Kavaro is resource management software for agencies and consultancies. Make the staffing call with capacity, tentative work and margin in one view. It shows who's free, who's tentative and who's on leave across retainers and projects. It drafts the team from the statement of work, and it tells you the margin before an allocation goes live.
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Resourcing breaks in the gap between "yes" and "who"
New work arrives in the same way at every agency: a pitch lands or a retainer grows, a client moves a date. Then someone has to decide who does it. That decision usually gets made from a spreadsheet, a scheduling tool, a finance export and memory.
We interviewed operations and resourcing leads at agencies and consultancies. They told us the same things:
- "We don't know how busy we are." An agency coach was quoting a founder whose agency had no resourcing system at all.
- "You have to move everything manually around." A head of delivery at a 120-person agency, on the tool they use today.
- "Someone's occupied, but are they billable?" A finance lead at a consultancy, on the gap between utilisation and billable hours.
- "Every week [I] have to pull [an] extract from Power BI, put it into Excel" to build an eight-week forecast. A resource manager at a global consultancy.
- "Where this starts to get really interesting, I guess, is provisional bookings." A fractional agency operations lead, on staffing work that isn't signed yet.
The schedule is rarely the hard part. The hard part is the decision behind it: who should take this work, what it does to everyone else's week, and whether the job still makes money once you've staffed it.
What agency resource management software does
Agency resource management software matches your team's capacity to client demand. It shows who's booked, who's free and who's away. It covers confirmed and tentative work, so you can plan staffing, protect utilisation and avoid burning out your best people. Project management tools track tasks. Resource management tracks people's time across all your projects at once.
Any tool worth shortlisting should do these six things:
- Scheduling and allocation. Show people against weeks, with bookings in hours or a percentage.
- Capacity and utilisation. Report booked, billable and free hours by person, role and team.
- Tentative and pipeline work. Hold unconfirmed work without overwriting confirmed work.
- Leave and working patterns. Take time off out of capacity automatically.
- Rates and budgets. Put a charge rate and a cost on the time you book.
- Time tracking. Compare what was planned with what happened.
Kavaro does all six. The rest of this page covers what it does beyond them.
How Kavaro works for agencies
Start from the statement of work, not a blank plan
Drop a statement of work or a brief into Kavaro's chat. Kavaro drafts the project for you: phases, budget type (time and materials, fixed fee, fixed hours or retainer), the team it needs, and tentative bookings. Those bookings go to named people or to open roles you haven't filled yet. You edit the draft, then confirm it. Upload a CV and Kavaro drafts that person's profile, including their skills. Paste in meeting notes or a call transcript and it proposes the bookings that came out of the meeting.
See confirmed, tentative and open work in one schedule
The schedule shows every person against the calendar. Confirmed bookings appear as solid bars and tentative ones as striped bars. Open roles get rows of their own, and time off is shown next to project work. Your organisation's working week sets the hours for each weekday, the start of the week and the timezone, so capacity reflects how your team actually works.
Schedule retainers and projects side by side
Retainer teams and project teams usually draw on the same people, which is where overbooking starts. In Kavaro a retainer is a project with the Retainer budget type and a budget total. You book its team week by week in the same schedule as fixed-fee and time-and-materials work. Utilisation by project shows where each person's hours are going. Finance shows revenue, cost and margin per client for the period, so an over-serviced retainer shows up before month end rather than after it.
Know the margin of every booking
Each booking carries a charge rate from the project's rate card (or the client's default card). It also carries a cost rate, saved from the person at the moment you book them. Kavaro's finance view shows revenue, cost and margin for the period. Tentative work appears as its own line, so pipeline revenue is never mixed into confirmed numbers. Any hours missing a charge rate or a cost rate are flagged rather than silently counted as zero.
Get costed cover options when a role has no one in it
Kavaro's hiring agent looks 4, 8 and 12 weeks ahead at every open role, including work tagged Tentative, Pitch, Opportunity or Estimate. For each role it ranks the ways you could cover it:
- Someone in the same role who has space.
