Approved Headcount Budget
Board-approved end-of-period headcount target. The contractual reference point against which `hr.total_headcount` and `hr.open_positions` are read — drift means either hiring under plan (typically a growth concern) or over plan (typically a burn-discipline concern). Common pitfall: silent in-year adjustments — boards approve a number, the CEO informally expands or contracts to it, and the variance never gets reconciled. Best practice is to treat changes to this number as board-action items, recorded in `hr.board_actions`. — HR KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).
I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier)
No public third-party standard anchors this KPI yet, so I'mBoard authors and maintains the definition — transparently labeled as editorial tier. See the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system and the back-attribution workstream.
Rogue ID: hr.approved_headcount_budget
Type: Number
Domain: HR
Definition
Board-approved end-of-period headcount target. The contractual reference point against which hr.total_headcount and hr.open_positions are read — drift means either hiring under plan (typically a growth concern) or over plan (typically a burn-discipline concern). Common pitfall: silent in-year adjustments — boards approve a number, the CEO informally expands or contracts to it, and the variance never gets reconciled. Best practice is to treat changes to this number as board-action items, recorded in hr.board_actions.
Formula
Plain board-approved end-of-period FTE target. No derivation — set by board resolution as part of the annual or semi-annual budget. Changes require board approval and should be logged in `hr.board_actions`.Why it matters
The single number that converts strategic intent into operating constraint. Variance against this number drives the budget-vs-actual conversation that anchors most board meetings' HR section.
How to interpret
DEPRECATED (#2056) — superseded by hr.total_headcount carrying scenario=budget (the F1 scenario axis, #2019). The board-approved headcount plan is now the budget scenario of the single canonical headcount KPI, so budget and actual share one definition and one variance view instead of two parallel KPIs. This KPI is hidden from the "Add KPI" picker and onboarding but still resolves so existing references keep rendering; prefer hr.total_headcount (scenario=budget) for all new budget surfaces. For migration context: pair with hr.total_headcount and hr.headcount_change for variance reporting — a sustained gap >10% under plan typically signals recruiting capacity issues; sustained over plan signals approval-gate slippage or contractor-conversion that bypassed the budget process (industry folk-wisdom, not citation-grade).
Calculation policy
How an AI agent should compute this KPI from messy company data. Free-text rules consumed at reasoning time — not a deterministic DSL. The most common ways to get this wrong are listed under Common miscomputations.
Inclusion rules
- The board-approved end-of-period FTE target — a plain count set by board resolution as part of the annual or semi-annual budget. No derivation; it is an input, point-in-time as-of the period it governs.
- Use the same FTE-equivalent, employees-only convention as
hr.total_headcountso plan and actual are directly comparable.
Exclusion rules
- Contractors and open reqs beyond the approved seat count — the budget is an employee-FTE ceiling, consistent with the headcount definition.
- Informal in-year expansions or contractions that never went through a board approval — changes to this number are themselves board-action items (
hr.board_actions).
Required inputs
- The board resolution / approved operating budget stating the headcount target.
- Any board-approved mid-period revisions, each logged as a board action.
Data-source priority
- Board-approved budget document / resolution of record.
- Finance FP&A headcount plan reconciled to the board number.
Edge cases
- DEPRECATED (#2056): the board-approved plan is now the
scenario=budgetaxis ofhr.total_headcount, so budget and actual share one definition and one variance view. Populate this legacy KPI only to keep existing references resolving; author all new budget surfaces againsthr.total_headcount(scenario=budget). - Mid-year board-approved revision: record the change and its effective date rather than silently overwriting, so the variance history stays auditable.
Validation checks
- Variance vs
hr.total_headcountactuals: a sustained gap >10% under plan signals recruiting-capacity issues; sustained over plan signals approval-gate slippage or contractor-conversion that bypassed the budget process. - Any change to this number should have a corresponding
hr.board_actionsentry — an unexplained change is a process gap.
Common miscomputations
- Silently adjusting the approved number to match actuals so variance always reads zero — defeats the budget-vs-actual conversation this KPI exists for.
- Mixing a headcount (people) target with an FTE target, or including contractors, so it cannot be compared like-for-like against
hr.total_headcount.
Related KPIs
hr.total_headcounthr.headcount_changehr.open_positionshr.hiring_planhr.board_actions
Source
I'mBoard editorial — authored and maintained by I'mBoard, first published 2026-04-01. No third-party standard is cited for this KPI; when one emerges, the definition is back-attributed and promoted to the published tier (a minor version bump). Read the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system, attribution rules, and dispute process.
Stage relevance
| Company stage | Priority |
|---|---|
| Series A | Recommended |
| Series B | Core |
| Series C+ | Core |
| Public | Core |
Suggested for stages: Series A, Series B, Series C+, Public.
Default owning functions
- HR
- Finance
Machine-readable
- This KPI as JSON:
/api/ontology/hr/approved_headcount_budget.json - All HR KPIs:
/api/ontology/hr.json - Full catalog:
/api/ontology/index.json
HR KPIs
Headcount, hiring, attrition, compensation. 31 KPIs in this domain — 4 anchored to third-party standards, 27 editorial.
ARR per FTE
Annual Recurring Revenue divided by total FTE-equivalent workforce — the canonical SaaS workforce-productivity ratio anchored to the SaaS Capital Annual Survey methodology (revenue per employee benchmarks). A high-signal denominator for "are we over- or under-staffed for our revenue scale?" Common pitfall: choosing different ARR conventions (ending vs average, GAAP-reconciled vs raw) without locking in a board-level standard. Best practice is to pair this with `sales.arr` so the numerator is unambiguous and to disclose whether contractors are included in the FTE denominator. — HR KPI anchored to SaaS Capital Annual Survey 2025 (14th Annual).