FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) is a standard method for measuring the amount of work a person (or group) contributes, relative to a full-time schedule.
Uses of FTE in Resource Management
Capacity planning: Ensure you don’t over-allocate resources.
Budgeting: Translate FTEs into cost.
Scenario planning: Test if projects are feasible with the current headcount.
Benchmarking: Compare resource usage across teams/projects.
Formula and Definition
FTE = Workload Hours / default Full-time hours in a selected time period
In Runn, the number of hours in one FTE is determined by the default Full-time hours defined in Account Settings.
If the default Full-time hours in Account Settings is set to 8 hours, the full-time hours per week are 8 hours x 5 days = 40 hours per week:
The FTE effort unit lets you normalize different working arrangements into a single comparable unit.
FTE as the Effort Unit for Workload Hours
1.0 FTE = one employee working the default full-time hours (40 hours/40 hours = 1)
0.75 FTE = one employee working 30 hours per week (30 hours/40 hours = 0.75)
0.5 FTE = one employee working 20 hours per week (20 hours/ 40 per week)
As a result, the sum of two employees each working 20 hours is 0.5 FTE + 0.5 FTE = 1.0 FTE
FTE as a Capacity Unit
You can also view people's capacity in FTE in Runn.
1.0 FTE = one employee's capacity is the same as the default full-time hours (40 hours/40 hours = 1)
0.8 FTE = one employee's contract capacity is 40 hours a week, but he is taking a day off [(40 hours - 8 hours)/40 hours = 0.8]
0.5 FTE = a part-time employee is only contracted to work 4 hours a day, 20 hours per week (20 hours/ 40 per week)
FTE in Reports
Project / Team FTE
When planning resources, you often sum the FTEs across people:
Example:
Alice = 1.0 FTE
Bob = 0.5 FTE
Claire = 0.25 FTE
Total team FTE = 1.75
This helps you compare against project demand. If a project requires 3 FTEs, but you only have 1.75 available, you know you’re under-resourced.
Time-Phased FTE
In project planning, you may calculate FTEs over a month or year:
Step 1: Total hours worked in period ÷ default full-time hours in that period.
Example: If default full-time hours per month = 160 (40×4), and one person logs 120 hours in March:
FTE=120/ 160=0.75 FTE
What if I have multiple teams and each has a different definition of full-time hours?
If you have staff in different regions and each region has a different definition of "full-time hours" (e.g., some regions' full-time hours are 8 hours, while others are 7.5 hours), you can choose only one region's full-time-hour definition and set it as the account default Full-time hours.
You can set people in other regions' capacity based on custom working hours in their contracts, so their daily and weekly capacity hours are accurately reflected. However, it will not translate to 1 FTE.
People in other regions with a different full-time-hour capacity will appear as having over or under 1 FTE capacity.
In this setup, we recommend:
When viewing the People Planner, select Availability (h) as your display mode
When scheduling assignments for people, use Capacity % as the Effort Unit instead of FTE to avoid confusion.
Example
For example, if the account's default full-time hours are 8 hours, staff who are in the region working 7.5 hours full-time will be classified as having a capacity of 0.94 FTE (7.5 hours / 8 hours = 0.94):
If you add assignments to them, the default Effort will be based on their contract capacity, which is 0.94 FTE:
If you override the input and schedule 1 FTE of assignment to them, they will be treated as overallocated. This is because you are scheduling 40 hours of work to a person whose capacity is just 37.5 hours:
In this setup, we strongly recommend using Capacity % as the effort unit. Capacity % is based on each individual person's contract capacity. Therefore, assigning an assignment at 100% to a person with 37.5 hours of contract capacity would mean scheduling 37.5 hours of work:
