A headcount planning template is a spreadsheet that turns a revenue target into a hiring plan: how many people each team needs each quarter, who to hire as growth or backfill, when each requisition must open, and what the people cost fully loaded. ORM's free Excel template does this for SaaS, starting from ARR, rep ramp and attrition.
Get the headcount planning template
Standard .xlsx, eight tabs, eight quarters (two fiscal years) and two year columns, no macros. Opens in Excel, and in Google Sheets through Drive (Open with > Google Sheets) or File > Import. Yellow cells are inputs. Everything else is a formula.
Quick check: hires and cost for one team next year
A one-year shortcut for a single team. It counts the hires you need to grow the team and replace expected leavers, then prices the year fully loaded. The template does the same by quarter for every team. Defaults are illustrative (a customer success team).
| Line | Amount |
|---|
Growing the team from 5 to 8 people takes 3 growth hires. At 20% attrition on an average of 6.5 people, about 1.3 people leave during the year, so plan 5 hires in total, 2 of them backfills. Each person costs $156,200 a year fully loaded: $105,000 base, $25,200 of payroll load, $20,000 variable and $6,000 of tools. The team costs about $1,065,300 for the year, including $50,000 of recruiting.
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You just priced next year's hiring plan. The Forecast Brief is a short email from Pete Furseth, ORM's COO, built on what ORM sees in its customers' forecasts.
What is a headcount planning template?
It is the working file behind next year's hiring: every team, how many people it needs in each quarter, the hires that gets you there and what they cost. ORM's glossary entry on headcount plan vs capacity plan draws the line this template is built on. A headcount plan counts seats and cost. A capacity plan says how much revenue those seats can deliver after ramp and attrition. A good template does both in one file.
Most free templates in the search results are payroll lists: names, departments, salaries, start dates and a cost total. That answers what the people cost. It does not answer the question the board asks first, which is whether this many people can deliver the revenue target, and whether they will be hired early enough to matter. This template starts there.
What should a headcount plan include?
A headcount plan the board can trust links each team's size to the revenue target, shows growth hires and backfills separately, dates each requisition, and prices it all fully loaded. Each part below is one tab or one block of the template.
| Part of the plan | Question it answers | Where in the template |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue target | What ARR, new-logo ARR, expansion and churn does the plan serve, by quarter? | ARR target |
| Sales capacity | Can the account executives we will have, after ramp and attrition, book the new-logo target? | AE capacity |
| Team drivers | What sets each team's size: AEs per manager, ARR per CSM, employees per G&A head? | Assumptions |
| Attrition and backfills | How many people will leave each team, and how many hires only replace them? | Teams |
| Hiring calendar | Which requisitions open on which date so people start in the right quarter? | Hiring plan |
| Fully loaded cost | What do the people cost with payroll load, variable pay, tools and recruiting, by department? | Cost |
| Checks | Where is capacity short of target, and which requisitions are already late? | Summary |
What is in the template, tab by tab
The workbook has eight tabs. Three take inputs, and the rest calculate. Every quarter column runs across eight quarters, so hires for year 2 show up in year 1, where you have to make them.
| Tab | What it does | What you enter |
|---|---|---|
| Start here | Fill-in order, every formula in words, three rules | Nothing |
| Summary | ARR, AE capacity against target, heads, hires split into growth and backfill, people cost and its share of revenue for eight quarters and two years, plus eight checks | Nothing |
| Assumptions | Company drivers, seasonality, the AE ramp curve, the AE team on day one by tenure level, AE pay, and one driver row for each of up to 11 other teams | 12 inputs, 4 small tables and the team rows |
| ARR target | Year 1 and year 2 targets, the new-logo ARR they need after churn and expansion, the quarterly ARR bridge and subscription revenue | Nothing |
| AE capacity | Capacity of the day-one team and of each hire cohort by quarter, after ramp and attrition; the gap to target; the hires that close it a set number of quarters ahead | Manual AE hires (offers already out) |
| Teams | For each team: required heads from its driver, heads at the start of each quarter, hires, backfills, growth hires, expected departures and fully loaded cost | Optional override of required heads |
| Hiring plan | Hires by team and quarter, totals split into backfills and growth, and the date each requisition must open | Nothing |
| Cost | People cost by team and department (COGS, S&M, R&D, G&A), heads by department, cost as a share of revenue, and loaded cost per head for each team | Nothing |
How do you build a headcount plan from the revenue target?
