This feature is currently being rolled out across Float. If you don’t see it in your account yet, it will be available to your team in the coming weeks—stay tuned!
Unassigned roles make it easier to estimate, scope, and plan projects without knowing exactly which people will do the work. This helps improve forecasting accuracy for cost, margin, and hiring needs.
Use cases for unassigned roles
Estimating a project
When scoping a new project, you may know what roles are needed and for how long, but not yet know who will do the work. For example:
One Designer at 100% capacity for six weeks
Two Frontend Developers at 100% for four weeks
One QA Engineer at 50% for one week
You can add these roles as unassigned during the planning phase and assign actual people later if the project is confirmed.
Planning with unknown resources
Sometimes you know the role you'll need but not the exact person. For example:
You know you’ll need a Motion Designer in month three of a project
You're still checking the availability of your team or hiring a new person
Unassigned roles let you hold space in the project plan and assign a person later.
Planning the full scope for an accurate margin
An accurate project margin is critical for profitability; however, margin can become misleading when only part of the work is planned. As an example:
A two-month project is partially planned. The manager adds people only for the first month and leaves the second month blank.
Because future work isn't accounted for, costs are underreported, and the margin looks artificially high.
Unassigned roles let you plan the full scope, even when people aren’t confirmed yet.
Unassigned role
Unassigned roles can be described as role-based placeholders used for project planning.
They differ from person-type placeholders that are used for headcount planning.
Feature | Unassigned role | Placeholder |
Purpose | Plan projects when people are not yet known | Plan hiring needs or manage overflow work |
Use case | Need two Designers, don’t know who yet | Need to hire a Designer or move work temporarily |
Conversion | Assign a person to the unassigned role | Swap the placeholder with a person when hired |
Role-based project planning
Adding unassigned roles to your projects
Adding unassigned roles to your projects works the same way as adding actual team members. There are a few ways you can do it.
2) With the +Add on the Project view, selecting Role.
3) With the +Add on the Project plan with the specific project filter applied, selecting Role.
All available roles are displayed with their cost and bill rates (if set).
If the role does not have role rates set, the Account Owner or one of the team Admins can add them in Team settings > Roles & rates.
📝Note: Some of the roles might be greyed out. For a role to be active for planning, it must be assigned to at least one person on your team.
Adding unassigned roles to project phases
You can add unassigned roles to specific project phases only by adding them to the phase's Team section. If your project’s budget is fee-based, this is also where you can specify different bill rates that will be applied to that phase only. Those will apply as you allocate time for the corresponding phase/s.
Roles added on the phase level will automatically show in the project's Team section with the phase indicator.
Assigning the person to an unassigned role
Once a role is added to the project or phase’s team, you can assign it to an actual person at any time with the +Assign button.
You can choose a person with the same role (preferred), or anyone else on the team. People whose role matches the unassigned role show first in the assign person drop-down. The role, together with its cost rates and bill rates, is displayed next to the person's name.
If a selected person has different bill rates than the role, you can choose which rate to use: either keep the same bill rate as the role or use the person's bill rates.
Allocations already scheduled for the unassigned role will be automatically assigned to the new person.
Searching for unassigned roles
If any of your projects have some unassigned roles, you can quickly identify them using the Person type filter, selecting Unassigned role.
You can also add a Role filter to narrow your search.
Unassigned roles in project templates
To streamline planning, create project templates with unassigned roles instead of specific people. When starting a new project, use the template to quickly assign people to matching roles.
Reports
On the reports, you can use the People: Unassigned filter to include/exclude unassigned roles.
People report
The People tab of the People report shows the allocation for all the unassigned roles grouped by role. Under each unassigned role, the list of projects is displayed.
Unassigned roles are also listed under the Roles, Departments, Projects and Tasks tabs.
Single Project Report
On the Single Project Report, allocations scheduled for the unassigned roles are summarized by role in the Team tab.
If the time is allocated for a specific task, the unassigned role allocations will also show in the Tasks tab.
Roles management
The Account Owner and the Admins can see an overview of all the roles on the Roles & rates page within the Team settings. This is where roles can be added, edited, or deleted.
In the Unassigned column, we display the number of projects with unassigned roles.
Clicking on the number opens the Project plan with the role and unassigned role filers applied.
Additional notes
Unassigned roles are included in the CSV export of the reports.