The Complete Manpower Setup & Usage Guide.

Sign In & Set Your Password

Open the link in your welcome email and click Set your password & sign in, then Continue, to choose your own password — that’s the one you’ll use going forward. (If you’re the workspace owner, your password was set at checkout; just sign in.)

You’ll land on the Schedule view, empty and ready. Your name and role show top‑right, and your company name is already in place from signup.

Find Your Way Around

Get oriented before you build. Inside the Manpower section, a row of tabs switches between:

• Schedule — your working board. The Grid is employees grouped under their foreman with weeks across the top; the Timeline and By Job views (section 7) read the same schedule differently.
• Map — where every crew is working that week, placed from each job’s site address, with per diem mileage rings around your offices (an editor sets those under Offices on the map).
• Projection — forecast manpower demand vs your actual crew (Part 3). Read‑only: it shows the schedules built on the Project Schedule page and scores every week.
• Analytics — charts and KPIs over any date range (Part 3). Everyone on the team can open it.
• Time and Certifications — payroll hours and OSHA/equipment cards; both are on by default (an admin can switch either off), and Time isn’t shown to Viewers.

The bar at the very top of the app switches between your hubs — Place & Finish, Manpower, Project Schedule (where the bar‑line schedule is built, Part 3) and Daily Reports.

Also up top: your brand mark + company/office name, a ? Help button (opens the in‑hub Field Manual), a Day / Night sun‑moon toggle (Night/dark is the default), the green Auto‑Saved pill (a status indicator — everything saves automatically; there’s no Save button and no menu), a live “N ONLINE” presence pill (hover to see who’s here), the admin‑only gear that opens the Control Panel, and your name / role badge (tap it for My Account). Editing controls appear only if your role can edit.

Brand Your Hub

Make it yours. Open the gear ⚙ → Control Panel → Branding:

• Company logo — tap Upload (PNG, JPG or SVG, up to 5 MB — auto-resized for crisp headers and export bands); Remove drops back to the stock Planning Ops mark. Your logo brands every screen, your login splash, your tenant’s branded portal at your-company.planningops.com, and every PDF export and schedule email your crews and clients receive — so everything that leaves the hub looks like your company.
• Accent color — run the app in your company color instead of orange (Reset to Default restores orange).
• Under Locked in at signup: your company name, office name and workspace code show read‑only. The company name and office name head every export; the workspace code is a short identifier for the workspace, not a filename prefix — exports are named with your full company name and city. Email support@planningops.com to change any of them.

Add Your Foremen

Your roster is organized under foremen/superintendents, so add them first. Open the Manage cluster on the tab row and tap Add Foreman, enter the name (First Last), pick a crew color, and tap Add. That color runs through their crew’s rows, and employees you add get grouped under them.

Tap a foreman’s color bar (it shows a live crew head‑count, e.g. “12”, with a ⚙ hint) to open the Edit Crew sheet: rename or recolor the crew, sort it A–Z, or Remove Crew (available once their crew is empty). To fill or clear a whole crew, drag‑select its rows on the grid (section 8).

Build Your Roster

Add the people each foreman runs.

• Tap + Add on the right edge of the foreman’s color bar to open the Add Employee dialog; enter the name, an optional EE ID (letters or numbers) and Position (text), then tap Add. (Add a note later from the row’s ⋯ menu → Status / Note.)
• New employees get a NEW badge (New Hire status) that auto‑expires after 7 days (one week).
• Each person’s EE ID and Position appear together on a line under their name in the crew column.

• Open Import Roster (Excel or CSV) from the Export ▾ menu (it accepts the Excel .xlsx template or a plain CSV), download the template, and fill the Roster tab — Superintendent, EE ID, Position, Employee Name (repeat the superintendent on each row, or leave blank to carry down).
• After you pick a file the dialog shows a preview count and a match plan (how many are matched/updated, added new, or on the board but missing from the file) before you commit. If the required columns (Superintendent/Foreman and Employee Name) are absent it tells you no rows were found.
• Import upserts: people already in the hub are matched (by EE ID, then name) and updated in place — their schedule, PTO, and badges are kept — new names are added unassigned, and anyone on the board but absent from the file stays unless you tick “remove missing.”