Work from the ARR target down: size the sales team that has to book it, size every other team from its own driver, then add attrition, dates and cost. With the template that is seven steps.
- Set the target. On Assumptions, enter starting ARR and the growth targets for year 1 and year 2, plus gross and net revenue retention. ARR target shows the new-logo ARR each quarter needs after churn and expansion.
- Describe the AE team you have. Count your account executives by tenure level on day one (level 1 is months 1 to 3, level 6 is month 16 on), then enter quota, seasonality, the ramp curve and AE attrition.
- Read the AE gap and the hires. AE capacity shows what the team can book each quarter and the hires that close each gap, made a set number of quarters ahead (three in the example). Add offers already out as manual hires.
- Give every other team a driver. SDRs and marketing as a ratio to AEs, managers and sales engineers per AE, CSMs and support per dollar of ARR, RevOps per go-to-market head, G&A per employee. R&D usually follows the roadmap, so type its numbers in the Override row on Teams.
- Add attrition and pay. For each team: starting heads, annual attrition, base, variable at target, recruiting cost per hire and time to fill.
- Read hires, dates and cost. Teams and Hiring plan show every hire as growth or backfill and the date the requisition has to open. Cost shows the fully loaded total by department.
- Check and decide. Summary flags quarters where AE capacity is short and requisitions that should already be open. Close a gap by hiring earlier, changing a driver, or taking a smaller number to the board.
Headcount plan example for a $12M ARR SaaS company, 2027 and 2028
This is the worked example inside the example file. The company and every number are illustrative, made up to show the mechanics, except the defaults sourced below. It starts 2027 with $12,000,000 of ARR, 59 people and a board target of 30% ARR growth, then 25% in 2028. It assumes 88% GRR and 101% NRR, the medians in Benchmarkit's 2025 SaaS benchmarks, which are based on 2024 data.
Step 1, the target. Ending ARR of $15,600,000 in year 1 means new customers must bring $3,480,000 of new ARR, after $1,440,000 of churn and contraction and $1,560,000 of expansion. Year 2 needs $3,744,000 of new-logo ARR to reach $19,500,000.
Step 2, the AE team without hires. The company has six AEs: four fully tenured, one in month 10 and one in month 4. Quota is $700,000 of new ARR a year, phased 20%, 26%, 22% and 32% by quarter. The illustrative ramp says an AE books 5%, 20%, 40%, 60% and 70% of full quota in tenure levels 1 to 5, and 85% once tenured. AE attrition is 30% a year. Without a single hire, that team covers 80.8% of year 1's new-logo target ($2,810,582) and 57.9% of year 2's ($2,166,074), because people leave faster than the rest ramp.
Step 3, the AE hires. The template plans each hire three quarters before the gap it closes, nets out earlier hires, and adds one manual Q1 hire whose offer is already out:
| Quarter (illustrative) | New-logo target | Day-one team only | AE hires | AE heads | Capacity with hires | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y1 Q1 | $696,000 | $588,000 | 3 | 9.0 | $609,000 | -$87,000 |
| Y1 Q2 | $904,800 | $749,132 | 1 | 9.2 | $858,116 | -$46,684 |
| Y1 Q3 | $765,600 | $624,901 | 0 | 8.4 | $807,689 | $42,089 |
| Y1 Q4 | $1,113,600 | $848,549 | 1 | 8.7 | $1,243,277 | $129,677 |
| Y2 Q1 | $748,800 | $499,800 | 1 | 9.0 | $802,495 | $53,695 |
| Y2 Q2 | $973,440 | $594,311 | 1 | 9.2 | $1,083,951 | $110,511 |
| Y2 Q3 | $823,680 | $459,979 | 0 | 8.4 | $924,205 | $100,525 |
| Y2 Q4 | $1,198,080 | $611,984 | 1 | 8.7 | $1,328,265 | $130,185 |
| Year 1 | $3,480,000 | $2,810,582 | 5 | 8.7 | $3,518,082 | $38,082 (101.1%) |
| Year 2 | $3,744,000 | $2,166,074 | 3 | 8.7 | $4,138,915 | $394,915 (110.5%) |
Three things stand out. First, Q1 and Q2 stay short no matter what: a January hire books 5% of quota in its first quarter, so those gaps had to be closed by hires made in 2026. Second, the plan makes eight AE hires over two years while about six AEs are expected to leave, so after the three Q1 hires the team holds at about nine people. Its capacity still rises 36%, from 4.35 to 5.93 full-quota AEs, because the team gets more tenured. Third, year 2 ends with headroom because hires keep ramping after the quarter they were planned for. That cushion is a choice to keep or trim.
