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Headcount Planning and Cost Template

A role register and cost sheets that price every planned hire by month against payroll tax caps and health premiums, plus an approval memo.

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Pack of 9 files: 4 documents, 5 spreadsheets

Headcount Planning and Cost Template
  • Headcount Policy NoteDocument
  • Load Rate MethodDocument
  • Hiring Plan ReviewDocument
  • Attrition and Backfill NoteDocument
  • Payroll Burden BaselineSpreadsheet
  • Role RegisterSpreadsheet
  • Fully-Loaded CostSpreadsheet
  • Start-Date PhasingSpreadsheet
  • Attrition AssumptionsSpreadsheet
RiverHeadcount Planning and Cost Template
Fully-Loaded Cost
Aldergrove Systems Inc. · 2026 plan, in-year · the blended rate their own register produced was 18.05%
ReqRoleSalaryStTier In-year wagesReal load RateFlat est.Error
01Staff engineer218,000Feb family199,83337,332 18.68%36,079 under 1,253
02Account executive132,000Mar employee110,00019,012 17.28%19,860 over 848
03Senior engineer176,000Apr employee132,00020,420 15.47%23,832 over 3,412
04Product designer148,000May family98,66722,367 22.67%17,814 under 4,553
05Support specialist68,000Jul employee34,0007,350 21.62%6,138 under 1,212
06Implementation lead96,000Oct employee24,0003,627 15.11%4,333 over 706
Total838,000 598,500110,10818.40% 108,0552,053
Real fully loaded 708,608.22
Flat method 706,555.22
Agreement 0.29%
Gross line error 11,983.45

Three roles over-costed by 4,965.22, three under-costed by 7,018.23. The agreeing total conceals 9,930.44 of offsetting mispricing, and REQ-03 and REQ-04 rank the wrong way round because of it.

Page 1 of 1153 words

How to build a headcount plan

A headcount plan sets out who you will pay over the coming year: your current staff, the roles you will add or replace, and when each one starts. A good one prices every role fully loaded, meaning salary plus employer payroll taxes, health premiums and retirement match, counted month by month. It shows this year's cost apart from the full-year cost, and you update it whenever a start date or a rate changes.

Cost each role on its own numbers. One company-wide multiplier can get the plan total right and every role wrong, and approvers decide roles, not totals.

People working at computer desks in a large open-plan office lit by rows of hanging bulbs
Every desk in the plan carries its own taxes, benefits and start date. Photo: Israel Andrade on Unsplash

Start the headcount plan with one row per role

Before you cost anything, give every opening its own row with the facts that drive its cost. Take salaries from your salary bands, and where an answer isn't known yet, record your assumption.

  • Base salary
  • Start month, not a quarter
  • Expected health plan tier: single or family
  • Whether the role gets a retirement match
  • New role or backfill, with the leaver's last month
  • Who approves it

Push back on start quarters. "Q3" can mean July or September, and on a $150,000 salary that is $25,000 of pay in or out of this year's budget.

Add up the fully loaded cost

A role's fully loaded cost is its salary plus everything you pay on top. In the US, IRS Publication 15 lists the 2026 federal rates. Employers pay 6.2% Social Security tax on each employee's wages up to $184,500, and 1.45% Medicare tax on all of them1.

What goes into a fully loaded cost (US, 2026)

ComponentHow it is chargedWhat moves it
Social Security6.2% of wages, up to $184,500 a personStops at the cap
Medicare1.45% of all wagesNo cap; the extra 0.9% on high earners is the employee's
Federal unemployment0.6% of the first $7,000 after the state credit, or $42 a personMore in a credit reduction state
State unemploymentYour own rate, up to your state's wage baseYour rate notice, every year
Health premiumThe employer's share, in dollars a monthTier and waiting period
Retirement matchYour plan's percentage of payWho joins, and any wait

Add workers' compensation insurance and any other state payroll taxes. Keep one-time costs, such as recruiting fees, on a separate line.

Two inputs are specific to your company, so no benchmark can supply them. One is your state unemployment rate. Washington's Employment Security Department, for example, sends each employer its rate in December, for the whole next calendar year2. The state taxes the first $78,200 of each worker's wages in 2026. Read yours off your notice.

The other is the employer's share of health premiums by tier, from your carrier's invoice. For scale, KFF's 2026 Employer Health Benefits Survey found family cover averaged $28,303 a year, of which workers paid $7,4713. Single cover averaged $9,804, with workers paying $1,672. That leaves the average employer about $20,800 for a family and $8,100 for one person, whatever the salary, unless the plan ties contributions to pay.