Add Your Projects

Projects are the jobs you assign people to. Open the Manage cluster → Projects (Admin/Editor) and you can:

• + Add Project — it also creates the job in Control Panel → Projects so it links across every module (same name + color). Each project is auto‑assigned a color that carries through the grid and analytics.
• Edit (rename/recolor) or Archive / Restore any job right here — for a Linked job the change saves to Control Panel → Projects and updates Place & Finish too. Crew assignments are preserved and come back intact on restore.
• Delete (admin‑only) appears only on an archived Manpower‑only job with no crew, time or projection history — nothing is lost, and no Place & Finish data is touched. Permanently deleting a Linked job stays in Control Panel → Projects.

Active jobs list first; archived ones tuck behind a collapsible Archived section you can roll up to keep the list clean.

Read the Schedule: Grid, Timeline & By Job

The grid is the heart of the hub:

• Rows are employees, grouped under their foreman — whose color bar shows a live crew head‑count (“12”) and opens the Edit Crew sheet for whole‑crew actions. Terminated people sit in their own collapsed section at the bottom.
• Rearrange a crew by dragging the ⠿ dots handle at the left of any member’s row — drop them where you want in the line, or onto another foreman to move them (you’ll confirm the move; their schedule, PTO, and badges come along). Edit Crew → A–Z snaps one crew back to alphabetical, and the printed Men Tracker follows your order.
• Columns are weeks. Each header shows the week’s start date (“Wk of …”) and flags US holidays with a ★ and the holiday name, so you can plan around Christmas, July 4th, Memorial Day, etc. at a glance. Each cell holds one assignment — a project, or empty (that person’s on the bench that week).
• The left Crew & Employees column shows each name with its status pills (NEW, LEAVE, L.D., PTO) and any skill/trade badges beside it, and the EE ID · Position on the line below.
• A highlighted column marks the current week (a light orange tint); the week you click is outlined in orange. Scrolled off somewhere? Today snaps you right back.

A Grid | Timeline | By Job switch sits beside the tabs. Nothing is copied — all three read the same assignments.

• Timeline — one bar per stretch a person spends on a job, so a job that runs for months is one long bar. PTO, Sick or Off inside a job shows as a notch; dashed outlines are open time (amber Available needs attention, gray Not booked is unplanned). Fit 3 Mo / 6 Mo / 1 Yr to the screen, fold a crew to one line by tapping the foreman’s name, and tap any bar for its dates. View only — assign on the Grid.
• By Job — the week as one card per job, biggest crew first, each person with a dot in their crew’s color and a Starts, Rolls off or This week only tag. The amber Open card lists everyone with no job that week and their next booking; a PTO card lists who’s out and when they’re back.

Assign Crew to Projects

Scheduling is fast:

• Click a cell to open Assignment — Available (unassigned) and PTO (Time Off) sit above your active projects. Pick one and tap Save; Set Available empties the cell in one tap.
• Drag‑select a block of cells, then Set Project from the bar at the bottom. The bar shows exactly what you’re about to change (cells, men · weeks — days in Day Mode) before you apply; Clear wipes the selection back to Gap.
• With two or more cells selected, press Delete to clear them back to a gap.
• Repeat a week by drag‑selecting the source cells across the weeks you want to fill, then Set Project.
• A whole crew at once: drag‑select across all of that crew’s rows for a week or range, then Set Project… or Clear — the same move on one person’s row assigns or clears just them.
• Move someone on By Job: switch the board to By Job and drag a person by the ⠿ grip onto another job’s card — or onto Open to free them — and they’re moved for the week on screen. Undo is on the notice; past weeks and PTO don’t move, and a missing certification warns without blocking.

Week Mode vs Day Mode

By default you schedule by the week. An admin turns on Enable Day Mode in Control Panel ▸ Modules & Features (it’s company‑wide — there’s no board button) and each week splits into Mon–Sun (weekends included and editable), so you can put a person on different jobs on different days. Click any day label in the header — or a day cell in a row — to scope the KPI strip to that single day (it gets an orange ring); click the week header to go back to the whole week. Weekend cells tint cooler so they’re easy to tell apart.