Step 4, every other team. Each team follows its driver. These are the results for year 1 and year 2:
| Team (illustrative) | Driver | Heads day one | Hires Y1 | Heads end Y1 | Hires Y2 | Heads end Y2 | Cost Y1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Account executives | New-logo target, ramp, 30% attrition | 6 | 5 | 8.7 | 3 | 8.7 | $2,173,307 |
| SDRs | 0.5 per AE | 4 | 3 | 5.4 | 2 | 5.3 | $599,556 |
| Sales managers | 1 per 6 AEs | 2 | 0 | 1.8 | 0 | 1.5 | $559,080 |
| Sales engineers | 1 per 3 AEs | 3 | 0 | 2.7 | 1 | 3.2 | $627,270 |
| Marketing | 0.5 per AE | 4 | 2 | 5.4 | 0 | 4.6 | $933,572 |
| Customer success | 1 per $2.5M of ARR | 5 | 3 | 7.0 | 3 | 8.5 | $1,008,676 |
| Support | 1 per $2M of ARR | 6 | 3 | 7.5 | 5 | 10.0 | $725,984 |
| Revenue operations | 1 per 15 go-to-market heads | 2 | 1 | 2.8 | 1 | 3.3 | $403,759 |
| R&D | Roadmap: 20 to 27 heads | 20 | 5 | 23.0 | 7 | 26.9 | $4,472,341 |
| G&A | 1 per 10 employees | 7 | 1 | 7.4 | 2 | 8.5 | $1,199,451 |
| Total | 59 | 23 | 71.7 | 24 | 80.6 | $12,702,996 |
Heads show decimals because attrition is applied as an expected rate, while hires are whole people. Of the 23 hires in year 1, about 6 replace leavers. In year 2 that rises to about 10 of 24, because the company is bigger and more people leave. People cost is $12,702,996 in year 1, 93.0% of $13,660,800 of subscription revenue, and $14,489,370 in year 2, 83.3% of revenue, so the plan gets more efficient as ARR outgrows heads.
Step 5, the dates. Seven of the year 1 Q1 hires have requisitions that must open before January 1. The three AE hires, with a 90-day time to fill, needed open requisitions by October 3, 2026. A headcount plan approved in December cannot deliver a January start.
Why AE headcount needs ramp and attrition, not quota divided into the target
Dividing the new-logo target by quota gives the number of fully productive AEs you need. It says nothing about how many people you must employ, because most of them are not fully productive. Pete Furseth, ORM's COO, frames it as three different numbers: headcount, assigned quota and productive quota. "Having 100 reps with $1 million quotas does not automatically mean the company has $100 million of selling capacity."
- Ramp is longer than most plans assume. In ORM's data it takes a B2B SaaS rep 15 to 18 months to become fully productive, and it varies by role and region. The Bridge Group's 2026 survey of 158 B2B companies puts median AE ramp time at 6.2 months, the highest in its research history (Bridge Group, 2026). The gap between the two is the gap between ramp as reported and ramp measured from bookings.
- Measure ramp against full quota. ORM divides each rep's monthly bookings by the full monthly quota, not a reduced ramp quota. Measuring against a reduced quota makes new reps look more productive than they are. The template's ramp table uses the same rule, so its level 6 value is what a tenured AE books.
