Resource management is essential to ensuring your team’s workload is properly managed and that work can continue as efficiently as possible. Read on to learn more about our top software picks designed to help your team master resource management.
| Our Pick | Best For | Pricing Starts At |
|---|---|---|
 Visit Kantata | Best All-Around Resource Management Solution | Contact sales for pricing information Learn more |
 Visit Smartsheet | Best for Portfolio Resource Management | Free to try • Paid plans starting at $7 per user/month* Learn more |
 Visit ClickUp | Best for Team’s Managing Freelancers | Free to try • Paid plans starting at $7 per user/month* Learn more |
 Visit Toggl Plan | Best for Collaborative Resource Management | Free to try • Paid plans starting at $8 per user/month* Learn more |
 Visit ResourceGuru | Best for Resource Scheduling | Free to try • Paid plans starting at $4.16 per user/month* Learn more |
*Indicates pricing when paid yearly
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Kantata: Best All-Around Resource Management Solution
Kantata, formerly Mavenlink and Kimble, pulls together some of the best features of our top picks together in one easy-to-use solution. As a professional services cloud, Kantata offers much more than just robust resource management features, with functionality that supports project management, project planning, financial management, team collaboration, and more.
Read more: Our full review of Kantata
With numerous integration options, automations, and organization-wide real-time data insights and dashboards, Kantata stands out as the top choice for all-in-one resource management. Despite offering advanced features, Kantata is an approachable option even for less experienced users, with a streamlined interface and numerous features enabled with drag-and-drop editing.
Key Features
Resource dashboards and forecasting: Resource dashboards compile real-time data about where and how resources are being allocated, helping you stay on top of resource tracking while avoiding overruns.
Skills Inventory: The skills inventory feature highlights each team member’s unique skillset and capacity for taking on new work, making it easy to find the right person for each task while keeping workloads manageable.
External Talent Management: External talent tracking makes it easy to add freelancers and independent contractors to your talent database, with the ability to track their skills, calendars, rates, and more.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| • Convenient resource dashboard views: Comprehensive resource dashboard views with forecasting predictions make it easy to visualize how resources are being allocated. • Budget capabilities: Kantata includes budgeting capabilities that link with project data, predicting potential overruns before they happen. • On-the-go time tracking: Teams can record timesheets and track time instantly in the desktop app or on the go from the mobile app. | • Excessive emails: Many users report excessive notifications and emails from the application, which can be inconvenient and distracting. • Learning curve: The learning curve can be extreme due to numerous, in-depth features. • No demo: Currently, Kantata does not offer any type of demo or free trial, which can be intimidating for users who are making the leap to a new solution. |
Why We Picked Kantata
Kantata is a stand-out choice for teams who have a wide range of business management needs, while still focusing on resource management. While unfortunately, Kantata is not transparent about its pricing, users can still get a tremendous amount of value out of the extensive feature set. With drag-and-drop functionality available for many features, Kantata is also an easy-to-use option for teams, regardless of their previous experience with resource management software.
Smartsheet for Resource Management: Best for Portfolio Resource Management
While Smartsheet is most commonly known for its project management software, it offers a resource management-specific solution that pairs seamlessly with Smartsheet project management.
Read more: Read our full review of Smartsheet
Specifically, Smartsheet for resource management stands out as a top choice for large organizations who are managing a portfolio of projects, thanks to dynamic reporting features, built-in time tracking capabilities, and resource tracking that highlights data trends on a variety of levels, from an organizational view all the way down to unique team members.
Key Features
Team member segmenting: Within Smartsheet for resource management, users can silo individual users into categories based on their talents, department, area of expertise, and current availability – making it easier to manage the entire portfolio of resources in larger organizations.
Smartsheet data connectors: For teams already utilizing Smartsheet for project planning needs, that data can connect directly to Smartsheet for resource management, enabling teams to see who’s been assigned each project, select the best talent for each deliverable, and keep essential files close for easy reference.
Predictive analytics: Predict how resource allocation will change over time in relation to organizational goals and gain real-time insights on how project changes will impact resource allocation on a company-wide level.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| • Predictive resource trends: Predictive analytics help prevent surprises and bottlenecks with resource management, providing transparency about team workloads. • Export options: Users that need to take information offline can easily export project and dashboard data as a PDF and other ready-to-export formats. • Template options: Smartsheet offers a wide variety of templates that can make setup easier and help streamline workflows. | • Slow application response: Users, particularly larger teams, report slow load times and sluggish app responsiveness. • Integration limitations: Compared to other vendors, Smartsheet’s 3rd party integrations are limited, with most options requiring a paid Zapier subscription. • Functionality: Other vendors may provide more robust functionality compared to Smartsheet, which can be limited in comparison. |
Why We Picked Smartsheet for Resource Management
Compared to other options, Smartsheet offers users a wide range of flexibility when it comes to tackling resource management, with Smartsheet’s internal integration with project management features and individual team member segmentation standing out as top features. Smartsheet is a great option for larger teams who want the expansive project management functionality offered by choices such as Kantata, in a solution with a more focused set of features pertaining to resource management.
ClickUp: Best for Team’s Managing Freelancers
Transparency is the name of the game when it comes to effective resource management and ClickUp excels at providing teams with multiple ways to visualize resource status in real-time. For teams relying heavily on freelancers and independent contractors, ClickUp provides increased visibility into individual users’ activities and status, thanks to individual user workload profiles.
Read more: Read our full review of ClickUp
Built-in timers for instant time tracking and customizable fields that log freelancer pricing help ClickUp stand out as a top choice for teams who need resource management solutions geared towards 3rd party contractors and internal staff alike.