A cell where someone changes jobs mid‑week reads as tidy ranges — “Mon–Tue Amazon · Wed–Thu Lab Depot · Fri Amazon” — not a wall of chips.

Statuses, PTO & Notes

Every employee row has a ⋯ (three-dots) menu at the end — click it to open the Employee menu, where you manage that person:

• Time Off / PTO — block out vacation or sick time. Add as many ranges as you need (each From week → To week, or specific days); they stack in a removable list. You can also pick PTO (Time Off) right from a schedule cell’s status picker (it replaced “Off”). Booked‑off time can’t be scheduled, shows in Who’s Out, and is subtracted from your available crew in Projection’s gap math.
• Status / Note — add a free‑text note (restrictions, bilingual…) or set a status: New Hire, On Leave, Light Duty, or Terminated (or back to Active). Marking someone Terminated clears their upcoming assignments (past weeks stay for history), drops them into the collapsed Terminated section, and asks if they’re eligible for rehire — say yes and they get a green REHIRE OK tag. To bring someone back, open their ⋯ menu and clear the status.
• Badges / Skills — assign reusable, color‑coded badges (operator, finisher, forklift cert…). Pick from your shared catalog or create a new badge; the board’s Search finds people by their badges.
• Edit Employee (name, EE ID, position) and Remove from Roster (hides them; past history is kept). To move someone to another crew, drag their ⠿ handle onto that foreman — the hub asks to confirm with Move to Another Crew.

New‑hire badges auto‑expire after 7 days (one week) so the roster doesn’t get stale.

Filter & Find

Cut the grid down to exactly what you need:

• All crews dropdown — show just one foreman’s crew, or All crews for everyone.
• All projects dropdown — spotlight a single job and dim every other assignment (great for a morning standup).
• Search — type a name, EE ID, trade, or position to find anyone fast. The board always shows every crew member; there are no hide toggles.

Read the KPIs

The numbers stay live as you edit:

• Above the grid, a KPI card strip: On Assignment, On Bench, Projects (active this week), Utilization (assigned ÷ total crew), and Foremen — all for the selected week (or day, in Day Mode).
• Beside the cards is a load panel headlined “This week’s load” (or “Today’s” in Day Mode) with the headcount on assignment and the active‑project count, then a colored tile for every active project showing its headcount for that week or day.
• Below the grid, a Bench · available strip lists everyone unassigned that week (grouped by crew). Tap a bench chip to open Assign to Project for that person. (Viewers see it read‑only.)
• Click a week (or day) header to focus the KPI strip and tiles on that period; ✕ Clear or Today returns to the live week.

Projection: Capacity vs Demand

Projection is your forward‑looking capacity planner. You lay out the jobs you expect to run and the crew each will need (your demand), and the hub stacks that against the people you actually have plus what’s already on the live schedule (your supply) — so you spot the weeks you’ll be short before you get there. Anyone on the team can open Projection. Nothing is built here — schedules are created on the Project Schedule page (step 14) and show up read-only. What Admin/Editor adds on this page is setting a row’s foreman, managing 🔗 job links, and Export Shortfall.

• Project Schedules are built on their own Project Schedule tab — see step 14. Projection is where you read them against your crew: every schedule shows here automatically, read‑only, and counts toward the gap. There is one set of schedules, never a copy.
• Click a schedule’s name (or the ↗) to jump straight to it on the Project Schedule page.

• The strip across the top scores every week: each cell shows the week, the ±delta, and demand / available crew.
• Weeks tint Short (red — demand exceeds your crew), Tight (amber — at or near capacity), or stay comfortable surplus.
• Supply is PTO‑adjusted — anyone booked off that week is subtracted, so the number reflects who’s truly available.

• Capacity tiles summarize the horizon: Available crew, Peak demand, and counts of Short, Tight, and Surplus weeks — the gap strip shows which weeks they are.

• Export Shortfall drops the supply‑vs‑demand crew/gap table to Excel. The GC‑ready 11×17 schedule prints from the Project Schedule page (step 14).

