Bookings vs assignments

Applies To: Project Operations for resource/non-stocked based scenarios, Lite deployment - deal to proforma invoicing

Bookings are the hard or soft allocation of resources to a project. Hard bookings consume a resource's capacity. Bookings represent organizational concepts for teams so that they can understand how resources will be engaged across various projects. Dynamics 365 Project Operations considers bookings a project-level concept.

Unlike bookings, assignments are the commitment of resources to project tasks in the project schedule. The resources can be named or generic. When a resource requirement is derived from the project task assignments, Project Operations uses the effort contours of the resources assignment to build the contours of the resource requirement details. However, a reference to the resource assignments isn't maintained. Updates to the bookings derived from the resource requirement don't update any resource assignments.

Typically, the sum of the bookings for a resource will equal the sum of the resource's assignments across one or many tasks. However, Project Operations doesn't enforce this agreement. The Reconciliation view shows the Project manager places where a resource's bookings and assignments don't agree.