Key differences from Headcount Planning

Compare Workforce Planning and Headcount Planning across setup, data modeling, and workforce analysis.

Workforce Planning is the successor to the existing Headcount planning functionality in Budgets & Forecasts. While both features help you model employee costs, Workforce Planning introduces a more flexible approach to managing workforce data.

If you're familiar with the Headcount functionality in Budgets & Forecasts, it's important to understand that workforce plans are created and managed separately from budgets, then published for use in reporting and budgeting.

Separate from budgets

Headcount planning is created and managed within a budget. Workforce Planning is a standalone planning tool that sits outside the budget process.

You create and maintain workforce plans independently, then publish them for use in Budgets & Forecasts and analysis.

Flexible dimensions

Headcount planning uses the same dimensions as the associated budget.

Workforce Planning allows you to use dimensions from any database, as well as create custom dimensions specifically for your workforce data. This gives you more flexibility to organize and analyze employees.

Flexible measures

Headcount planning includes salary, commission and bonus by default and does not allow this to be changed.

Workforce Planning allows you to add, remove and edit measures to accurately reflect and model your payroll.

Effective-dated changes

Headcount planning stores a single value for each employee attribute.

Workforce Planning uses temporal cells, allowing values to change over time. For example, you can model multiple salary increases, FTE changes, or benefit changes within the same plan without creating separate versions.

Dedicated workforce analysis

Headcount data exists primarily to drive budget values.

When you publish a workforce plan, Phocas creates a dedicated workforce database that you can analyze independently. This allows you to explore workforce costs by employee, division, location, work type, and other dimensions before incorporating the data into a budget.

Improved scalability

Workforce Planning is designed to support larger and more complex workforce models, with fast Excel imports and support for thousands of employees.

Foundation for future resource planning

Workforce Planning is the first step toward a broader resource planning capability. Future planning models are expected to include areas such as fixed assets, leases, subscriptions, and capital expenditure.