Hi
In my consideration excel is not a complete resource planning software. One can do a bit of scheduling in excel but it doesn’t have those robust features that are a pre requisite in a resource planning software.
You should consider something that exclusively focuses on resource planning, management and scheduling. I searched a lot on web for it and I found that most software had functionalities which are beyond our requirement and many of them too expensive.
I halted my search on software named eResource Scheduler. I tried it for a while, it was worth trying. It had everything that was needed. Drag & drop scheduling, niche detailed reporting, time sheet management are some of the many features the software comes along with. The software has an inbuilt check that prevents overloading of a resource which in-turn helps when the resources are being shared. Try it, it may prove useful to you.
Thanks