In Microsoft Project, resources come in two basic types: work and material . A work resource is any person or thing that is assigned to work on tasks . People are the most common kind of work resource, but work resources can also be pieces of equipment or machinery that are required to finish a task. Material resources are things that get consumed by the act of working on a task. Examples of material resources are lumber on a construction project, or network cable on an IT project.
Work resources have calendars that define their working and nonworking days and times. How Project spreads work assigned to a resource across time depends primarily on that resource's calendar settings.
Material resources have no calendar. Project considers them as always available. It is important to note that Project will not help you keep track of how much of a material resource you have left in stock. It will only track how much you have used according to your resource assignments. Material resources also have their own specific field called Material Label. This label is how the material is represented when it is assigned to a task. For instance, a material resource called Network Cable might have a label like "ft." When this resource is assigned to a task with five units, it will read 5 ft .
