Approving a planned position in Headcount Planner creates the actual Job Board requisition, with its title, salary range, skills, and employment type already carried over — not an export file, not a second entry in a separate recruiting system. From there, hiring status is tracked through to filled inside the same app.

Each forecast holds named what-if scenarios — conservative, aggressive, cost-optimization, and others — with budget, headcount, and ROI calculated from each one's assumptions, so two or more can be compared side by side before one is locked in as the plan. AI can draft a first version of a demand forecast from stated business goals, propose alternate scenarios, and suggest budget or hiring optimizations — a starting point to review, not an auto-approved plan.

Built-in analytics track planned vs. actual headcount and budget variance by department, and the Headcount Agent answers plain-English questions about plans, budgets, and pending requisitions.

How headcount is forecast by department, how what-if scenarios are compared on budget, hires, and ROI, how approved positions become Job Board requisitions, and how planned versus actual hires and time-to-fill are tracked.

Recruiting

Highlights

Forecast headcount by department with annual or quarterly plans and multiple what-if scenarios.

Compare scenarios side by side on budget, hires, ROI, and timeline, then lock one as the plan.

Route positions through approval, then create a fully-populated Job Board requisition with one click.

Track planned vs actual hires, budget variance, time-to-fill, and cost-per-hire in built-in analytics.

Let AI draft demand forecasts, scenario options, and budget-optimization suggestions.

Ask the Headcount Agent plain-English questions about plans, variance, and pending requisitions.

Capabilities

Recruiting & Connected Apps

One-click creation of a fully-populated Job Board requisition from an approved position
Manually advance hiring status (start hiring, mark filled) as recruiting progresses
Mark a position filled once a candidate is hired
Auto-generated position IDs (DEPT-ROLE-YEAR-###)

AI Planning Assistance

AI workforce-demand forecast from business goals and growth assumptions
AI scenario recommendations for a forecast
AI budget and hiring optimization suggestions
AI salary benchmarks and talent-availability analysis
Natural-language questions via the Headcount Agent

Forecasts & Scenarios

Annual and quarterly forecast creation
Six scenario types per forecast (conservative through market expansion)
Revenue-growth, budget-constraint and hiring-velocity assumptions per scenario
Auto-calculated ROI, cost-per-hire and timeline from assumptions
Select one scenario as the primary plan
Side-by-side comparison of two or more scenarios
Duplicate a forecast with all scenarios and budgets

Budgets, Positions & Approvals

Department-level budgets within each scenario
Position templates and create-from-template
Forecast validation and activation workflow
Forecast-level approval with approver and timestamp
Per-position approval lifecycle (planned through filled)
Bulk position status updates and bulk approvals
Position cancellation with a recorded reason
Publish and unpublish department budgets

Market Intelligence Library

Curate a market-intelligence library (compensation, talent-market, competitor records)
CSV import of market data
Filter by category, industry, geography, data source and freshness
Coverage scoring and intelligence-gap identification

Reporting & Analytics

Planned vs actual headcount and budget variance
Department-level budget-variance breakdown
Hiring-velocity, time-to-fill and cost-per-hire trends
Executive report templates (frequency, audience, sections)
Executive summary, budget, hiring-effectiveness and market reports
CSV analytics and grid export

Limits & 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
Employment types: Full-time, Part-time, PRN, Contract, Intern
Planning horizon: One fiscal year per forecast
Access: Manager, Admin, Super Admin, or designated app admin
Pricing: License required (per-tenant opt-in)

Screenshots

Headcount planner dashboard — open requisitions, approvals, and budget burn

Headcount grid — plan roles by department, cost center, and start month

Analytics dashboard — planned vs actual hires, time-to-fill, and budget variance

AI forecasting — workforce demand projections with confidence scores and risk levels

Use cases

Annual workforce plan

An HR director builds next year's headcount forecast by department, adding conservative, moderate, and aggressive scenarios to model different growth outcomes.

Scenario comparison

Finance compares two or more scenarios side by side on total budget, planned hires, ROI, and timeline before selecting one as the primary plan.

Approve-to-hire handoff

A manager creates a fully-populated Job Board requisition from an approved position with one click, then manually advances hiring status as recruiting progresses.

Budget vs actual tracking

A VP tracks filled-position spend against approved department budgets and flags teams running ahead of or behind plan.

Executive board report

HR generates a planned-vs-actual executive summary with cost-per-hire and time-to-fill trends for leadership review.

Resources

Headcount Planner Datasheet (PDF)

Datasheet

Features, capabilities, pricing model, and FAQ on one downloadable sheet — share it with your team.

FAQ

Headcount Planner requires a license and is opt-in per tenant. It is disabled by default until an administrator enables it for your business from the Apps Marketplace.

Because it exposes compensation budgets and salary bands, Headcount Planner is a management surface rather than an all-employee one. Managers, admins, super admins, and users designated as app administrators can access it. The detailed export of raw salary and budget rows is restricted to managers and above.

Each scenario holds department-level budgets. A department budget is calculated from planned headcount times budget-per-position, plus per-hire recruiting and onboarding costs. Totals roll up to the scenario and forecast, and variance is tracked against what filled positions actually spend.

Forecasts move from draft to validated to active, and can carry a forecast-level approval with an approver and timestamp. Individual positions have their own lifecycle — planned, approved (or rejected), requisition created, in progress, filled, or cancelled — and you can approve positions in bulk. Each forecast has a single approver; delegated routing to alternate approvers is not yet available.

Yes. Once a position is approved, you can create a fully-populated Job Board requisition from it with one click. As recruiting progresses, you manually advance the position to "in progress" and mark it filled when someone is hired — hiring status does not sync back automatically.

With AI features enabled by an administrator, the app can generate a workforce-demand forecast from your business goals, recommend alternative scenarios, suggest budget and hiring optimizations, and analyze salary benchmarks and talent availability. The Headcount Agent also answers plain-English questions about plans, variance, budgets, and pending requisitions.

Each forecast covers a single fiscal year. For multi-year planning, create separate annual or quarterly forecasts and compare them in analytics.

Headcount Planner is the upstream planning step: it decides which positions to open, budgets them, and runs approvals before any hiring starts. Once approved, it hands off to Job Board, where the requisition is posted and candidates are tracked through to hire. Talent Hub layers cross-job recruiting analytics — pipeline visibility, time-to-hire, source effectiveness — on top of Job Board and the rest of the recruiting suite. Succession Hub is a separate track for leadership continuity: succession matrices, high-potential identification, and executive pipeline planning. Use Headcount Planner to plan and approve the roles, Job Board to hire for them, and Talent Hub for cross-job reporting.