Learn how to compare planned and actual project hours, investigate variance, and run a useful weekly delivery review for professional services teams.
Hourglass Editorial Team
Hourglass · 14 September 2026
Most teams create a plan, then measure success against a deadline. By the time a deadline is missed, the first useful warning may be weeks old. Comparing planned and actual hours each week exposes the gap sooner. The goal is not to make every hour match. It is to learn where the plan differs from the work and decide what to do while the project is still moving.
Start with planned hours for a specific period, person and project. Compare them with hours actually logged to that same period and project. Keep leave and internal work visible so they do not look like unexplained delivery gaps.
Hours variance is actual hours minus planned hours. Variance percentage is hours variance divided by planned hours, multiplied by 100.
If a consultant was scheduled for 20 hours on a project and logged 26, the variance is +6 hours, or +30%. That deserves a question, but it does not by itself prove the project is over budget. The consultant might have brought forward work that was planned for next week. Check task progress and remaining effort before deciding.
Three common patterns mean different things. Actual hours exceed plan while progress is on plan: work may have been underestimated or assigned to a more expensive mix of people. Actual hours match plan while progress falls behind: the team may be blocked, waiting on the client or producing more rework than expected. Actual hours fall below plan while progress falls behind: available capacity may not have been used as planned, perhaps because other projects took priority.
Also check where hours were logged. A healthy total can hide a senior specialist doing work budgeted for a junior colleague, or a team member spending unplanned time on a different client.
For each active project, ask four questions: how many hours were planned and logged last week, what was completed and what remains, what explains any meaningful difference, and does the next two weeks' allocation or project forecast need to change.
Record one decision and an owner when action is needed. Examples include moving a milestone, getting a client dependency resolved, changing an assignment or updating the estimate to finish. A variance report without a decision is only another report.
There is no universal percentage that should trigger an escalation. A two-hour difference matters on a ten-hour task and may be noise on a large programme. Choose thresholds based on project size, remaining budget and the cost of acting late.
At project close, group variances by type of work. Did discovery repeatedly take longer? Were approval rounds underestimated? Was the original capacity plan too optimistic? Use that evidence to adjust the next proposal and resource plan.
Hourglass brings the weekly planner, time tracking and utilisation reporting into the same platform, so managers can compare scheduled work with logged hours without assembling separate sheets, across both team utilisation and the wider reporting suite.
Both. Project totals show budget pressure; person-level differences show allocation problems and where the work actually landed.
Set a predictable weekly submission point. Mark incomplete periods clearly, since missing time can make an overrun appear to improve.
No. The concern is whether extra hours were planned, billable and supported by progress. Review the reason before reacting to the number.
A weekly comparison of planned and actual hours, with one decision recorded per project, so delivery problems surface while there is still time to fix them.
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