The problem: There is a major flaw with the Resource Utilization report in Projects v7. The view does not take into account the completion level of the tasks shown in the planner. The simplest example is this:

John is assigned a task to complete over 2 weeks (10 days). The task has 10 total Work Hours assigned to it. In the Resource Utilization report, it is therefore displayed as 1 hour on each of the days in the planner.

However, if John has logged 8 hours as of the second day, the planner shows 1 hour per day for the entire duration of the task, regardless of what day this is. Similarly, if John marks the task as 80% complete, there is still no change to the report.

And most importantly, if John has not started the task on day 8 of the 10-day period, the report STILL allocates 1 hour per day to the remaining 2 days.

Use case: Users, as well as project managers, do not care about work that has already been done, or was not done in the past. The Resource Utilization report gives the user a look at what is ahead. If tasks were not done in the past, those hours need to be shifted forward. If tasks WERE worked on in the past, those hours need to be removed from view. Either way, Zoho simply offers a report of where time has been assigned, and does yet not offer an effective tool for planning tasks and allocating resources.

Other software helps solve this issue by taking into account time logged on the task, the completion % of the task, or offers different ways of "fitting" tasks into the plan, for example, front-loading, back-filling, or otherwise. I think this might be too advanced for Zoho Projects at this point, so I'm proposing the following:

For tasks that do not use "Work Hours Per Day" or "Work % Per Day" (because that should be allocated daily, regardless of completion, as you would expect):

1. Calculate Completed Hours on a task using either Completion % or Timelog (I think that completion % is easier and clearer, but ideally the option would be given to the admin in portal settings).

2. Calculate Remaining Work Hours on a task as the total Work Hours minus Completed Hours. In the example above, the Remaining Work Hours would be 2 if the 10-hour task is 80% complete, or 2 if the task had 8 hours already logged against it. (This must also take into account multiple owners on a task).

3. Create a view on the Resource Utilization report called "Real Time" (which, I argue, should be the default view). This view should show the real-time allocation of task hours and resources, taking into account what has already been completed to offer a clear picture of today and the future. This view would show Remaining Work Hours for tasks and allocate those Hours across future days (including today), ignoring days that have already passed. So, in the example above, if we are on day 8 of 10 and there are 2 hours remaining, the report would allocate the task as 0:40 per day for today and the next two days (days 8, 9, and 10). Similarly, if that task had not been started, it would be allocated as 3:20 per day (10 hours over 3 days).

Hopefully this is not too complicated to understand and I hope that the development team is willing to take it on as a project. It would really help bring Zoho Projects much closer to being a project management tool rather than simply a task and time tracking tool.