Project Schedule: Build It

This is where the bar‑line schedule actually gets built. Everything you build here shows on Projection automatically and counts toward your crew gap — one schedule, never a copy. Admin & Editor build; Viewers can open it read‑only.

• Type your phases into the left rail (Enter after each) — “Footings”, “SOG”, “Tilt‑Up”. Each one gets its own row.
• Drag across the calendar on that row to place the bar; the name fills in automatically. Drag a bar to move it, pull an edge to resize, click it to rename, recolor or re‑date.
• Drag a phase’s number to reorder the list — the printed sheet lists activities in exactly the order you set here.
• Drop the ◆ Milestone chip on a bar’s left half to pin it to that phase’s start, the right half for its finish, then name it. Milestones ride the bar if the phase moves.

• The Crew row sits under the phases. Click any cell inside a phase and type the crew for that week — or per day when the schedule’s Week | Day toggle is on Day. Overall | Per Phase switches to a crew row under every phase.
• Where two phases overlap, the cell shows their combined total; type there to hard‑set a number for that week.

• 🏢 Buildings splits one job into linked buildings (Bldg 1 / 2 / 3), each with its own phases — they print together on one calendar.
• ↔ Shift Dates moves the whole schedule when the start slips — phases, milestones and crew all together.
• 🔗 Link To Job ties the plan to a live job, so Projection shows the weekly +/- of scheduled crew against the plan.

• Print gives you the GC‑ready 11×17: title block, activity table, phase bars, milestones and a crew‑loading histogram.
• It is always safe to hand out — the sheet shows the crew this schedule plans, but never your internal crew availability.
• A schedule too long for one sheet continues onto the next, each headed Sheet 1 of 3 with the dates it covers, so they tape together into one run.

Measure with Analytics

Available to everyone on the team. Pick a date range — presets cover Last 4/12 weeks, Year to date, Next 4/12 weeks, and Rolling ±6 weeks (a look‑ahead pipeline view) — or set From / To weeks by hand.

• Six KPI tiles roll up the operation: Employees, Avg / Week (with peak), Bench / Week (average unassigned crew, with peak), Projects in range, Utilization (with active‑foreman count), and Peak / Week — which becomes OT Weeks (weekend overtime and the jobs driving it) when Day Mode is on.
• Charts: the manpower curve per project (top 10), headcount per foreman, a current‑week project mix donut, and a utilization trend — all day‑aware when Day Mode is on.
• Export to a branded PDF, stamped with your logo: the six KPI tiles and a 2×2 chart grid (manpower curve, man-weeks by foreman, project mix, utilization), then By Project — Man-Weeks and By Foreman — Man-Weeks tables. In Day Mode the Peak / Week tile swaps to OT Weeks.

Share & Export

Get the schedule out the door, branded with your logo:

• Export Schedule (Excel) — a branded .xlsx with four tabs: Summary (KPI tiles + per‑foreman headcount), the full Men Tracker grid, Project Totals, and Notes. Day‑aware in Day Mode; PTO weeks show as labeled cells.
• Distribute (Email + Excel) — one click emails the schedule, the Excel workbook auto‑attached, through Planning Ops (no mail app needed). Every teammate with Manpower access is listed as a recipient pill; tap one to leave them out of just this send. The Subject names your company and the schedule’s week, the email’s heading names the week, and you can edit the Subject and Message before sending.
• Import Roster (Excel or CSV) — bulk‑add or update crews (supervisor, EE ID, position, name) in one upload; it upserts (Admin/Editor); see section 5.
• Download Roster Template — grab the styled Excel template to fill out before importing.
• Analytics has its own PDF export (see section 15).

Invite Your Team & Set Roles

User management lives in Control Panel → Users & Roles (gear ⚙) and is Admin only. Open it to Invite User, set roles, and send password resets. Each area has its own role; the Manpower view has four:

• Admin — everything: schedule, roster, projects, and users. Branding, notifications and billing stay with the workspace owner.
• Editor — runs the schedule: edit cells, manage the roster, add/archive projects, and import rosters. Can’t manage users or touch billing.
• Coordinator — a roster‑only role: add/edit people and set statuses and badges — but can’t set time off, edit the schedule or projects, or import a roster (those are Admin/Editor).
• Viewer — read‑only.

