Headcount Plans You Can Defend
The headcount plan, the actuals, and the gap between them in one place — department forecasts, open requisitions, budget impact, and variance you can explain in the next finance review.
What Headcount Planner Helps You Do
Build Headcount Plans
Department-level headcount plans by role, level, location, and start quarter. Reusable templates, scenarios, and version history.
Track Positions
Every planned position with its status, approval, target start date, hiring manager and the Job Board requisition it became — advancing on its own as the hire lands.
Manage Budgets
Per-position budget plus recruiting and onboarding cost per hire, rolling up to department, scenario and plan. Variance against what filled positions actually cost.
Route Approvals
Approve positions in the app or from the Manager Approvals dashboard, beside leave and timesheets. Approvals hold — change the role or the money on an approved seat and it goes back for a decision. Requests above plan are flagged, not blocked.
Analyze Variance
Plan vs actual variance by department, function, role, and time period. Spot under-hiring, over-hiring, and mix issues before they snowball.
Forecast With AI
Draft a demand forecast from stated business goals, get alternative scenarios proposed, and see budget and hiring optimisations suggested — a starting point to review, never an auto-approved plan.
One App, Three Audiences
For Finance & People Analytics
The plan, the budget, and the variance — all in one place.
- Department plans — roles, seniority, employment type, target start dates, per-position budget.
- Budget rollup — per-position budget plus recruiting and onboarding cost — by department, scenario and plan.
- Variance analysis — plan vs actual by department, role, time.
- Scenarios — model different hiring pace scenarios for board and budget reviews.
For Hiring Managers & Business Leaders
Their positions, target dates, and where each one stands.
- My requisitions — every position they raised or hire for, with its status and its Job Board requisition.
- Target start dates — overdue and due-soon positions flagged.
- Approval status — decided in the app or from the Manager Approvals dashboard; a change to an approved seat goes back for a decision.
- Team headcount — current vs planned by department.
For Recruiting Leaders
What the plan will ask of the recruiting team, and when.
- Open positions — by department, by status, by target start date.
- Hiring timeline — upcoming positions in start-date order for the quarters ahead.
- Time-to-fill and cost-per-hire — trends from positions the plan actually filled.
- Overdue positions — past their target start and still open.
How A Headcount Plan Moves Through The System
Headcount Planner In Practice
A practical scope check: what the app covers, which controls matter, and the workflows teams usually run first.
Core workflow
Create headcount forecasts by department, compare what-if scenarios, and let AI draft the demand forecast from your business goals.
Controls that matter
Approvals & Position Workflow includes Forecast validation and activation workflow and Forecast-level approval (approved_by, approved_at).
Scope and specs
Useful specs: Forecast types: Annual, Quarterly, Project, Strategic, Custom; Scenario types: Conservative, Optimistic, Aggressive, Baseline, Cost Optimization, Market Expansion; Position statuses: Planned, Approved, Rejected, Requisition Created, In Progress, Filled, Cancelled.
Annual workforce plan
An HR director builds next year's headcount forecast by department, with conservative, moderate and aggressive scenarios for the growth the business is planning.
Scenario comparison
Finance models three hiring scenarios—aggressive growth, moderate, and conservative—and compares their budget impact side by side.
Budget allocation
A VP allocates approved headcount budget across teams, tracks spend against plan, and flags departments that are ahead or behind target.
Connected To The Rest Of MangoApps
→ Job Board
An approved position becomes a Job Board requisition in one click, and the position follows the hire — in progress when applicants arrive, filled when the accepted candidate becomes an employee.
← People
Department plans are keyed to the org chart, and current headcount on the grid is the live directory — a renamed department keeps its plan, and actuals are never re-keyed.
→ Manager Approvals
Positions awaiting a decision sit in the same Manager Approvals dashboard as leave, timesheets and job offers, each showing its standing against the department's plan.
→ Ask AI
The Headcount Agent answers plan, variance, budget and pending-position questions in chat, and can raise a position request that enters the same approval queue — after you confirm.
REPLACES POINT TOOLS
One headcount plan in place of finance's spreadsheet and HR's tracker
Most companies plan headcount in a finance spreadsheet, track requisitions in Greenhouse, watch variance in Anaplan, and reconcile by email. Headcount Planner retires that — and puts plan, requisition, actuals, and pipeline in one app.
Pigment
Modern finance planning platform
- Headcount plan lives next to live employee records, requisitions, and recruiting pipeline — not connected by quarterly CSV exports to Pigment
- HR and finance work the same plan instead of reconciling two spreadsheets after the quarter closes
- Same per-employee suite license covers headcount planning AND every other module, instead of a Pigment platform fee
Anaplan Workforce
Enterprise planning platform
- Deploys in days, not the multi-quarter Anaplan model-build engagement
- Department forecasts, requisitions, and actuals reconcile in one place — no Anaplan-to-HRIS sync to maintain
- Approvals run through the same workflow engine as every other HR request — one inbox per manager
Workday Adaptive Planning
Workday's planning module
- Independent of Workday HCM — works whether your HRIS is MangoApps, ADP, BambooHR, or anything else
- Hires flow back into the plan automatically from Job Board — not a separate Workday Recruiting view
- Per-employee suite license covers planning plus the rest of HR — not a Workday Adaptive seat tier
Causal / Cube
SMB-focused planning tools
- Built for HR plus finance, not finance only — plan, actuals, positions and approvals all in one app
- HR Q&A about open reqs, variance, and budget impact answered by the agent grounded in live data
- One audit log across plan changes, requisition approvals, and offer acceptances — not a spreadsheet version history
Excel + Greenhouse + email reconciliation
The DIY headcount stack
- One system of truth that finance, HR, and recruiting all see — no Friday reconciliation meeting
- Variance against actuals visible the day a hire starts — not a month later when finance closes the books
- Approval workflows replace email threads with auditable routing
PLATFORM ADVANTAGE
Headcount Planner inherits everything else MangoApps already does
A point planning tool has to build, buy, or integrate each of these. Headcount Planner gets them for free because the platform already runs them.
