Placeholders at Float
A placeholder is a temporary resource used to hold allocations that have not yet been assigned to a specific person. Using placeholders helps teams plan ahead—whether you’re hiring, backfilling roles, or exploring resource needs.
Common use cases
Planning future work - use placeholders to outline roles or tasks waiting for approval or in early project planning stages.
Capturing work for potential hires - represent roles for future team members to plan and visualize upcoming hiring needs.
Managing shared or non-human resources - use placeholders to represent shared resources like vehicles, equipment, or rooms that are essential to your projects but not tied to individuals.
Placeholder limits
While you can add as many placeholders as you need, each Float plan includes a set number of fee placeholders:
Starter plan: 1 free placeholder included
Pro plan: 5 free placeholders included
Enterprise plan: Custom to your team’s needs. Chat with Sales to find out more!
Additional placeholders count as paid seats on your plan and can be added the same way you add people.
Adding placeholders
To add a placeholder:
1. Click the + button in the top-right of Float and then Add person, or use the keyboard shortcut Shift+E.
2. In the Type field, select Placeholder.
📝Note: Once added, placeholders appear at the bottom of the Schedule by default but can be moved using the custom sort option.
Placeholder profile
You can customize each placeholder's profile with relevant details.
In the Name field, you can indicate the name or the specific role, e.g., “Future Designer” or “Studio Camera #2”.
Profile picture—By default, each placeholder on your Schedule has a diamond icon set as the avatar, making it easily distinguishable from people.
In the Info tab, you can optionally add the role, rates, departments, or tags as needed.
Placeholders cannot be assigned access rights or an email address.
In the Availablity tab, you can set the placeholder's start and end date, their public holidays and add any notes as needed. Placeholders do not have specific days and hours availability settings.
Similar to people, you can assign placeholders to specific projects in the Projects tab.
Scheduling
You can allocate time to placeholders the same way you do for other team members. Because placeholders do not have custom availability settings, they cannot be scheduled for overtime.
Once ready, you can drag and drop any of the placeholder’s allocations into other people’s schedules.
Time off cannot be scheduled for placeholders.
You can search and filter placeholders like you can other resources.
Swapping placeholder to a person
If you planned the project work for the placeholder and you want to replace it with the actual person, you can use the swap option to reassign all the project work at once. On the Project plan, mouse over the placeholder's name and select Swap person.
After selecting the person to swap onto this project, the placeholder’s scheduled allocations will be automatically reassigned to them.
📝Note: If there was some time already logged for a placeholder, after you swap people, the previously logged time will be permanently deleted.
Reports
Placeholders can be included/excluded from the reports as needed using the People filter.
Placeholders do not display any capacity or overtime hours in the reports. It always defaults to zero.
Additional notes
To learn more about legacy placeholders, check the Legacy Placeholders article.