People and headcount

Updated July 18, 2026

The People section is your hiring plan. For most SaaS companies, payroll is the biggest cost, so modeling it explicitly matters more than almost any other input.

Staff

Add one row per person (or planned role). For each you set:

Role — for example CEO, Backend Engineer, Sales Rep.
Department — G&A, R&D, S&M, or COGS. This determines where the cost lands in your P&L.
Start month — when they are hired. Add an end month if the role is temporary.
Monthly salary and bonus %.
Salary increase — the amount and timing of raises.

Payroll taxes and benefits

Employer-side costs — payroll taxes, health insurance, retirement contributions — are added on top of base salary so your fully-loaded cost per employee is realistic, not just the headline salary.

Sales staff

If you have a sales team, model its productivity: quota per rep, ramp-up time to full productivity, and commission. This ties your sales headcount to the pipeline it can actually generate.

Support staff

Model customer support as headcount that scales with your customer base, allocated to COGS so it correctly reduces gross margin as you grow.

Department matters: R&D and G&A salaries sit in operating expenses, while support that scales with customers sits in COGS and affects your gross margin. Assign each hire to the right department.

Because hiring is usually the largest lever on burn, revisit this section whenever you test a growth scenario — see what-if mode.