- Slipping the start by up to 10 working days.
- Partial cover from inside the team, with a freelancer for the gap.
- Extending a contract that ends shortly before the role starts.
Each option is costed against the role's charge value. When nobody covers the role fully, Kavaro adds a freelance line for comparison. It also tests whether one permanent hire would pay for itself over 12 months.
Ask in plain English. Nothing changes until you confirm.
Ask Kavaro "who's free for three days a week of senior design in November?" or "what margin are we making on this retainer this month?" It answers from your own data and shows how this was calculated under the answer. When the answer involves a change, such as a booking, a new project or a moved date, Kavaro proposes it as a card with Confirm and Reject. It never edits the schedule on its own. Your resourcing team stays in control.
A weekly feed that tells you what to fix
Every week Kavaro writes a short feed for your team:
- People on the bench: capacity with no bookings.
- Leave that clashes with bookings.
- Utilisation by person.
- Finance for the week.
- Hiring needs.
- Timesheets not started or under 90% complete.
Every Monday you also get a RAID log (risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies) for a project you choose, covering the next four weeks. Booked hours become one-click timesheet suggestions, so plan and actual stay close.
Works with the tools you already use
- Slack: ask KavaroBot in a DM or a channel and confirm changes from the thread.
- Jira and Trello: see your boards in a sidebar next to the schedule.
- Workflows: send emails, signed webhooks (Zapier, Make or your own endpoint), or Kavaro actions when a stage, phase, budget or date changes.
- Claude and ChatGPT: connect Kavaro as a connector and ask resourcing questions from either assistant, with the same permissions you have in the app.
- Security: Google sign-in, email two-factor authentication, domain restriction and SAML single sign-on (Entra ID, Okta, OneLogin). See Security & GDPR.
Worked example: staffing a six-week campaign at a 25-person agency
All names and rates in this example are illustrative.
A client signs a six-week brand campaign. The statement of work asks for a senior designer three days a week (18 days), a copywriter two days a week and a project manager one day a week.
- Upload the SoW. Kavaro drafts the project with its phases and team. Each role becomes a tentative booking, and the senior designer seat starts as an open role.
- Check the schedule. Your usual senior designer is already 90% booked in weeks 2–4. Pushing the booking through would overbook them.
- Compare the cover options. The senior designer seat is worth £16,200 (18 days at a £900 day rate). Kavaro's hiring view lays out the options:
| Option | How it's covered | Cost | Margin on the role |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. Slip the start by one week | Another senior designer covers all 18 days at a £420/day cost | £7,560 | £8,640 (53%) |
| B. Partial internal cover + freelancer | 12 days internal at £420, 6 days freelance at £550 | £8,340 | £7,860 (49%) |
| C. Freelancer for the whole role | 18 days at £550 | £9,900 | £6,300 (39%) |
- Make the call. Option A keeps the most margin but needs the client to agree to a one-week slip. Option B keeps the date and gives up £780. Either way, you decide before you say yes, and you confirm the bookings in one step.
Benchmark: utilisation and capacity by agency size
Most utilisation advice gives a single number. Agencies of different sizes carry different shares of directors, managers and delivery staff, so the blended rate you can realistically plan for changes with size. This table combines published UK role benchmarks with a typical role mix at each size.
| Agency size | Assumed role mix (directors / mid-level / delivery) | Blended billable utilisation to plan for | Billable hours per person per year | Team billable hours per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 people | 2 / 3 / 5 | 58–69% | 1,000–1,200 | 190–230 |
| 25 people | 3 / 7 / 15 | 61–72% | 1,060–1,260 | 510–610 |
| 60 people | 5 / 15 / 40 | 63–74% | 1,100–1,290 | 1,260–1,490 |
| 120 people | 8 / 32 / 80 | 63–75% | 1,100–1,300 | 2,540–3,000 |
The ranges come from published UK role benchmarks: directors 30–40%, mid-level staff 55–70%, and junior and delivery staff 70–80% (Alto Accounting, citing the BenchPress survey of UK agencies and Synergist), blended with the role mix in the table. The hours columns use 1,740 available hours a year, a 37.5-hour week less the UK statutory 28 days' leave (GOV.UK). Sickness, training and admin are not taken off, so treat those hours as a ceiling.
