Meet Planful Workforce Pro, the Next Evolution in Workforce Planning

• What it is: An advanced workforce planning tool that moves beyond headcount snapshots to provide deeper insights into people movement, detailed financial modeling, and clearer visibility into cost drivers and their financial impact.
• Who it’s for: FP&A teams looking for fewer budget surprises and smarter, more strategic workforce planning analytics. HR partners who want to align people investments with business goals.
• Why it matters: Workforce Pro delivers more transparency into your workforce planning process and helps you move from reactive reporting to proactive, strategic decision-making.

Workforce planning may start simple, but quickly becomes complex. Basic headcount tracking in Excel and pulling data from payroll quickly derails as soon as the company starts growing. New hires get added mid-cycle. Backfills happen without a clear paper trail. Unexpected promotions or bonuses push salary costs above forecast. By the time Finance and HR catch up, budgets and plans are often already off track.

We built Workforce Pro to help Finance and HR teams stay ahead of those challenges.

Workforce Pro enhances our workforce solution with advanced compensation modeling, detailed cost tracking, and strategic reporting capabilities to support every aspect of workforce planning. Finance and HR teams can now work in lock-step, gaining real-time visibility into workforce changes, granular insight into salary cost drivers, and the flexibility to model complex compensation structures.

Historically, workforce planning has been reactive, with Finance scrambling to explain why costs changed. It’s a symptom of a larger issue: HR and Finance aren’t working together or with the same data sources.

Our latest research on the future of finance backs this up. FP&A professionals told us their top challenges with integrating workforce planning and financial performance management include:

• Aligning workforce planning with company growth strategy (64%) — It’s tough to prove ROI from your hiring initiatives when people data doesn’t connect to financial outcomes.
• Difficulty predicting labor costs and needs (52%) — Pay raises, attrition, and transfers go unnoticed until they skew the budget.
• Data silos and integration gaps (28–30%) — Even when Finance and HR want to collaborate, disconnected systems get in the way.
• Lack of real-time workforce data (23%) – Decisions are based on outdated reports rather than what’s happening right now.

Workforce Pro solves these exact problems.

With Workforce Pro, you can track every workforce dollar, analyze cost drivers in detail, and gain clearer visibility into headcount changes, like transfers and promotions. These enhancements help Finance and HR make faster, more strategic workforce decisions and control costs more effectively. It’s the solution for teams who want full control, transparency, and flexibility beyond an out-of-the-box experience.

Here’s what sets Workforce Pro apart:

• Headcount Rollforward: Tracks workforce movement across regions, locations, and departments, including hires, exits, and transfers, with real-time visibility.
• Variance Bridge: Shows you why salary spend changed, breaking down variances by key drivers like promotions, merit increases, and workforce movements.
• Custom Comp Builder: Allows precise modeling of unique and diverse compensation structures, like custom bonuses, tiered commissions, and regional pay rules, using Excel-style formulas directly in Planful.
• Import actuals at the compensation level: Integrates actual compensation-level data from your HRIS system for deeper visibility and tighter HR-Finance alignment.

In addition to these major innovations, Workforce Pro supports enhanced analytics and seamless integration with enterprise reporting tools, making it a comprehensive solution for organizations seeking true control and transparency.

Together, these capabilities tackle the biggest barriers to connected, strategic workforce planning. Let’s take a look at each in detail.

Headcount Rollforward allows you to track workforce movement over time

Headcount changes drive budget shifts, but most teams don’t have an easy way to track them.

Headcount Rollforward reporting gives Finance and HR a detailed, department-by-department view of workforce activity, including new hires, transfers, and terminations. You get a continuous, real-time view of how your workforce is evolving so you can connect people changes to budget impact right away.

Use Headcount Rollforward to:

• Monitor headcount movement across roles and departments.
• Understand headcount trends over time.
• Align staffing activity with financial outcomes.

With clear visibility into workforce movement, you can stay ahead of planning decisions and reduce surprises at month-end.

Variance Bridge lets you understand why workforce costs change

Finance hates surprises. And nothing shakes up budgets like a delayed hire here or an unexpected termination there. At the end of the month, Finance realizes the budget’s off track, but it’s too late to adjust.

With Variance Bridge, you don’t just see the total change in salary spend — you see why it changed. It allows you to break down workforce cost variances into actionable insights, showing the dollar impact of individual workforce events like merit increases, new hires, terminations, promotions, and transfers.