Why one multiplier misprices roles

The usual shortcut multiplies every salary by one loaded rate, such as 1.3. Even a rate taken from your own payroll misprices individual roles. Social Security stops at the cap, so a high earner's tax rate falls, and a fixed health premium weighs far more on a modest salary with family cover.

ExampleTwo hires priced both waysAn illustrative example written for this guide. The roles and the 22% company rate are made up.

Senior engineer, $200,000, single cover: Social Security $11,439 (capped), Medicare $2,900, unemployment $1,082, health $8,132, 4% match $8,000. Load: $31,553, or 15.8% of salary.

Support lead, $90,000, family cover: Social Security $5,580, Medicare $1,305, unemployment $1,082, health $20,832, 4% match $3,600. Load: $32,399, or 36.0% of salary.

At the company's blended rate of 22%: $44,000 for the engineer and $19,800 for the support lead.

  • The total looks fine. Added together, the two flat estimates miss by $152.
  • Each role does not. The engineer is over-costed by $12,447 and the support lead under-costed by $12,599.
  • The smaller salary carries more. Family cover costs $12,700 more than single, which outweighs the engineer's higher taxes and match.
  • Assumptions. Full-year costs, 2026 federal rates, a 1.33% state rate on Washington's $78,200 base and KFF's average premiums.

Use your blended rate (last year's employer taxes and benefits divided by wages) for one job: checking the total. Apply it to the plan's in-year wages and compare the result with your role-by-role sum. If the two are far apart, check your inputs, starting with premium tiers and start months.

Phase the cost by start month

A hire costs only the months they're on payroll, and those months aren't equal. Payroll tax caps reset on January 1 for everyone, whenever they joined. A $220,000 hire who starts in January passes the Social Security cap in November. That tax drops from about $1,137 a month to $72 in November, then nothing in December.

Benefits can start late too. Federal rules bar a group health plan from making an eligible employee wait more than 90 days for coverage4. Within that limit, use your own plan's wait. You may never reach the Social Security cap on a late-year hire, so you pay it on every dollar. Waiting periods, meanwhile, take a bigger share of a short year.

Put the monthly figures, not a twelfth of the yearly cost, into the annual budget and your cash forecast.

Plan departures and backfills seat by seat

A replacement is a new employee, so every capped tax starts again at zero. Publication 15 applies federal unemployment tax to the first $7,000 you pay to each employee during the year1. Its successor-employer rules can carry wages over when you acquire a business and keep its employees, but not when a new person fills an old seat.

Say a $200,000 engineer leaves at the end of June and a replacement starts July 1 on the same salary. Social Security now applies to all $200,000, not $184,500, which adds $961. Federal unemployment adds a second $42, and state tax a second $1,040 at an assumed 1.33% Washington rate. That's about $2,040 more tax on the same wages, with no gap.

So assume departures seat by seat, not as a company-wide percentage, and book the extra tax from the month the replacement starts. An empty seat saves wages, but the replacement still brings this tax, so net the two before you count a hiring freeze as a saving.

Get it approved, then keep it current

Give approvers each role at two numbers: this year's cost, which goes in the budget, and the full-year cost, which the hire commits you to from next year. That way, nobody approves the smaller one by accident.

Then recost when a start month slips, when an accepted offer changes the health tier, when someone resigns, and every January. The Journal of Accountancy reports that the Social Security Administration raised the wage cap to $192,300 for 20275. That lifts the most an employer pays per employee from $11,439 to $11,922.60, so price a 2027 plan on the new cap.

When to bring in your accountant

Tax rates, wage bases and benefit rules change often and differ by state, so confirm yours with your payroll provider or accountant before you finalize. This guide and the template are planning tools, not tax advice.

Before the plan goes for approval

  • Every role has a salary, start month, health tier and approver
  • The state rate and premiums come from your own notice and invoice
  • Each role is costed on its own; the blended rate only checks the total
  • Costs are phased by month, with in-year and full-year totals apart
  • Every expected backfill carries its own fresh payroll tax

If a role could go to a contractor, price both routes with the contractor vs employee cost comparison. Once the plan is approved, carry its monthly figures into a rolling forecast. To skip the arithmetic, open this template in River. It works out your blended rate from last year's payroll and costs every role against its own caps and premiums.

How to use this template

Work through the files yourself: each comes filled in for a made-up company, so you can see how the costing works before you swap in your own numbers. Or open the template in River, which asks for last year's payroll register and the roles you plan to hire, each with a start month.

River works out your blended rate and each person's real load, then costs every new role against its own tax caps, premium tier and waiting periods. It leads with the roles a flat rate over-costs or under-costs. If your state rate notice or health insurance invoice is missing, it uses a labeled placeholder instead of a guess.

  1. Download it or open it in River

    Download the four Word documents and five CSV sheets for free, or open the template in River to cost your own plan.