How to read it
- Role benchmarks (measured, published). Directors 30–40%, mid-level staff 55–70%, junior and delivery staff 70–80% (Alto Accounting, citing the BenchPress survey of UK agencies and Synergist).
- Role mix (assumed). Kavaro's estimate of a typical agency at each size.
- Available hours (measured). A 37.5-hour week less the UK statutory 28 days' leave gives 1,740 hours a year. Sickness, training and admin aren't taken off, so treat the hours columns as a ceiling.
- Professional services overall (measured). Billable utilisation was 66.4% in 2025, the lowest in the survey's history, against a 75% target (SPI Research, 500+ firms, via Deltek). By agency type, UK creative agencies typically run at 60–70%, digital and SEO at 65–75%, and PPC and paid media at 70–80% (Alto Accounting).
- Warning signs. A delivery team consistently above 85% is a burnout risk. Below 60% points to spare capacity you're paying for (Alto Accounting).
Want the number for your own team? Use the free billable utilisation calculator, then the billable vs non-billable hours calculator to see where the rest of the time goes. Planning in a spreadsheet for now? Start with the free agency resource planning template, then the capacity planning template and resource allocation template. For the method, read how to calculate utilisation rate.
Resource management for every kind of agency
Marketing agencies
Retainers, campaigns and pitches all draw on the same people. Kavaro keeps retainer hours, campaign spikes and pitch work (tagged Pitch or Opportunity) in one schedule. You can see who can take the next engagement before you commit to it.
Advertising, media and production agencies
Air dates and shoot days don't move, so staffing has to. Open roles show the crew and creative seats you still need to fill. The hiring view costs a freelancer against internal cover before the call sheet goes out.
PR and communications agencies
Teams split their time across many accounts. Utilisation by person shows who is spread thin. Leave that clashes with a booking appears in the Monday feed before it becomes a missed deadline.
SEO and PPC agencies
Retainer work, technical projects and launches compete for the same specialists. Rate cards per client keep margin visible on every account, and timesheet suggestions keep logged hours close to the plan.
Social media and content agencies
Content calendars, community cover and review rounds need steady capacity with room for spikes. Bench and utilisation cards show where writers, editors and strategists have space this week.
Creative, design and brand agencies
For studios staffing concepting and production rounds, see creative agency software.
Consultancies
Firms running utilisation targets, bench time and skills-based staffing should see resource management for consultancies.
Kavaro vs Float vs Resource Guru vs Productive
Prices are list prices from each vendor's pricing page, checked on 19 October 2026. They may change, so check the vendor's page before you decide.
| Kavaro | Float | Resource Guru | Productive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $20/user/month billed annually, $25 monthly | $7/person/month (Starter) | $5/person/month (Grasshopper; no reports) | $10–12/user/month (Essential) |
| Next tier | n/a | $12/person/month (Pro: time tracking, rate cards, advanced reports) | $8/person/month (Blackbelt: timesheets, reports, rates and budgets) | $25–29/user/month (Professional) |
| Free trial | 30 days, no card | 30 days, no card | 30 days, no card | 14 days, no card |
| Tentative work | Yes, plus open roles | Yes | Yes, plus placeholders | Yes ("soft allocations") |
| Drafts a staffed project from a SoW | Yes | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Costed cover and hiring options | Yes | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Best for | Agencies that want the staffing decision, margin and cover options in one place | Teams that want a mature, visual scheduler with time tracking on Pro | Simple, low-cost booking of people, rooms and equipment | Agencies that want one all-in-one system for projects, budgets, billing and resourcing |
"Not listed" means we didn't find the capability on the vendor's pricing or help pages. Read our full comparisons: Kavaro vs Resource Guru, Kavaro vs Float, Kavaro vs Productive, Kantata alternative, Paprika software alternative and Teamwork.com alternative.
