Advanced work planning with Mixed mode

For most teams, the With subtasks or Without subtasks work planning options will cover everything needed for effective project planning. We strongly recommend choosing one of these two options to ensure the best data consistency and reporting across your site.

However, larger organizations may have more complex structures, where some teams need the granularity of subtasks while others prefer simpler task lists. In this case, the advanced work planning option – Mixed mode – allows both work planning approaches to coexist on the same Scoro site.

1. How mixed mode works

1.1. Quote-to-task flow options

In Mixed mode, Scoro doesn't force a single planning logic site-wide. Instead, you decide how to handle the budgeted and planned time and the task structure before creating tasks from your quote.

Let’s look at how the quote-to-task flow with Mixed mode works in practice:

1. Just like in the With subtasks work planning mode, you start by creating a quote. Once your client confirms the quote, create a project from it.
   
2. Then, you create tasks from your quote. By default, tasks will show up with zero planned hours, as if you’ll use them as parent tasks and break them down with subtasks later. This is where you can decide how you’ll allocate the budgeted hours:
   • If you plan to use subtasks in your project, create the parent tasks with zero planned hours. The total planned time of subtasks will roll up to the parent.
   • If you prefer to distribute the quoted hours directly across assignees, you can set the budgeted hours as planned hours by clicking the Actions button, then selecting Set quoted hours as planned duration. Once you’ve created the tasks, you’ll be able to use the custom split of planned time to allocate the planned hours to the assignees.

1.2. Custom split of planned time preferences

With Mixed mode, you can also use the custom split of planned time functionality, which allows you to split the planned hours for regular tasks and parent tasks among assignees.

After enabling the Mixed mode work planning option under Settings > Work and projects > Calendar and tasks, choose the default planned time split preference as ‘Equal’ or ‘Custom’.

While your split preference will be applied to new tasks by default, you can always modify the planned hours for each assignee as needed.

Learn more about the custom split of planned time.

2. Is Mixed mode the right fit for your site?

Mixed mode is a hybrid approach best suited for companies with diverse operational needs. While it offers the most flexibility on your Scoro site, that freedom comes with some trade-offs and requires much higher manual oversight than the other methods. 

Because the system allows both direct planned time allocation and roll-up logic simultaneously, it is easy to accidentally inflate your project plan.

The risk of double-planning

The biggest risk in Mixed mode is double-counting your planned hours. Unlike the With subtasks work planning mode, where a parent task acts as a container with zero planned hours, the Mixed mode lets you split the planned time on the parent task between the task assignees and create subtasks that roll up their planned time to the parent.

Let’s use an example to see where the conflict happens:

• A consulting agency has quoted 50 hours for a service.
• A project manager creates a task from that quote and uses the 50 quoted hours as the task’s planned hours.
• Later, the project manager decides to add a subtask with 5 planned hours. Scoro summarizes these planned durations, resulting in a total of 55 planned hours for the parent task.

To fix this budgeted and planned time inconsistency, the project manager must manually reduce the parent task’s planned duration to “make room” for the subtask. This manual adjustment is error-prone; if missed, it can lead to overplanned projects, inaccurate utilization reports, and confusing data across various Scoro views.

Recommendations

• If the risk of data inconsistencies is too high and your team would rather avoid them, agree on a single way to work in your entire organization. This means choosing either the With subtasks or Without subtasks work planning option. This greatly simplifies your internal workflows and ensures the best data consistency for your long-term reporting.
• If your organization truly needs the hybrid approach that Mixed mode brings, you must implement clear rules for setting up projects consistently. This is essential to ensure your reports remain accurate and reliable.