đ°ď¸ Est. Time: 5 minutes
đŻ Goal: Learn how roles impact job planning and resource allocation
đ Requirements: Access to view and edit jobs
Role-based planning lets you assign hours and costs to roles rather than specific team members, focusing on the skills required instead of individual availability.
This is especially useful during the planning and quoting stages, when you know youâll need a Designer but arenât sure who will be available until closer to the time.
đ đş Prefer to watch a video? Check out our 5-minute walkthrough
đ đş Prefer to watch a video? Check out our 5-minute walkthrough
What is a role?
Roles let you set billable rates for different positions in your business and assign them to team members.
Creating a role
To set up a new role in Streamtime, follow these steps:
Go to Settings â Master Settings â Roles.
Click the + Create button and select Role.
A new row will appear in the list.
Enter a name and sell rate for the role.
Linking team members to Roles
Once a role is created, you can link team members:
Hover over the role name in the list
Click the ⎠(three-dot) menu
Select Link to team member
Assign one or multiple people
Each team member in Streamtime is linked to a single role, and their cost rate stays consistent (since their salary doesnât change).
Team members who wear multiple hats
If someone takes on multiple responsibilities, you can override their billable rate on individual jobs, or items within a job, to reflect the extra work. Add a note to the item name or the To Do to clarify which role they were working in, if needed.
How to assign a Role to an Item
To assign a role to an item, simply choose a Role instead of a specific team member. This lets you allocate work based on the skills needed, e.g. adding a Designer without deciding who will do it yet.
Click on team member in the Item.
From the dropdown menu, select the role you want to assign to the item, such as "Designer" or "Developer."
How do cost rates work when planning by role?
When an item is planned for a role, Streamtime calculates the planned cost based on the cost rates of team members assigned to that role.
Here's how it works in different scenarios:
If no team members are assigned to the role, the planned cost will be blank.
If only one team member is assigned, the planned cost equals that team memberâs cost rate.
If multiple team members are assigned, the planned cost is calculated as the average of their cost rates.
Note: Streamtime always rounds the planned cost up to the nearest whole number.
Example:
Two Account Managers are assigned to the same role. One has a cost rate of ÂŁ70 and the other ÂŁ45. Streamtime calculates the planned cost by averaging these rates, resulting in a planned cost of ÂŁ58.
Display a role summary on a Quote
Adding a role summary makes your quotes clearer for clients by showing the cost of each role.
Make sure you have role summary selected in your Quote Settings.
Here's how Quotes look with the role summary enabled:
Assign team members to a role
After planning by role, you can assign specific team members to take on those roles. Here's how it works in different scenarios:
For a phase or the entire job
For a phase or the entire job
When you need to ensure one person takes on a specific role for a job, this process helps you assign all related hours to that team member. For example, assigning a project manager to a job ensures all project manager hours are covered without individually assigning each task.
Click the empty avatar icon on the right of the team section in the jumbotron. Note: Hovering over this icon shows a breakdown of all unassigned time.
Select the role you want to assign. On the right, youâll see how many hours are required for that role for the entire job.
You'll now see a list of all your team members and their availability for the job period. You can adjust the availability period and search for team members here.
â
By default, only team members with the specified role in their profile are shown. To include team members with different main roles, toggle the switch to show the entire team.
In this case, we see a project manager with availability for the whole job. Select them.
Before hitting the assign button, double-check that you wonât need to manually unassign this team member from each item individually. Then, click the assign button.
Only want them to look after one phase of the job?
To assign a team member to a role for a phase only just use this avatar button in the phase bar and follow the same steps.
For an item
For an item
Assigning roles per item in Streamtime is essential when you have multiple team members fulfilling various roles within a single job. This process ensures all planned hours are accounted for and distributed among the appropriate team members. For example, if you're working on a design project and need both a designer and a developer, you can assign hours to each team member based on their role and availability.
Hereâs how to do it:
You'll see a prompt saying 'Click to assign team members.' Go ahead and click on this.
A list of all team members with the relevant role will appear. Choose one or more team members to assign to the planned hours. Youâll also see their availability for the period of the item.
Need to swap someone with a different role? Toggle the list to show all team members in the organisation.
Distribute the hours among the selected team members as needed. You can split the hours however you wish.
If you donât assign all the hours, the remainder will stay as an unassigned bucket on the item, ready for you to assign later.
Once you are done click Assign
From the schedule
From the schedule
Our Schedule View is a powerful feature that allows you to plan a job while keeping an eye on your teamâs availability. Weâve made it easy to assign team members to roles in the Schedule View, giving you full visibility while planning a job.
â
Head to the Schedule View. You can get there quickly from your Job Page by clicking on the Schedule icon right above the first phase of your job.
Locate the item you want to assign team members to and expand it.
Click the Assign icon to bring up the Team Member Selection drop-down.
You will now see all of your team members who have been assigned that role and their availability. Select your team member from this list and assign them some hours.
If you want to add hours to a person who doesnât have this role assigned to them, click the switch.
Once you have allocated your hours to your team members, hit the Assign button. Any hours you havenât assigned to a team member will remain as unassigned so you can come back later and assign them.
Viewing unassigned time
You can see total unassigned time of each role per job in the jumbotron and per phase.
You can also see unassigned time per role on the availability modal. Make sure you have âInclude Unscheduledâ toggled on, as all unassigned time is unscheduled. You will then see the hours youâve planned for roles spread evenly across the date ranges of the items. If there are no dates on the items, the time is not included.
This is helpful for longer range capacity planning. It means you can plan by role and hours are unassigned, but when you look at your overall capacity in the future, youâll get an idea of what youâve already planned for different roles and where you might need to shuffle work, or look for extra people.