Budgeting and the people plan
Each department head keeps their own copy, the headcount plan lives in a separate sheet, and nobody is sure which version the board approved.
7 of 55
buyer companies named headcount and workforce planning as a pain, and 5 named a painful or broken budget cycle. It's usually the same problem: the people plan lives outside the budget.
Source: 55 buyer companies quoted in MCC sales conversations, 2026.
A simple budget with no real headcount complexity may not need this much. That's a lighter conversation, and we'll tell you so on the call.
A new CFO or finance leader was the trigger for 8 of 55 buyer companies. It's often the first time anyone asks, out loud, why the budget takes as long as it does, and why nobody trusts the version that comes out the other end.
| The old way | The new way |
|---|---|
| The budget is multiple versions of the same spreadsheet, emailed between department heads. | One collection point where each department enters its numbers. |
| Every department starts from a blank template, or from last year's file. | A pre-filled first version, so managers adjust numbers instead of inventing them. |
| Headcount and compensation live in a separate sheet nobody reconciles. | Headcount, salaries, burden and hiring dates sit in the same model as the budget. |
| Nobody trusts which version is current. | One approved version, with every change tracked. |
Two finance leaders on what budget season looked like before, and after:
A dental group went from 18 clinics to 36, and the budget, the board reporting and the covenant scenarios kept up.
“MCC helped us implement Vena to streamline budgeting, reporting, and forecasting across our 25 clinics. Even in the first year of implementation, we significantly reduced the time and manual effort required for our annual budget process - replacing multiple Excel versions with a much more efficient workflow.”
Simon Dumais
VP Finance, Clareo
A short timeline, and a handover SOP with screenshots at the end
“The implementation process with MCC was a wonderful experience. Their patience, expertise, and training methods ensured not only that we would get up and running, but that I would have the tools to understand and maintain the new system. We had a short timeline, but I never felt rushed. At the end of the project, the team handed over a detailed SOP with screenshots — which I had not been expecting, but was delighted to receive. I cannot recommend MCC highly enough!”
Daeman Di Stefano
Director of Finance, Park Avenue Synagogue
Give each manager one place to enter their numbers, pre-filled with a first version built from actuals and known changes, so nobody starts from a blank template. Finance sets the shared assumptions centrally, managers adjust only what they own, and approvals happen in the same place instead of over email.
Headcount planning is the plan for who you'll employ, when, and at what cost: current staff, open roles, hiring dates, raises and burden. HR usually owns the people data and finance owns the cost. It works best when both feed the same model, so a delayed hire changes the forecast without anyone retyping it.
Plan by person or role, not by department total. Each line carries a salary, a burden rate for benefits and payroll taxes, the raise date and percentage, and a start date for new hires. The budget then adds itself up, and moving one hire's start date flows straight through to cost and cash.
Stop emailing files. Keep the budget in one place with named versions, such as working, submitted and approved, control who can edit what, and lock the approved version once it's signed off. Later changes become a reforecast measured against it, not a new copy of the file with a date in its name.
Last updated
The budget and the people plan get layered in during tailoring, once the foundation is live on your actuals. The usual trap is every department asking for its own report at once, so priorities get set up front.
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