That level of granularity helps you:

• Tie labor cost fluctuations directly to specific workforce actions.
• Spot budget risks early and reforecast with confidence.
• Achieve rapid, detailed answers for plan deviations.

And for teams that prefer Microsoft Excel, Planful Spotlight for Microsoft 365 allows you to work with your workforce data in the environment you know best. No more manual exports or switching between systems, and the data is always up to date.

Custom Comp Builder lets you model how your team actually pays people

Modeling bonuses, commissions, and regional pay variations in spreadsheets gets messy fast and introduces unnecessary risk. That’s especially true for companies with a mix of hourly and salaried employees, global presence, multiple locations, or complex compensation structures.

Custom Comp Builder changes that. This capability offers a flexible, Excel-like formula builder to create, manage, and apply any tailored compensation logic directly in Planful.

• Adapt to any regional or role requirements: Apply local tax policies, labor laws, and tiered structures with flexible compensation attributes.
• Break down salary components: Model anything from merit increases, bonuses, overtime, commissions, and other pay factors with flexible, configurable attributes.

Workforce costs aren’t one-size-fits-all. Your compensation management shouldn’t be, either.

Import granular actuals for accurate analysis

With Workforce Pro, teams can directly import workforce actuals from HRIS systems at the compensation item level, allowing precise and detailed comparisons of planned versus actual costs.

Why does this matter? Traditionally, Finance reviews variances at the GL account level, creating a disconnect when reconciling actuals to plan. For example, at the GL level, various insurance premiums may be grouped into a single expense account, obscuring the true variance of specific items like dental insurance premiums. Workforce Pro eliminates this gap by enabling apples-to-apples variance analysis, streamlining planning and reporting at the same level. You gain clear visibility into what’s driving cost fluctuations, where they occur, and why.

Workforce Pro customers recognize the benefits of gaining more transparency into workforce changes and more granular insight into cost drivers.

“With Workforce Pro, we connected every workforce change back to financial impact. Our teams make faster decisions, and variance is down,” said Octavio Cubero, Vice President of Finance at Pixelogic.

When Finance and HR work and collaborate from the same real-time data, it’s easier to adapt hiring plans, control costs, and support business growth.

Workforce Pro brings Finance and HR teams together to cut the guesswork from their workforce planning strategies. With real-time visibility, custom compensation modeling, strategic reporting, and advanced analytics, Workforce Pro is one of the few workforce planning solutions built for complex, fast-growing companies.

• Finance can model, report, and forecast workforce costs more accurately and frequently to enhance strategic planning capabilities.
• HR gains the forward-looking visibility they need to enable proactive management of hiring plans and workforce changes.

Aligning workforce plans with business needs? Now that’s strategic workforce planning. Try our interactive demo to get started.

What is Workforce Pro by Planful?

Workforce Pro is Planful’s advanced workforce planning solution that gives Finance and HR teams real-time visibility into headcount changes, detailed compensation modeling, and granular cost driver analysis. It goes far beyond traditional headcount tracking by delivering strategic visibility into every workforce decision.

What’s the difference between Planful’s Workforce Planning and Workforce Pro?

Workforce Planning is included in the Planful platform and offers foundational tools for modeling headcount and people costs. Workforce Pro builds on that foundation with advanced features like Headcount Rollforward, Variance Bridge, and a Custom Comp Builder for modeling complex pay structures. It also imports compensation-level actuals from HRIS systems. Ideal for complex or fast-growing organizations, Workforce Pro offers more control, flexibility, and strategic insight.

How does Workforce Pro support HR teams specifically?

Workforce Pro gives HR real-time visibility into workforce movements, compensation structures, and plan-vs-actual costs, helping them stay in sync with Finance. HR can use this visibility to optimize headcount, forecast talent needs, and justify hiring decisions with financial clarity. It also reduces time spent on manual updates and improves cross-functional collaboration.

How is Workforce Pro different from other cloud-based financial platforms?

Workforce Pro is purpose-built for Finance and HR teams to plan together with speed, precision, and transparency. Unlike tools that require complex setup or heavy admin support, Workforce Pro offers real-time collaboration, a flexible Excel-style formula builder, and the ability to import compensation-level actuals from your HRIS. It’s designed to handle complex pay structures and headcount scenarios without relying on third-party tools or IT development. That means faster time to value and better alignment across departments.