Identity & SSO
Finance, HR, and managers work the plan with the same SSO they use for every other app. No separate planning-tool seats to provision.
HRIS-synced actuals
Department actuals pull from the live employee record — every hire, term, and transfer is reflected in the plan the same day.
Translation in 50+ languages
Plan reviews, requisition forms, and variance reports translate inline so global finance and HR partners work in their preferred language.
Audit log & retention
Plan revisions, requisition approvals, and variance commentary land in the same audit log eDiscovery and Legal already use.
Mobile app & approvals
Department leaders approve requisitions and review variance from the same mobile inbox as every other HR request.
Workflow & automation
An approved requisition opens a Job Board posting; a hire updates actuals and closes the requisition — using one automation engine.
INDUSTRY FIT
Built for the organizations where headcount actually drives the P&L
Headcount Planner is the planning surface for workforces whose cost structure is mostly people — and whose hiring plan has to defend itself in every monthly business review.
Professional Services
Utilization-driven hiring plans with skill-tier requirements, pipeline coverage by practice, and variance against project bookings.
Technology
Engineering org plans with role-level requisitions, leveling guardrails, and variance against burn rate — visible per team and per quarter.
Healthcare
Census-driven nursing plans, credentialed-role gaps, and shift-coverage requirements feeding requisition volume by unit and shift.
Retail
Store-level headcount plans tied to traffic, sales mix, and seasonal adjustments — with district-level rollups for finance review.
Manufacturing
Production-driven plant headcount plans with shift-coverage, skill-tier, and union-step requirements rolled into requisition volume.
Financial Services
Regulated-role hiring plans, revenue-team coverage models, and variance against the financial plan that survives audit and board review.
WHY MANGOAPPS WINS
One platform beats a stack of point solutions on every axis
The argument finance, security, IT, and HR all share — and the one a planning point tool structurally cannot answer.
Cheaper than the stack
One per-employee suite license replaces Pigment + Anaplan + Greenhouse reporting add-on + a finance-to-HR reconciliation tool — and the bill stops growing.
More secure
Comp-loaded plan data sits behind the same identity perimeter and permission model as the rest of HR — not exported to a planning vendor.
Easier to deploy
Already deployed if you have MangoApps. Load departments, define plan versions, map approvers, and run the first review cycle the same quarter.
Easier to use
Department leaders approve reqs and review variance from the same mobile inbox as every other HR request. No Anaplan login.
Easier to manage
One admin surface for plan versions, requisition workflows, and variance rules — not a planning tool plus an ATS plus a reconciliation sheet.
Easier to extend
A requisition approval opens a Job Board posting and triggers a finance notification — using one automation engine.
AI is actually better
Headcount Planner AI answers "what's our variance to plan in Engineering?" and "how many reqs are stuck waiting on finance?" using live plan, requisition, and actuals data — governed by the same permission model.
Headcount Planner Screenshots
Real product screens from Headcount Planner workflows, pulled from the app screenshot gallery.
Ask Questions With Headcount Planner AI
Headcount Planner has a paired AI agent for plans, variance, requisitions, trends, and budget — same data, same permissions as the app.
Headcount Planner AI
Plans, variance, requisitions, trends, and budget — live in chat.
Customer Success
How Customers Use It
Customer Case Studies
Customer Case Studies
Video Case Studies
Customer Case Studies
Customer Case Studies
Customer Case Studies
MangoApps became the glue that holds our fast-growing company together. It gives every new employee—from newly acquired teams to recent hires—an immediate sense of belonging and access to everything they need.
Jeff Petet
Senior VP of IT
Petauri
Frequently Asked Questions
Spreadsheets capture intent but don't connect to actuals or hiring. Headcount Planner reads actual headcount from People, turns approved positions into Job Board requisitions that report back as they fill, and keeps variance, overdue positions and budget burn current without anyone re-keying a number.
Yes. Scenario modeling lets finance and people ops compare hiring-pace scenarios, location shifts, role-mix changes, and what-ifs against the approved plan. Useful for budget reviews and board scenarios.
Every position starts as planned and waits for an approver — in the app or on the Manager Approvals dashboard, where each request shows how many of the department's planned seats are already taken and flags requests above plan. Once approved, a change to the title, seniority, employment type or compensation withdraws the approval and sends the seat back for a decision, with the approver told what changed. Who may approve is a tenant setting, separate from who may raise a position.
Planned headcount times budget per position, plus recruiting and onboarding cost per hire. Each position then carries its own salary range, total compensation budget, signing bonus and equity, and variance is measured against what filled positions actually cost.
An approved position becomes a Job Board requisition in one click, with title, salary range, skills and hiring manager carried over. From there the position follows the hire — in progress when the first applicant arrives, filled the moment the accepted candidate becomes an employee — and time-to-fill and cost-per-hire trends build from those fills.
Yes. Department plans are keyed to the org chart in People, so a renamed department keeps its plan and its manager keeps access, and current headcount on the grid is the live directory, not a typed-in number.
The agent surfaces plans, variance, open requisitions, trends, and budget in chat — same data, same permissions as the app. See the agent page for the full capability list.
Let's Talk
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- Proven Results: 98% customer retention rate.
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