- There is no single ramp curve. ORM's representative curves, modeled from patterns across its customers (not raw customer data), differ sharply by role:
| Tenure level (ORM representative curves) | SMB rep | AE | Senior AE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 (months 1 to 3) | 7% | 3% | 8% |
| Level 2 (months 4 to 6) | 28% | 11% | 54% |
| Level 3 (months 7 to 9) | 47% | 21% | 41% |
| Level 4 (months 10 to 12) | 69% | 49% | 57% |
| Level 5 (months 13 to 15) | 61% | 44% | 79% |
| Level 6 (month 16 on) | 102% | 103% | 99% |
The dip around level 5 shows up across companies. Pete reads it as selection and timing: struggling reps often stay through their first year and leave around then, and many companies hire early in the year, so level 5 lands in the slow first quarter of a rep's second year. If your plan has more than one sales role, copy the AE capacity tab per role with its own curve.
- Turnover shows up as a productivity problem. Pete's warning: when turnover rises, average tenure falls and a bigger share of the team is still ramping. Year-over-year attainment drops, and it looks like reps got worse when the workforce mix changed. That is why the template counts the day-one team by tenure level.
- Hire before the need. "If the company needs additional productive capacity in March, hiring someone in January will usually not solve the problem." In ORM's models, moving from a one-year to a two-year capacity plan cuts cost by roughly 5%, because shortages are found early enough to hire and ramp. That is why the template runs eight quarters.
For the sales team alone, the sales capacity planner answers how many reps a quota target needs with ramp. This template takes that question across the company: once AEs are set, SDRs, managers, sales engineers, marketing, CSMs, support, RevOps and G&A follow from their drivers.
How do you plan attrition and backfills?
Give every team its own annual attrition rate, convert it to a quarterly rate, and plan the replacement hires as a separate line. Backfills are real hires with real recruiting cost and, for sales roles, a full ramp.
The template converts annual attrition to a quarterly retention rate, (1 - annual attrition) ^ (1/4), so 30% a year is a 91.5% chance that each AE is still there at the end of a quarter. Expected departures are heads during the quarter times one minus that rate. A hire counts as a backfill up to the number of people who left the quarter before, and anything above that is a growth hire. Use your own trailing 12 months by team. For a sense of scale, the U.S. information industry, which includes software publishers, had an average monthly quits rate of 1.3% in 2025, and professional and business services 2.3% (BLS JOLTS, Table 22). Quits exclude layoffs and terminations, so total attrition runs higher.
The sales hiring plan guide covers the other half of the calendar: the backward math from the quarter that needs capacity to the date the requisition opens, and how many new reps a manager can absorb at once.
How do you calculate fully loaded cost per employee?
Fully loaded cost per head per year = base salary x (1 + payroll load) + variable pay at target + tools and equipment. Recruiting is a one-time cost per hire, charged in the quarter the person starts. The template applies this per team and raises base and variable by the pay increase in year 2.
The payroll load default comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June 2026, private industry employers paid $32.82 an hour in wages and $14.07 in benefits, 30.0% of total compensation (BLS ECEC, Table 1). A salary already pays for vacation, and bonuses are planned as variable pay, so the template's load counts only insurance ($3.69), retirement ($1.57) and legally required benefits ($3.40). Divided by wages plus paid leave ($36.36), that is 23.8%, rounded to 24%. Use your own benefits cost if you have it. For AEs, the example uses the Bridge Group's 2026 median on-target earnings of $200,000 (Bridge Group, 2026) at its 2024 median 53:47 base to variable split (Bridge Group, 2024): $106,000 base and $94,000 variable.
| Role (example, year 1) | Base | Payroll load (24%) | Variable at target | Tools | Fully loaded per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Account executive | $106,000 | $25,440 | $94,000 | $6,000 | $231,440 |
| R&D engineer (illustrative) | $150,000 | $36,000 | $10,000 | $6,000 | $202,000 |
| Customer success manager (illustrative) | $105,000 | $25,200 | $20,000 | $6,000 | $156,200 |
| SDR (illustrative) | $65,000 | $15,600 | $25,000 | $6,000 | $111,600 |
For sales roles, the fully loaded cost per rep entry adds what this people-cost view leaves out, such as manager time and enablement, when you want cost per unit of quota. The sales budget guide costs the sales team the same way and ties commissions to the bookings budget.
