Headcount planning

Overview

Headcount planning is relevant for almost every company. Planning on a people- or department-level is typically needed when analyzing salaries. However, the actuals data is typically structured slightly differently in accounting systems. Here, we'll review the differences and our recommended approach to setting up headcount planning.

Basics

Importing actuals data for salaries

Your chart of accounts typically includes a range of accounts related to salaries, including base salaries, fees, taxes, and more. You decide whether to create individual rows for each account or map them together into one row.

If you have implemented dimensions, salaries account data can additionally be broken down into greater detail levels, such as departments or people.

Creating forecasts for salaries

The recommended approach is to structure your headcount forecasts in a separate tab, keeping them clearly separated from the P&L.

You can structure the headcount plan with groups for departments that include rows for people. If you wish to include multiple items per person, you can also create a group or section per person and then create rows per item.

Salary forecast values are typically hardcoded figures corresponding to base salaries. If you wish to work with yearly increases, you can leverage the if_month(NUM) function, e..g,

\text{"Base salaries"}[-1]*(1+\text{if_month}(1)*5\%)

If you include all salary forecasts in a group called "Total salaries", you can reference that to pull the aggregate amounts into the P&L.