Overview
There are two ways of working with bookings in the Cinode planner:
- Preliminary booking on a role: This type of booking is used to assign a suitable person to a project early on in the sales process, but no definitive decision has been made yet.
- Definitive booking on a role: This type of booking is used when it is decided that a specific person is going to be assigned to a project.
By starting early with preliminary bookings, you can make sure that there are available people that are a match for a future project. When the decision is made to assign one or more people to a project, you just update the status of the role from preliminary to definitive.
Preliminary book a person for a role
1. Click on a project and create a role.
2. Fill in the information about the role, such as title, start/end date, and the extent of the role.
3. Select a person to book.
4. Under "Type of booking" select "Preliminary" and click Save.
5. Saved preliminary bookings in Cinode are indicated by a blue bar:
The preliminary booking is calculated from three variables:
The probability of a project X (times) the role extent / (divided) on number of person that is preliminary booked for the same role.
The probability of the project - The probability of winning a project refers to how likely it is that your company will successfully wins the project. The probability is typically tracked and updated within your pipeline, which outlines the stages a project goes through, from initial contact to final decision. If you have not manually assigned a probability for a project, the system will automatically set a probability based on the stage the project is currently in within your pipeline.
Times the extent of a role - When creating a role you will need to add a role extent
Divided on the number of persons preliminary booked on a role.
Scroll down to view an example of the preliminary booking calculation.
Calculation of preliminary bookings example
Preliminary bookings will always take the probability to win a project into consideration when calculating the preliminary utilization rate. If the utilization rate will be 100% for a definitive booking and the probability to win the project is 70 %, the preliminary utilization rate will be 70% (100% * 0,7).
An example,
In the Planner, we have chosen to show definitive and preliminary bookings. In the overview, it looks like James is preliminary booked on a role of 50 % (indicated by 0 definitive + 50 preliminary).
Expanding the view however, will show that James is preliminary booked on the role of Solution Specialist with the extent of 100 %.
Note - if there is 2 persons that preliminary booked for one project, it will show that James is preliminary booked 25% since it is divided on the number of persons that is preliminary booked on a role.
The reason behind this is the probability of the project that the role is connected to.
If we hover above the project name "Bi Solution project" we will see that the probability for the project is set to 50%. This in turn gives the preliminary booking rate a value of 100% x 50 % (role booking x probability) = 50%.
Solution:
Cinode will also take the chance of probability into account for preliminary bookings. The only way to affect the displayed preliminary booking rate is to change the probability. You can set the probability to 100 % for all pipe stages to always display the actual preliminary booking rate as specified in the role. Note that you should only do this if you do not intend to use probability for projects at all, as this will affect the data shown in the pipelines and sales reports.
View the perliminary bookings in the Forecast
In the Forecast it is possible to filter on only definitive bookings or Definite - Preliminary bookings.
1. Click the filter display mode to filterr and toggle "Definite - Preliminary bookings"
In the example "Claes Nilsson" total bookings are 100 + 7. The first number before the "+" sign indicates the definitive bookings while the numbers after the "+" sign indicate the preliminary bookings.
If you hover on the project C# Consultant to the left you will se that the probability of the project is 20 and the extent of the role is (100%). In this case, if you click on the role you will see that three persons in preliminary booked on this role. The calculation is therefore 100 X 7 / 3 = 7.