Project Schedule has its own role beside Manpower — Admin (edit any schedule), Editor (build their own), Viewer (read‑only) or No access (the tab hides). It’s a grant of its own, separate from the Manpower role, and Admin or Editor takes a working seat (still one per person); Viewer is free.

Each person you invite gets a branded welcome email with a secure link to set their own password — no temporary password, no manual handoff. The link works for 14 days; after that they tap Forgot your password? on the sign-in page, or you send a fresh one with Resend Welcome Email from their ⋯ menu. Your plan’s base price includes a set of working seats (Admin, Editor, and Coordinator); your first few are already covered. Past those, the workspace owner adds a seat when inviting (a prorated per-seat add-on), and when the owner removes a working user, any extra seat comes off at the next billing date. Viewers are always free and unlimited, so read-only access is never blocked. (If a card on file is declined, the seat isn’t added — fix billing in section 18 and retry.) To reset a password, open any user and hit Reset Password — the hub emails them a link to set their own new password (you never see it). Removing a user takes away their access to this workspace; you can re-invite them any time.

• Admin — adds and manages every role, changes roles, resets passwords, and removes users. Adding or lowering paid seats is the workspace owner’s.
• Editor, Coordinator & Viewer — no access to the Control Panel or the Users screen at all.

These limits hold on the server, not just in the UI — a non-admin can’t add a paid user or delete anyone even by going around the buttons.

Your team size and your bill stay in sync (paid seat changes are the workspace owner’s):

• Invite User (top of the Users & Roles panel) — create a working user (Admin, Editor, or Coordinator). If that takes you past the working seats you pay for, the owner confirms an Add a paid seat? prompt (a prorated $20/seat add-on; no charge until a trial ends), and another admin’s invite is refused until the owner adds the seat. Adding a Viewer is always free.
• Lower paid seats from Control Panel → Billing → Manage Subscription (workspace owner), or the owner can just remove a paid user and their seat frees automatically (when another admin removes one, the seat stays billed until the owner lowers it). Reductions take effect at your next billing cycle (no surprise mid-cycle credit), and you can’t go below the working seats your base plan includes — the Planning Ops plan includes 3. Viewers never count against this floor.

Either way, the owner gets a confirmation email with the new seat count and any prorated charge.

Manage Billing

Opens the Billing tab — your full in-hub billing screen, no bouncing out to a portal:

• Current plan — product, billing cycle, status, paid seats in use, and the card on file at a glance; during the trial it shows the days left and your first-charge date.
• Manage Subscription — add or remove working seats; it shows a running New monthly total with the exact proration (added immediately and prorated this cycle, or removed at the end of it) before you confirm. The $149/mo base covers your first 3 working seats, each additional one is a flat $20/seat add-on, and read-only Viewers are always free and unlimited.
• Billing cycle — shown here read-only. Annual (one month free) is chosen at checkout; email support@planningops.com to switch cycle.
• Update card (inline, secure — it never leaves Stripe), View invoices with PDF downloads, and Cancel — cancellation runs to the end of your paid period, asks an optional reason, and keeps your data restorable for 90 days. Changed your mind? Resume Subscription un-cancels with one click.

Your card isn’t charged until the 14-day trial ends — cancel anytime before then and you won’t be billed.

Day-to-Day Power Tools

A few things that make the everyday smoother:

• Day / Night theme — the hub opens in the Night (dark) theme by default; tap the sun/moon toggle for the print‑friendly Day (light) theme, which then persists in that browser. Higher contrast is always on in both. (Separate from the Day/Week schedule mode.)
• Help — the ? button opens the in‑hub Field Manual, a dockable picture manual; tap Ask Support inside it to email support@planningops.com.
• Board Health — the Health button on the toolbar lists everyone not on a project for the week in view (tap a name to find them), with a live count.
• Every edit auto‑saves and syncs live to everyone in the workspace — no save button; the green Auto‑Saved pill is your confirmation. Handy keys: Delete (or Backspace) clears the selected cells, and Esc clears the selection.