The headcount planning formulas, in Excel and Google Sheets
Every formula uses functions both apps share. References are simplified from the template, and the examples come from the worked example.
| Measure | Formula | Excel or Sheets | Example (illustrative) |
|---|---|---|---|
| New-logo ARR needed | Target - start + churn - expansion | =B7-B5+B8-B9 | $15.6M - $12.0M + $1.44M - $1.56M = $3,480,000 |
| Quarterly retention | (1 - annual attrition) ^ (1/4) | =(1-B42)^(1/4) | (1 - 30%) ^ 0.25 = 0.9147 |
| AE capacity needed | New-logo target / (quota x seasonality) | =C11/(B11*B18) | $696,000 / ($700,000 x 20%) = 4.97 full-quota AEs |
| Capacity of one cohort | Hires x retention ^ quarters since hire x ramp at that level | =$E$28*$B$6^(H$3-3)*INDEX(ramp,MIN(6,H$3-3+1)) | 1 x 0.9147^3 x 60% = 0.459 |
| AE hires to close a gap | Gap in quarter + lead / what one hire delivers by then, rounded up | =ROUNDUP(gap/(B6^B7*INDEX(ramp,B7+1)),0) | Y2 Q1 gap of 0.31 / 0.459 = 0.67, so 1 hire in Y1 Q2 |
| Required heads, ratio team | AE heads x ratio, or AE heads / span, rounded up | =ROUNDUP(ROUND(C7,0)/6,0) | 9 AEs / 6 = 2 managers |
| Required heads, ARR team | Ending ARR / ARR per head, rounded up | =ROUNDUP(B18/2500000,0) | $15,600,000 / $2,500,000 = 7 CSMs |
| Hires | Required heads - heads at the start of the quarter, rounded, never below zero | =MAX(0,ROUND(C17-C18,0)) | 7 CSMs - 6.02 = 0.98, so 1 hire |
| Expected departures | Heads during the quarter x (1 - quarterly retention) | =C22*(1-$B$23) | 9.0 AEs x 8.5% = 0.77 |
| Fully loaded cost per quarter | Heads x (base x (1 + load) + variable + tools) / 4 + hires x recruiting | =C22*(G50*(1+B13)+H50+B14)/4+C19*I50 | 9 AEs x $231,440 / 4 + 3 x $25,000 = $595,740 |
| Open requisition by | Quarter start - time to fill | =C21-B46 | Jan 1, 2027 - 90 days = Oct 3, 2026 |
The blank file returns zeros, not errors, until you add inputs. Both files were evaluated formula by formula and matched an independent model of the same plan.
Headcount plan vs workforce plan vs capacity plan
The three plans describe the same people at different depths. A headcount plan counts seats and cost by quarter. A workforce plan looks further out at skills and how to get them. A capacity plan converts sales seats into the revenue they can deliver.
| Headcount plan | Workforce plan | Capacity plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Question | How many people, in which team, when, at what cost? | Which skills and roles will the company need, and how will it get them? | How much revenue can the selling roles deliver after ramp and attrition? |
| Horizon | Quarters, usually one to two years | Several years | Quarters, ideally two years |
| Owner | Finance with each department head | People team with leadership | Revenue operations |
| Unit | Heads or FTEs and dollars | Roles and skills | Productive rep equivalents and ARR |
| In this template | Teams, Hiring plan, Cost | Not covered beyond team drivers | AE capacity |
If you are building next year's full plan, the annual operating plan template holds targets, pipeline, budget and the P&L for one year. Use this headcount template to build its people lines, then carry the totals across. In most companies the FP&A team owns that handoff, and people cost by department lands on the S&M, R&D and G&A lines of the profit and loss template.
Common headcount planning mistakes
- Counting assigned quota as capacity. Six AEs at $700,000 of quota is $4,200,000 on paper. After ramp and attrition, the example's day-one team books $2,810,582 in year 1.
