Hoursfor

Hoursfor is an open-source scheduling framework designed to manage and analyze the allocation of work hours across tasks, projects, and teams. It provides a consistent data model for hours, rates, and calendars, enabling organizations to plan capacity and track actuals.

The project began in 2016 as a small library for project managers and evolved into a modular platform with core functionality and optional plugins. It is maintained by a community of contributors, with releases and a public issue tracker. As of 2024, several adopters report integration with popular project-management tools.

Key features include time arithmetic for calculating totals and remaining work, support for non-working days and holiday calendars, multi-time-zone handling, hourly budgeting and forecasting, and reporting dashboards. The system supports data import and export and offers a REST API for integration with payroll and accounting systems.

The architecture centers on a core data model that records WorkHour entries with fields such as date, duration, task, project, and user, along with status. Calendars and time zones are pluggable, and data can be stored in JSON-based stores or relational databases.

In practice, hoursfor is used to forecast capacity, allocate hours to tasks, and compare planned versus actual hours. It produces summaries and charts that aid project managers in resource planning and progress tracking.

Reception has been mixed: it is praised for its simplicity and interoperability, while some users note limited built-in analytics compared with full-suite PM tools. Ongoing development focuses on documentation, integrations, and performance improvements. See also time tracking, resource planning, and project management software.