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Headcount

Plan the company's people cost, and know what the underlying roster actually holds.

A headcount plan is not a headcount number — it's built on named people, each with their own start date and cost.

Headcount follows the same Overview / Master Data / Plan library shape as Revenue. New plan asks for a Plan name, a Select plan source, a cut-off date for excluding inactive employees, and Select departments to plan — so a plan can cover the whole company or a chosen subset of departments, before the same Read/Write/Approve table.

Master Data is the actual employee roster the plan is built from: Type, Full name, Role, Start date, End date, Hours, MTH Gross, Fully Loaded, Employer Cost, Benefits, Location, Department — one row per person. Sync data, Edit and Customize table sit above it, the same pattern as Revenue and Expenses, with its own Source and Last updated line — though the source here can simply read a dash, meaning the roster is maintained by hand rather than fed from a connected HRIS.

⚠ MTH Gross and Fully Loaded are not the same figure, and the gap between them is real cost. MTH Gross is salary alone; Fully Loaded adds Employer Cost and Benefits on top. Planning off MTH Gross alone understates what a hire actually costs the company — sometimes by a wide margin.

Headcount Overview showing the currently selected plan Budget planning Dev, a chart split into Development and Product, Merge plans and New plan buttons, and a plan library listing plan name, author, dates, status, departments and active flag.
  1. 1Currently selected plan
  2. 2Chart, split by department
  3. 3Merge plans and New plan
  4. 4Plan library, with several draft plans across departments

ValueWorks 2026.08

Headcount Master Data showing source and last-updated information, table controls, search, and the employee roster with compensation and organizational columns.
  1. 1Source and Last updated — Source may show a dash when maintained manually
  2. 2Sync data, Edit and Customize table controls
  3. 3One row per employee, including role, dates, hours and compensation
  4. 4Employer Cost, Benefits, Location, Department and Cost-Center fields

ValueWorks 2026.08

The Create new Plan dialog for headcount, with Plan name, Select plan source set to Master Data, a cut-off date for excluding inactive employees, a Select departments to plan dropdown, and a user permissions table with Read, Write and Approve columns.
  1. 1Cut-off date for excluding inactive employees
  2. 2Select departments to plan
  3. 3Read, Write and Approve, per person

ValueWorks 2026.08

Takeaways

  • Headcount plans can be scoped to chosen departments, not only the whole company.

  • Master Data is a real employee roster — one row per person, not a headcount total.

  • Fully Loaded cost includes Employer Cost and Benefits on top of MTH Gross — plan off the wrong one and you understate true cost.

Surfaces covered

  • Liquidity

Also taught in the Academy

Module 6 · Liquidity and runway

Take it as lesson 6.5 in Business Analyst & FP&A