One honest note: Kavaro is new. Float, Resource Guru and Productive have years of reviews on G2 and Capterra, and Kavaro has none yet. That's why the trial is 30 days and needs no card.
Do you need software, or is a spreadsheet enough?
One resourcing lead told us: "In my previous agency I had a Google Sheet and it worked absolutely fine." For a small team with one person owning the plan, that can be true. Spreadsheets start to break when:
- More than one person books people, and changes collide.
- Tentative work has to sit alongside confirmed work without overwriting it.
- Leave is recorded in one system and bookings in another, so people get booked while they're away.
- Finance needs margin by project, and someone rebuilds it from exports every month.
For a worked example of the spreadsheet method, see agency capacity planning.
Worried about switching? The concern we heard most was "the lift and shift and double running and not losing something." Kavaro is built to start from what you already have. Upload CVs to create people and SoWs to create projects, then confirm each draft. A seeded demo and step-by-step tours let you try every page before you add your own data.
Who keeps the data up to date? Every change is a booking, so plans update when people move work. Proposals from chat, Slack and meeting notes are one Confirm away. Timesheets are pre-filled from bookings.
Pricing
Kavaro costs £15 per user per month billed annually, or £18 billed monthly. Every plan starts with a 30-day free trial, no card required.
| Team | Annual billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|
| 20-person agency | £300/month (£3,600 a year) | £360/month |
| 60-person agency | £900/month (£10,800 a year) | £1,080/month |
All prices exclude VAT where it applies. See full pricing.
Frequently asked questions
What is agency resource management software?
It's software that matches an agency's capacity to client demand. It shows who is booked, free or on leave across every project, including tentative work, so you can staff projects, protect utilisation and margin, and avoid burnout.
When should an agency move from spreadsheets to resource management software?
Move when more than one person books people, when tentative and confirmed work need to sit side by side, or when finance needs margin by project without rebuilding it from exports. There's no fixed headcount; Productive's agency guide suggests a dedicated system once you pass five people.
What utilisation rate should an agency target?
Plan for a blended billable rate of roughly 58–69% for a 10-person agency and 63–75% for a 120-person agency (see the benchmark above). By role, aim for 70–80% for delivery staff and 30–40% for directors. A delivery team consistently above 85% is a burnout risk.
What is the difference between resource management and project management?
Project management tracks tasks and deadlines within a project. Resource management tracks people's time across all projects, so you can see who is free, who is overbooked and what new work will do to everyone's week.
How do you plan for pipeline work that isn't signed yet?
Book it as tentative so it holds the time without overwriting confirmed work, and tag how firm it is. In Kavaro, tentative revenue is reported separately from confirmed revenue, and open roles show the seats you would still need to fill if the work lands.
How much does agency resource management software cost?
List prices on 19 October 2026 run from $5 to $29 per person per month for the tools compared above. Kavaro is $20 per user per month billed annually, or $25 monthly.
Does Kavaro's AI change the schedule by itself?
No. Kavaro answers from your data and proposes changes as Confirm/Reject cards. Nothing is booked, moved or created until a person confirms it.
Can Kavaro handle retainers and fixed-fee work?
Yes. Projects can be time and materials, fixed fee, fixed hours, retainer or no budget, and each booking carries a charge rate from the project's rate card.
Related: Pricing · Billable utilisation calculator · Billable vs non-billable hours calculator · Free agency tools · How to calculate utilisation rate · Creative agencies · Consultancies · Kavaro vs Resource Guru · Kavaro vs Float · Kavaro vs Productive · Kantata alternative · Paprika software alternative · Teamwork.com alternative