- One blended ramp curve for every role. Pete's single-sentence version of the biggest capacity mistake: "Applying company-wide averages to the assumed ramp and productive capacity."
- No backfill line. A plan that funds only growth hires shrinks by its attrition rate every quarter. In the example, backfills are about a quarter of year 1 hires.
- Hiring when the gap shows up. A new AE books 5% of quota in the first quarter of the example ramp. Gaps in Q1 and Q2 have to be closed by hires made the year before.
- Raising quotas instead of adding heads. Pete plans average attainment at 75% to 80%. If the target only works when average attainment drops to 50%, he calls it a capacity problem, not a quota problem, and would rather keep quotas consistent and hire in markets that can support more heads.
- Hiring sellers with nowhere to sell. Pete's rule of thumb is at least three times a rep's quota in addressable market, since only about a third of the market is likely to buy in a given year.
- Salary used as cost. Base pay understates cost by the payroll load, variable pay and tools. For the example AE, $106,000 of base is $231,440 fully loaded.
ORM's take on headcount planning
A spreadsheet like this one gets the structure right: revenue target first, roles from drivers, ramp and attrition explicit, two years in view. Where it gets hard is the detail. Pete's view is that capacity models rarely break because the math is wrong. They break because the assumptions are too broad: one ramp, one productivity number, one attrition rate for every role and region. Keeping those current by role and region in Excel takes Sales Ops a long time every cycle.
ORM measures ramp and productivity from each rep's own bookings by role, region and tenure level, then uses a constrained optimization model to choose which roles to hire, where and when, at the lowest cost that meets the revenue requirement. In the models ORM builds, that finds 10% to 15% more productive capacity for the same sales budget. ORM also forecasts new, expansion and renewal revenue against the plan, so a capacity gap shows up while there is still time to hire for it. ORM targets 95% forecast accuracy on the forecasts it builds.
Common questions
How do I create a headcount plan in Excel?
Start from the revenue target, not from last year's org chart. Put the ARR target by quarter on one tab, turn the new-logo part into the sales capacity you need after ramp and attrition, then give every other team a driver such as ARR per CSM or AEs per manager. Hires are required heads minus the people still employed, and cost is heads times fully loaded cost per head.
What is the difference between a headcount plan and a workforce plan?
A headcount plan is the near-term, numbers version: how many people each team needs each quarter, when they start and what they cost. A workforce plan is broader and longer: the skills the company will need over several years, how it builds or buys them, and succession. Most finance teams run the headcount plan quarterly and the workforce plan once a year.
What should a headcount planning template include?
At a minimum: the revenue target it serves, one row per team with its driver, starting heads, attrition, base and variable pay, payroll load, recruiting cost and time to fill. From those it should calculate required heads, growth hires, backfills, requisition open dates and fully loaded cost by department and quarter. Without the revenue link it is a payroll list, not a plan.
How do you calculate fully loaded cost per employee?
Add base salary, employer payroll load and variable pay at target, then the tools and equipment each person needs. Payroll load covers employer taxes, health insurance and retirement. From BLS employer cost data for June 2026 it works out to about 24% of base salary for private industry. Recruiting cost is a one-time cost per hire, so keep it out of the annual rate.
How do you plan for attrition in a headcount plan?
Apply an annual attrition rate to every team as a quarterly rate: one minus attrition, to the power of one quarter. Expected departures are heads times one minus that rate. Plan backfills as hires on their own line, so the plan shows how many hires only replace leavers. For quota-carrying roles, also count the ramp a backfill needs before it books at full productivity.
What is the difference between headcount and FTE?
Headcount counts people. FTE, or full-time equivalent, counts hours: two half-time employees are two heads but one FTE. Headcount plans for SaaS companies usually count FTEs, since cost and capacity follow hours. Sales capacity uses a third unit, the ramped rep equivalent, because a rep in month two is a full FTE that books only a small share of quota.
See the capacity your plan will actually have
The template sets the headcount plan. ORM measures ramp by role and region from your own CRM history and forecasts against the plan every week.
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