time is still wasted by many service providers and time is still money for these companies. . With a handle on the time, they can improve their products and services to society. Good scheduling helps with this.

A question mark on an orange circle

Why schedule?

Because you don’t want to be ruled by the issues of the day. And that this delusion sets the agenda for tomorrow. To govern is to look ahead and scheduling is the instrument. But how far ahead do you schedule?

That depends on how far you can look ahead. As activities are further in the future, you will schedule more and more coarsely. You schedule them, for example with a Gantt Chart, but not in detail.

Create a work schedule

You will want to reserve as many employees as possible for the entire duration of the project. As activities get closer, you will make an operational work schedule.

For large projects, you look at the next four to six weeks. You work out a phase in activities and possibly sub-activities. From here you will make a schedule per employee and assign activities. In Timewax you do this with the help of our Planning Board.

An illustration of the planning board feature showing the planning of projects and resources
Weekplanner - Just like Excel

Make a weekly schedule

Many companies make a schedule per week, because a week is a well-rounded whole. Once a week they prepare the schedule for the coming week and this is the starting point for everyone.

Of course you don’t have to make a schedule every week. For example, it can also be done per day. Think of companies that have to schedule employees for acute incidents. Of course, they can only see these incidents coming on the day itself.

Stop with Excel

If you only schedule a handful of employees, Excel is a great tool for scheduling. It is clear and you can easily inform everyone by email or by telephone about the schedule and changes to it.

It becomes more difficult with a lot more employees. Especially if you often have changes in the schedule. In Excel you cannot drag, but you have to copy cells. That is cumbersome and that way a mistake is easily made.

An illustration of a project planning in Microsoft Excel
An illustration of various laptops and smartphone that are connected to one project planning board

Beyond Excel

It is then time for a planning tool that really gives substance to making a schedule by dragging and dropping and also signals workable hours, conflicts and overbookings, so that errors are a thing of the past.

Moreover, you want everyone to be able to consult and edit the schedule anywhere and at any time. That is not possible with Excel. This requires an online scheduling tool that can also be used with multiple devices.

Integrations

Our resource planning software integrates seamlessly with your systems. Get rid of tasks that you can automate with our integrations and API.

Simple planning board

We were inspired by old-fashioned planning boards. Making the schedule on such a board is very common. The concept of such a planning board is good. It is very visual and everyone understands how it works.

In Timewax you make an online schedule in our Planning Board feature. You can work on both day and week level. Scheduling is simply drag and drop from employees to projects. And what’s more, our planning board is online.

An illustration of the planning board feature showing the planning of projects and resources
An illustration of project bookings in Microsoft Outlook

Calendar systems

With our integrations to Outlook and Google calendar, we bring the schedule to your calendar system. This means that employees always have the most up-to-date schedule at hand, in a system they are already used to.

With our 2-way integration it is even possible to have employees schedule directly from Outlook. This is especially useful when employees are allowed to make appointments with customers themselves. In this way, planners always have 100% insight.

Ready in two minutes

“If I schedule a project for a department, I'll be done in two minutes. I select the employees and simply drag them onto the project”
Photo of Martin Embregts
Martin Embregts | Proximus NXT
PROJECT PLANNER SERVICE DELIVERY
Illustration of the Timewax mobile app

Mobile app

With the mobile app for iPhone and Android, employees have access to their online schedule anytime, anywhere. Perfect for field workers. Changes in the planning tool are immediately passed on.

In addition to viewing the schedule, it is also possible to register the actual spent hours. In addition, the progress can also be reported with a percentage of completion and hours still required to complete the job.

Analytics

If you are scheduling a project, you also want to analyze the results of the project for margin and performance. This way you ensure that your company will perform even better next time. You can analyze it with the Analytics feature.

With this feature you get access to interactive charts and tables. This way you can easily dive deeper into the data and ensure that everyone in your company is presented with information in the same way.

Illustration of a dashboard in Timewax that shows the project performance based on the project progress

Potential revenue increase