Key Features
Built-in time tracking: Customizable project fields, including in-app time tracking, make it easy for each individual team member to track their time and attribute it to specific tasks, ensuring data is up to date and never lost in the shuffle of the day-to-day.
Team and individual views: Flexible view options allow teams to visualize each unique team’s workload capacity per department while also zooming in for a closer look at each individual’s workload and expected time to task completion.
Workload analytics: Data insights through the dashboards feature simplify datasets across your organization and at a more granular level within each department and team, allowing you to track resource trends over time and predict potential roadblocks or bottlenecks.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| • Chat collaboration: ClickUp uniquely offers a real-time chat feature, which can help teams collaborate about updates faster without leaving the application. • Workload visualization: The workload view syncs up seamlessly with the timeline view to highlight areas of high resource usage and areas where more resources can be expended. • Tasks per user: Segment and highlight individual user’s workload and tasks for a predetermined period, gaining valuable insights into team resource availability. | • Slow reporting times: Generating reports can be time-consuming and inconvenient. • Mobile app limitations: Compared to the desktop version, the mobile version of ClickUp lacks full functionality and can be difficult to use. • Features vary by subscription type: Many of ClickUp’s most appealing features are available only for higher-level paid plans. For example, most time tracking, resource management, and portfolio features are only available in the Unlimited team plan or higher. |
Why We Picked ClickUp
Compared to other solutions, ClickUp’s ability to highlight each user’s estimated time to task completion, depict team workloads overall and include built-in customizable fields that add flexibility help it stand out as a top choice for teams who rely on external assets. ClickUp’s reputation as a highly customizable solution can also help provide additional room for essential detail that external assets may require, from project documents to operational notes, and more.
Toggl Plan: Best for Collaborative Resource Management
Toggl Plan aims to give users the best of both worlds by focusing on resource and project management together through task and workload visualizations. Pop-out task details give Toggl Plan users room to provide essential information about resource utilization while tagging team members to keep everyone in the loop.
Read more: Our full review of Toggl Plan
Individualized tags for each department help users quickly visualize where resources are concentrated while team-wide schedule views help eliminate schedule overruns.
Key Features
Drag-and-drop workload adjustments: Rearrange and move assignments to reallocate resources easily by dragging and dropping them across the team calendar.
Direct update sharing: Working with external stakeholders who need updates on how resources are being managed? Share guest access (with customizable access permissions) directly from within Toggl Plan.
Seamless Mobile App Usability: Toggl Plan is one of the few solutions on the market today that offers full functionality within the mobile application, making it easy to make adjustments and receive updates on the go.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| • Integration with Toggl products: Other Toggl products, such as Toggle Track and Toggl Hire integrate easily with the Toggl Plan interface, syncing essential data about team resource usage, task timing data, and more. • Team member search: If you need to fill a role quickly, you can search Toggl Plan for team members who have specific skills and open availability. • Responsive mobile application: Many users note the responsiveness of Toggl Plan’s mobile app, with a comparable experience to the desktop app. | • Limited export options: Data export options are limited, users can only export information is csv format. • Bulk action limitations: When making edits across numerous projects or groups of users, responsiveness can be limited, leading to a slower experience. • Few integrations: Toggl Plan does not offer as many integration options as other vendors. |
Why We Picked Toggl Plan
Toggl Plan offers users a high degree of flexibility when it comes to adjusting team schedules, managing resources, and visualizing projected workflows. However, what stands out about Toggl Plan against other top picks is its variety of collaborative features and highly functional mobile applications. Users who require a more collaborative resource management approach can benefit from customized team member notifications, team member tagging, in-depth pop-out task notes, and real-time notifications as changes are made.
ResourceGuru: Best for Resource Scheduling
ResourceGuru helps teams reimagine resource management through a feature-packed application with streamlined usability and a clean interface. Compared to other top choices, ResourceGuru is unique in that it offers users the ability to manage a variety of resources, from scheduling conference rooms, to booking equipment rentals, and more.
Read more: Check out our full review of ResourceGuru
Multiple team decision-makers can adjust resource schedules at once, making it easy for larger organizations to manage multiple resources at once without causing delays.
Key Features
Calendar integrations: ResourceGuru integrates easily with Outlook and G-Cal so you can keep al of your essential data close to the applications you rely on most.
Booking approvals: Team managers can adjust settings to receive booking approvals of the most in-demand team members, freelancers, and team resources to keep a closer eye on when and how resources are allocated.
Personal dashboards and reports: Each team member can elect to receive daily schedule updates and reports, which can also be viewed at any time through the personalized dashboard feature.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| • Variety of resource management options: ResourceGuru allows users to create individual tags for a variety of resources, including meeting rooms, company technology assets, and more. • Time-zone labels: Team members can easily view the time zone and working hours of colleagues with time zone labels for each user. • Work approvals: Work approval settings can help administrators limit changes and set resource limitations. | • Search functionality: ResourceGuru’s search functionality is often limited, providing poorly matching search results. • Lack of integrations: Native integration options are limited, with a Zapier subscription required to access many integrations. • Limited project capabilities: Users who want to compare resource allocation to project details may need more extensive proejct management features than ResourceGuru offers. |
Why We Picked ResourceGuru
Overall, Resource Guru stands out as a top choice for teams who are scheduling a variety of resources, from internal and external staff to conference rooms, and material resources. With features such as workload predictions and personalized dashboards, teams are always a step ahead of the game and able to predict potential roadblocks before they happen. Moreover, time off planning helps keep internal and external staff aware of team member availability so that resources can be reallocated ahead of time.
