Someone is over-allocated on a day when the hours booked for them that day add up to more than their capacity. Pondria checks this per person and per day, after holidays and approved time off are taken out. It warns you and never blocks the booking, so you decide whether to rebalance the plan or accept the extra load as intentional.
How Pondria works out capacity
Each person's capacity is calculated one day at a time:
- Start from the hours their Working schedule gives that weekday.
- Add or remove the Hours delta of every calendar they are subscribed to. A public holiday usually removes 8 hours.
- Subtract approved time off. Time off that is still Pending does not count yet.
A day with no capacity left, such as a weekend, a full holiday or a full day of approved leave, is non-working time. Bookings put no hours on such a day and do not move them elsewhere, so a non-working day never shows as over-allocated.
What makes a day over-allocated
A day is over-allocated when the hours booked across all projects are higher than that day's capacity. There is no tolerance, so even a fraction of an hour over counts. Bookings on Prospective projects count at their full hours, so the Capacity page shows the load your team would carry if every prospect lands. The page on how win probability works explains where weighting does apply.
The usual causes are:
- Two or more bookings on the same day that together exceed the person's hours.
- A booking with the same Hours per day across a shorter weekday, for example 8 hours a day on a 4-hour Friday. A booking entered as a Share of capacity also becomes one fixed number of hours per day.
- Partial leave or a partial holiday that shortens a working day while the bookings stay the same.
Where over-allocations show up
- While you book, the allocation form warns which dates would go over and the highest load they would reach, and still lets you save.
- On the Capacity page, over-allocated days are marked Over capacity with a warning sign. A chip below the chart counts the over-allocated person-days in the current view, and clicking it opens the Over-allocations list.
- On the Overview, the Act now section lists people who are over capacity in the next 12 weeks, with the number of those days in the next four weeks and a Rebalance link to their plan.
- A team's Planning tab marks people as Over-allocated, and both Team utilization and a person's Utilization tab count Over-allocated days.
Pondria sends no notifications or emails about over-allocations.
What you can do about it
Each row in the Over-allocations list shows the person, the day, the load (for example "125% ยท 10h of 8h" and "2h over"), the cause and the projects booked that day. The cause reads Shortened working day when time off or a calendar cut the day short, and Full working day otherwise. You can sort by Worst first, By person or By date. Anyone who can open the list, Members included, can use Find in grid to jump to the next open over-allocated day on the chart.
From the list, an Owner or Manager can:
- Click a project to open that booking, then shorten it, move its dates or lower its Hours per day. To hand the work to someone else, remove the booking and book a person with Room available.
- Acknowledge the overload as intentional.
To fix a single day, an Owner or Manager opens that day in the person's plan and changes the hours for that date only. Days in the past are read-only.
Acknowledging an intentional overload
Sometimes a crunch week is a deliberate choice. Acknowledging it records that decision with an optional reason:
- The day stays on the chart as Agreed overload and stops counting in the chip, on the Overview and in the utilization counts.
- It opens again by itself if that day goes further over capacity than the worst day in the acknowledged stretch was at the time.
- From the list, an acknowledgement covers the run of consecutive over-allocated days around that row, and a weekend or any day within capacity ends the run. From a person's day view, Acknowledge overload covers that one day.
- Only an existing overload can be acknowledged, so future warnings cannot be silenced in advance.
To undo one, tick Show acknowledged in the Over-allocations list and choose Remove acknowledgement.
Who can see and do what
| Role | Sees on the Capacity page | Can change |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Everyone in the organization | Every booking, and acknowledgements |
| Manager | People in the teams they manage, plus themselves and their own teammates | Bookings on projects of the teams they manage, and acknowledgements |
| Member | Themselves and the people in their own teams | Nothing, as the plan is read-only |
| Viewer | Nothing, since the Capacity page is not part of their view | Nothing |
In the Overview's Act now section, a Member sees only their own entry, "You're over capacity". A Viewer sees only the Overview and the projects shared with them, without capacity figures. The page on which projects a Viewer can see explains that access.