# Capacity, working patterns and time off **Category:** [Resource Planning](https://help.totalctrl.app/hc/totalctrl/totalctrl-help-center/en-US/categories/resource-planning) **Updated:** 2026-08-19 ## Capacity: a workspace default, then per person Set a default weekly capacity for the workspace (40 hours out of the box). Anybody whose week is different gets a profile with their own figure, on **Capacity & settings**. No profile is a perfectly good state — it means “use the default”. A profile exists to say something different. Leaving capacity blank is not the same as zero: zero hours would drop that person off every schedule you look at. ## The working pattern says which days somebody works The pattern is hours per weekday: 8 on Monday, 8 on Tuesday, 8 on Wednesday for a part-timer; 6 across five days for a four-fifths week; whatever the arrangement is. Leave every day blank and capacity spreads evenly over Monday to Friday, which is right for most people. It matters for everyone else in a way that is easy to miss. Without a pattern, a Monday-to-Wednesday part-timer is **charged for a Thursday off they were never going to work** — and under-charged for the Monday they were. Both errors are silent, and they do not cancel out. The pattern is also what makes the day view possible at all: a week of hours cannot be laid across days without knowing which days exist. ## Booking time off Time off has a kind — **Vacation**, **Sick**, **Public holiday** or **Other** — and a status of pending, approved or declined. Only **approved** leave reduces availability. A whole day off costs whatever that day was worth to that person, taken from their pattern. For a half day, enter hours per day; those hours are only counted on days the person actually works, so a half day inside a week that includes a Thursday they never work does not quietly cost you a Thursday. ## Workspace holidays A time-off entry with no person attached is a **public holiday for everybody**. Enter it once and it comes out of the whole team's availability. Only a planner can create one. ## Leave can never exceed capacity A public holiday falling inside somebody's vacation is two overlapping entries covering the same day. Without a cap, that day would be deducted twice and the week would report *negative* availability — which then divides into utilization figures above 100% for somebody who was not there at all. Leave is capped at capacity. A week fully off reports zero available hours, never minus eight. ## The day view A person's page lists one row per day: working hours, leave, allocation, and what was logged. It is where a half day is actually visible, and where a Thursday for a Monday-to-Wednesday person reads as a **non-working day** rather than as a day they mysteriously did nothing. The per-day allocation there is calculated from the weekly commitment, spread across the days in proportion to how long each day is. It is not stored as separate rows — if it were, every date you moved would mean rewriting them all. --- ## Related Articles - [Availability and utilization: which number you are actually looking at](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/resource-planning-utilization) - [Who can see and change what, including contractors](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/resource-planning-access) - [Resource Planning from the API or an agent](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/resource-planning-api) - [What Resource Planning is, and what it deliberately does not do](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/resource-planning-overview) - [Allocations: hours a week, soft bookings and overlaps](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/resource-planning-allocations) --- [← Back to TotalCtrl Help Center](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/)