  2. Send your payroll and hiring list

    Share last year's payroll register and the roles you plan to hire, each with a salary and start month.

  3. Let River cost every role

    River finds your blended rate, then prices each hire against its own wage caps, health premium and benefit waits.

  4. Review it and draft the memo

    Check which roles a flat rate misprices, then ask River to phase the plan by month and draft the Hiring Plan Review.

What's in the template

Every document in the packThe cost curve by month, the Payroll Burden Baseline, the Hiring Plan Review, and the Attrition Assumptions sheet.
Headcount Planning and Cost Template
RiverCost curve by month
Employer cost by month, and the rate that will not sit still
Costed per role, against real wage bases Costed at the register's blended 18.05%
Jan
 
 
Feb
1
9.21%
Mar
2
9.12%
Apr
3
9.08%
May
4
9.05%
Jun
4
8.68%
Jul
5
8.64%
Aug
5
8.60%
Sep
5
8.38%
Oct
6
8.23%
Nov
6
7.99%
Dec
6
6.55%
Month
Heads on payroll
Employer tax as a share of that month's wages

October, November and December carry the same six heads and the same 69,833.33 of wages. Employer tax falls from 5,746.01 to 4,573.35, a fifth of it, because the higher earners have run out of taxable social security and Washington unemployment base. No prorated annual figure produces that shape.

RiverPayroll Burden Baseline
Payroll Burden Baseline
Twelve existing staff, 2025 actuals. The sheet exists to produce one number, and then to prove that number cannot be used on a role.
Role2025 wagesTierMatch Social securityMedical Total burdenLoad rate
Founder / CEO265,000family yes10,91819,320 45,69117.24%
VP engineering232,000family yes10,91819,320 43,89218.92%
Staff engineer205,000employee yes10,9188,580 31,68115.45%
Senior engineer172,000 familyyes10,664 19,32040,36823.47%
Head of sales190,000employee yes10,9188,580 30,86316.24%
Account executive128,000 waivedno7,936 010,8028.44%
Product manager158,000 familyyes9,796 19,32038,73724.52%
Support lead82,000employeeno 5,0848,58015,863 19.35%
four further rows: senior engineer, engineer, designer, controller
Total, twelve staff2,021,000 113,671137,340 364,87818.05%
Blended load rate 18.05%
Lowest per head 8.44%
Highest per head 24.52%
Spread 16.08 points

One waived medical election and one family election, 16.08 points apart on the same plan in the same state. The blend describes all twelve together and none of them individually, which is the whole reason it checks a plan total and never costs a role.

RiverHiring Plan Review
Hiring Plan Review
2026 plan · six requisitions · for the Founder, VP engineering and Head of sales
What changed

Nothing in the plan. Six roles, same salaries, same start months. What changed is how they were costed, and three of them were priced wrong enough to change how they rank against each other.

The draft used a blended load of 18.05 percent, which was the right thing to try: it came off our own register rather than a rule of thumb. It produced 706,555.22 against a real 708,608.22. Those agree to 0.29 percent, which is why the draft went three rounds without anyone questioning it. The agreement is the problem.

Finding 1 · REQ-03 is 3,411.67 cheaper than the draft says

The senior engineer at 176,000.00 carries a real load rate of 15.47 percent, second lowest in the plan. The salary exhausts the Washington unemployment base before year end, and the role takes employee-only cover at 715.00 a month rather than family at 1,610.00.

REQ-03 and REQ-04 have been competing for the same approval slot all quarter. The draft had their load costs 6,018.11 apart with REQ-03 the more expensive. They are actually 1,946.67 apart with REQ-04 the more expensive. The comparison the plan was built to support was inverted.

Finding 2 · REQ-04 is 4,553.11 more expensive

The product designer at 148,000.00 carries the highest load rate in the plan at 22.67 percent, higher than the support specialist at less than half the salary. Family cover is the entire reason. Note what this defeats: a senior multiplier and a junior multiplier would not have caught it, because the driver is not seniority.

Recommendation

Approve all six as planned, with REQ-03 and REQ-04 re-ranked and both tier assumptions confirmed in writing before the offers go out. Add the 3,280.70 attrition reset to the Q3 and Q4 forecasts. Recost in January when the bases take effect.

