Bench Cost

Bench Cost is a chart within the Forecasting page of your Dashboard. It uses each person's hourly cost rate to calculate the dollar value of their unallocated time, broken down by month.

Key capabilities:

• View total bench cost across your workforce month-over-month

• Drill into which individuals are contributing to bench cost in any given month

• Filter by people and project attributes to isolate cost by division, title, region, or other custom fields

• Use Scenario Planning to model how winning pursuit projects would affect bench cost

Eligibility/Prerequisites

Access to the Bench Cost report depends on your permission level and account configuration:

• Permission required: Users must have the View Financial Fields permission. Only Administrators have this by default. Custom permission groups can be created to grant this access to other users.

• Cost rates required: The report will not populate without Cost Rate (hr) values entered for your people. If no cost rates exist in the account, a prompt will appear encouraging you to add them.

Note: Cost Rate (hr) values are hidden by default across the platform. Use the View Confidential Fields button in the main navigation to reveal them.

How to Use

Accessing the Report

Navigate to Dashboard > Bench Cost

• The bar chart displays total bench cost per month across your workforce

• The monthly total appears in the top right of the chart

• People with a bench cost are listed to the right of the chart for the selected month

• Click any bar or month to update the people list to reflect that period

• If someone has a bench cost but no cost rate entered, they will display as "No cost rate"

Adding or Editing Cost Rates

The Bench Cost report is calculated from each person's Cost Rate (hr) value. There are two ways to manage this data:

Individual cost rates:

1. Open a person's profile

2. Navigate to the Details tab

3. Enter or update the Cost Rate (hr) field

Default cost rates by title:

1. Go to Settings > People > System Fields > Title Cost Rate Defaults

2. Set a default hourly rate for each title in your account

3. People with that title will inherit the default rate unless a manual rate has been entered on their profile

Filtering the Report

By default, the report shows bench cost across your entire workforce. Use filters to narrow the view:

• People Filters – Filter by title, group, division, or any custom people field to isolate bench cost for a specific segment of your workforce

• Project Filters – Filter by project attributes to see bench cost in the context of specific project types or statuses

Using Scenario Planning

Use Scenario Planning to model different outcomes for your pursuit projects:

1. Click Scenario Planning in the top right of the Forecasting page

2. Select which pursuit projects to include

3. Click Apply to see how bench cost changes based on that scenario

This helps you understand how winning specific projects would reduce bench cost by increasing workforce utilization.

Common Workflows

Identifying your most expensive bench cost contributors: Click into the current month's bar to see which individuals have the highest bench cost. Use this to prioritize conversations about upcoming project assignments.

Segmenting bench cost by division or title: Apply People Filters to isolate bench cost for specific groups—for example, filter by "Sr. Project Manager" to understand the cost of senior staff sitting idle.

Modeling the impact of winning a pursuit: Use Scenario Planning to add a pursuit project and see how it reduces bench cost by absorbing available people.

Finding people missing cost rates: If the report shows a warning about missing cost rates, click the warning link to navigate directly to a filtered People list showing who needs a rate added.

Common Questions