What is Resource Forecasting and Why Do MSPs Need It?
Resource forecasting is how you figure out who's available to work on what and when they'll be free for the next project. It means looking at your team's current workload and knowing whether you can take on new work without overloading anyone or missing deadlines. For MSPs juggling multiple client projects and ongoing service tickets, this looks like answering "Can we start this project next week?" without spending Friday afternoons frantically updating Excel files.
Manual spreadsheets break down fast because they can't keep up with real work. A tech gets pulled into an emergency ticket, someone goes on vacation, or a project takes longer than expected, and suddenly your carefully built spreadsheet is lying to you. In this article, we'll show you how to forecast resource availability using real data from your PSA — ConnectWise, Autotask, or HaloPSA — so you can give clients honest timelines and stop guessing whether your team can handle what's coming.
Why It Matters Now
MSPs are stuck between clients who want to know "When will my project start?" and teams who need to know "What am I working on next week?" with no clear way to answer either question. Spreadsheets force you to manually track project hours, ticket loads, vacation days, and skill levels across every engineer, and by the time you update them, the data is already wrong.
Without real visibility into who's working on what, MSPs either overload their best techs until they burn out or turn away profitable work because they don't trust their capacity numbers.
When you forecast resource availability with real PSA data, you can give clients accurate project start dates instead of vague promises, know exactly when your team will be free for new work, spot overloaded engineers before they hit their limit, stop wasting hours on manual spreadsheet updates every week, and make confident hiring decisions based on real capacity gaps.
See how MSPs use TopLeft for capacity planning.
How to Apply It
Get your PSA data into one place automatically.
Connect TopLeft to ConnectWise, Autotask, or HaloPSA and it pulls project budgets, assigned team members, and ticket workload automatically. Your capacity view updates in real time as engineers log hours or new work gets added, so you are never working from a snapshot that is already out of date.
Map each engineer's availability week by week.
See assigned project hours compared against actual available hours for the next three or more months. Adjust for vacation days, training, or internal meetings so the forecast reflects reality instead of wishful thinking, and TopLeft surfaces all of this without you having to build or maintain anything manually.
Spot capacity problems before they become missed deadlines.
Overload indicators show who is scheduled for more hours than they can realistically work, who is close to their limit, and who has room for more. This lets you rebalance workloads before anyone gets overloaded, rather than finding out after a deadline has already slipped.
Plan by the week, not by the hour.
This approach matches how project work actually gets done and lets you account for both scheduled project work and expected ticket hours without creating a micromanagement burden. You can also test different project start dates before committing to anything with clients, so your promises are grounded in real numbers.
"We were able to move our average project delivery from negative efficiency to positive 58% efficiency. So we finish projects now with an average of 1/3 time left over!" — Steve Psaradellis, CEO of TEBA
See how other MSPs use TopLeft to deliver projects on time.
Mini-FAQ
What's the difference between capacity planning and resource forecasting?
Resource forecasting is predicting who will be available and when, while capacity planning is the full process of using that forecast to assign work, balance workloads, and commit to project timelines.
How do I account for emergency tickets that mess up my project schedule?
Build expected ticket hours into each engineer's weekly capacity based on historical averages from your PSA so that projects do not assume 100% availability, which never happens in real life.
Can I forecast capacity without scheduling every single ticket?
Yes. Plan project work by the week and use aggregate ticket estimates rather than assigning individual tickets, and you will get accurate forecasts without creating unnecessary admin overhead.
Related: MSP Capacity Planning | Free Capacity Planner Template | Kanban Capacity Planning Implementation Guide
