Soft booking

A soft booking is the planning equivalent of a pencil reservation. It marks a person or a generic role against a project for a window of time so the capacity is visible to anyone reading the schedule, but it carries less commitment than a confirmed allocation. Soft bookings are the standard way to model pitches that have not yet won, projects that are pending sign-off and contingency staffing for at-risk work.

Most planning tools treat soft bookings as a distinct status that can be filtered in or out of capacity views. A leadership review might look at confirmed bookings only, while a sales pipeline review might include all soft bookings to see what the studio could absorb if everything closes. Promoting a soft booking to a confirmed allocation is usually a one-click action once the project is signed.

Related: tentative project, allocation, scenario planning.