RiverAttrition Assumptions
Attrition Assumptions
Why a replacement costs more employer tax than the person they replace, on identical wages across identical months
SeatSalaryOutBackfill in Wages, either wayTax if they stayed Tax across the splitReset
VP engineering232,000AugOct 212,66715,604.73 18,164.462,559.73
Engineer141,000MayJul 129,25010,969.68 11,690.65720.97
Total reset 3,280.70
Component detail, VP engineering
ComponentLeaver, Jan to Aug Backfill, Oct to DecCombined If they had stayedReset
Social security9,589.333,596.00 13,185.3311,439.00 1,746.33
FUTA42.0042.00 84.0042.0042.00
Washington unemployment1,040.06 771.401,811.461,040.06 771.40

A base is paid twice only when the seat's combined annual wages exceed it. FUTA resets on every backfill, because a 7,000.00 base is cleared by any full-time seat. Washington resets on almost every backfill. Social security resets only above 184,500.00 of combined wages, which is why this seat carries 1,746.33 of it and the engineer seat carries none.

Which means the cost of a departure depends on which seat and which month, not on a company-wide attrition rate. The vacancy months here save 31,083.33 of wages and add 3,280.70 of tax, so the gap is real and 10.6 percent smaller than the wage line suggests.

  • Headcount Policy NoteWhat a fully loaded cost includes, what every requisition must carry, who approves it and when to recost.
  • Load Rate MethodHow each payroll tax and benefit is calculated, where each rate comes from and which ones are capped.
  • Hiring Plan ReviewA memo for whoever approves headcount: every role costed both ways, the findings and a recommendation.
  • Attrition and Backfill NoteWhy replacing someone costs more employer tax than keeping them, worked through for two sample departures.
  • Payroll Burden Baseline sheetLast year's payroll rebuilt person by person, giving your blended load rate and the spread around it.
  • Role Register sheetOne row per planned role: salary, start month, health tier, match, backfill or new, and approver.
  • Fully-Loaded Cost sheetEach role's taxes and benefits built up line by line, next to what a flat blended rate would say.
  • Start-Date Phasing sheetEmployer cost for every role, month by month, showing payroll tax falling late in the year.
  • Attrition Assumptions sheetExpected departures and backfills seat by seat, with the extra employer tax each replacement brings.

Common questions

What should a headcount planning template include?

One row per role you plan to fill, with its department, salary, start month, health plan tier, approver and whether it replaces someone. Each row needs a fully loaded cost by month: salary plus employer payroll taxes, the employer's share of the health premium and any retirement match. A good template also shows this year's cost apart from the full-year cost.

How do you calculate the fully loaded cost of an employee?

Start with salary and add each employer cost separately. For US employees in 2026, that means Social Security at 6.2% up to $184,500 of wages, Medicare at 1.45% of all wages, federal and state unemployment tax, the employer's share of health premiums and any retirement match. Take the state rate and premiums from your own notice and invoices.

Should I use one multiplier, like 1.3 times salary?

Only to check the plan total. A single multiplier, even one taken from your own payroll, tends to over-cost high earners, whose Social Security tax stops at the wage cap. It under-costs modest salaries with family health cover, because the premium is a fixed sum. Cost each role on its own, then compare the total with the multiplier.

How often should you update a headcount plan?

Whenever something that drives cost changes: a start date slips by a month or more, an accepted offer changes the health tier, or someone resigns. Recost every January as well, because wage caps and state rates change. The Social Security wage cap goes from $184,500 in 2026 to $192,300 in 2027.

Does the template work in any US state?

Yes. The sample company is in Washington, but Social Security and Medicare work the same in every state. Swap in your own state unemployment rate, from your annual rate notice, and your state's wage base. Federal unemployment tax is higher in credit reduction states, and if your state charges other employer payroll taxes, add a line for each.

Is this headcount planning template free?

Yes. Download the four Word documents and five CSV sheets with no signup. Each file is filled in for a made-up company, Aldergrove Systems, as a worked example to overwrite with your own figures. Edit with AI opens the same template in a free River workspace.

What does Edit with AI do?

It opens the template in a free River workspace and asks for last year's payroll register and your hiring list. River builds your blended rate from the register, costs each new role against its own tax caps and premiums, and names the roles a flat rate would misprice. A missing state rate or premium becomes a labeled placeholder, not a guess.

Sources

  1. IRS. “Publication 15 (2026), (Circular E), Employer’s Tax Guide.” irs.gov (opens in a new tab)

  2. Washington Employment Security Department. “How we determine tax rates.” esd.wa.gov (opens in a new tab)

  3. KFF. “2026 Employer Health Benefits Survey.” kff.org (opens in a new tab)

  4. eCFR. “29 CFR 2590.715-2708: Prohibition on waiting periods that exceed 90 days.” ecfr.gov (opens in a new tab)

  5. Journal of Accountancy. “Social Security wage base and COLA announced for 2027.” journalofaccountancy.com (opens in a new tab)

Written by

Chandler Supple

Co-founder & CEO, River

Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.

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Reviewed by

Brian Joseff, Co-founder, River

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