Most agencies do not lose money on bad work. They lose it in the gap between what was sold and who was actually free to deliver it. Retainers, projects and pitches land in the same fortnight, the people who can do the work are already booked, on leave, or held against something that has not closed, and the plan that reconciles all of it is a spreadsheet one person rebuilds on a Friday. By the time it is accurate, the decision has already been made in a meeting.
Kavaro is resource planning software for agencies. It holds one live view of who is booked, who is free, what is still tentative, and what each staffing decision does to margin — so “can we take this, who does it, what does it cost us” is a five-minute answer you can defend in front of your founder and your finance lead. Kavaro proposes the staffing. Your resource manager confirms or rejects it. Nothing reshapes the plan on its own.
Challenges agencies face
Pitch work eats paid capacity. Speculative hours come out of the same people who owe client work this week. When pitches are not on the plan, the first sign of overload is a senior working the weekend and a retainer slipping the fortnight after.
Retainers and projects compete for the same people. A 20-hour retainer looks light until three launches land together. Agency-wide utilisation stays respectable while the week that matters is undeliverable, and nobody sees it until the standup.
Freelance cover gets bought late and paid for twice. Contractors are briefed in a rush because the gap was visible a month out and nobody was looking. You pay a premium rate for a thinner brief, then absorb the rework.
Pipeline and confirmed work blur together. If tentative jobs sit on the plan like won work, you either turn down revenue you had room for or commit the same people twice. Both are expensive, and only one of them is visible.
Margin is decided when you allocate, not when you invoice. Putting a senior on junior work, or three people on a fixed fee that was priced for two, never shows up on a task board. It shows up when planned hours, actuals and rates finally sit on the same numbers — usually a month too late.
How agency resourcing actually moves
- Start from real availability — contracted hours, time zones, leave and contract end dates, not 40 hours per head.
- Book people onto the work — retainers, projects and pitches as % or hours, with tentative bars for anything unconfirmed.
- Hold the seat before you have the name — open roles keep demand visible while you choose between hiring, moving someone, or briefing a freelancer.
- Check conflicts, not just totals — who is over 100% next week, who is on the bench, who is booked while on leave.
- Close the loop with actuals — timesheets log against the bookings, so the utilisation number is not a separate rebuild.
How this shows up in Kavaro
The schedule is an agency-wide people × calendar board. Bookings carry effort as a percentage or hours, tentative work is styled as tentative, and open role seats sit as their own rows until someone is named. The person managing traffic works from the same picture the leadership team uses to judge capacity, delivery risk and the case for another hire.
Chat answers the live question — who is free next month, who has the skills, what taking this job does to margin. It proposes the bookings. A person with permission confirms or rejects them. The agent never writes the plan on its own, which is usually the first thing a resource manager wants to establish in a trial.
Timesheets capture actual hours against those bookings. Reports show utilisation from the live plan and from logged time, with permission-controlled cost and charge views and PDF or Excel exports when finance or the board needs the numbers. Insights flag over-allocation, under-utilisation, leave clashes, unfilled seats and roll-off before they become a delivery problem.
Standing agents and Inbox can run the recurring capacity check or turn meeting notes into proposed bookings — still with a human confirm step. Pricing models on projects (time and materials, fixed fee, retainer) stay attached to the same people plan, so the commercial view and the delivery view do not drift apart.
Why Kavaro for agencies
One plan instead of three versions of the truth
Pitches, retainers and live projects sit on the same schedule, so the capacity conversation stops depending on who updated which tab.
Answer “can we take this?” in the meeting
Ask who is free with the right skills and what it does to utilisation and margin, then confirm the booking while the question is still open.
See overload a fortnight out, not on Monday
Insights surface who is over 100%, who is on leave, and which seats are still unnamed before kickoff — early enough to move someone or book cover at a sane rate.
Utilisation you can put in front of the board
Planned load from bookings and actuals from timesheets on the same numbers, so the figure in the monthly review is not an estimate someone assembled by hand.
The agent proposes, your team decides
Every change to the plan is confirmed by a person. The resource team keeps control of the working week, while leadership gets a plan it can trust when client commitments, hiring and margin are on the table.
Explore by discipline
Different agency disciplines staff work differently. See how Kavaro plans people for your type of agency:
- Resource management for marketing agencies → Retainers, campaigns and pitches on the same capacity plan.
- Resource management for SEO agencies → Recurring optimisation hours versus project spikes.
- Resource management for PPC agencies → Launch crunches and ongoing media management load.
- Resource management for social media agencies → Always-on content calendars and community cover.
- Resource management for content marketing agencies → Writers, editors and client review cycles.
- Resource management for design agencies → Overlapping builds, specialists and freelance cover.
- Resource management for web design agencies → Launch windows and shared developers.
- Resource management for UX/UI agencies → Research, prototype and handoff staffing.
- Resource management for graphic design agencies → High-volume retainers and campaign spikes.
- Resource management for product design agencies → Discovery sprints and scarce senior time.
- Resource management for branding agencies → Long strategy phases and specialist allocation.
- Resource management for brand strategy agencies → Workshop-heavy staffing and alignment load.
- Resource management for brand identity agencies → Concepting versus production capacity.
- Resource management for rebranding agencies → Rollout waves and overlapping workstreams.
- Resource management for copy and naming agencies → Short intense bursts and review bottlenecks.
- Resource management for creative agencies → Pitch load versus paid production.
- Resource management for advertising agencies → Immovable air dates and crew bookings.
- Resource management for video production agencies → Shoot days, edit suites and freelancer windows.
- Resource management for digital creative agencies → Design and build sharing scarce people.
- Resource management for campaign agencies → Cross-channel teams against a fixed launch.
Calculate utilisation first
For a snapshot from hours you already have, use the free utilisation calculator or read how to calculate utilisation rate. Kavaro then reports utilisation from live bookings and timesheets — there is no import from the calculator.
See how Kavaro handles this work
Try Kavaro free for 30 days. Bring a live plan, ask who can take the next piece of work, and approve the staffing before it goes live.