ActivTrak for BI - Headcount Planning helps HR and finance teams see exactly where workforce capacity is being fully used, where it's stretched thin, and where salary dollars are tied up in time that isn't converting into expected productive output. Instead of relying on gut feel about which teams are "busy" or "have room," this report turns logged productive hours into a dollar-and-FTE view of available capacity you can act on.
- See available capacity in dollars, not just hours - understand exactly how much payroll spend is tied to underutilized time, both today and annualized.
- Flag over-capacity risk - identify users consistently working beyond expected productivity, a leading indicator of burnout or true staffing gaps.
- Prioritize reallocation opportunities - a High/Medium/Low Available Capacity classification points you to the users and teams where work can be redistributed.
- Compare teams and levels on equal footing - ratio-based metrics let you weigh a small team's underutilization against a large team's, rather than comparing raw dollar totals that naturally favor bigger teams.
- Track capacity trends over time - a rolling 12-month view shows whether available capacity is shrinking, holding steady, or growing as hiring and workload shift.
Available to customers with a paid ActivTrak package and the ActivConnect API (Add-on), this report surfaces available workforce capacity and its cost across your organization.
To access ActivTrak for BI - Headcount Planning, please refer to our platform-specific BI Template Setup Guide:
Tip: Save this report in your BI workspace for quick access, and consider publishing it to your organization's BI service for broader visibility across HR, finance, and management teams.
Contents
- Before you get started
- The challenge you're facing
- How to solve it
- How to read this report
- Practical applications
- Learn more
Before you get started
ActivTrak for BI - Headcount Planning relies on a small set of parameters that shape every metric in the report. Before drawing conclusions from the data, confirm these are set appropriately for your organization.
- Productivity Goal: The expected productive hours per day, typically set per role or team. A goal that's too generic across very different roles will make some teams look artificially overstaffed, and others understaffed.
The source of this value depends on your account package. See Set Productivity Goals to learn more about each goal type and how to configure them.
You can customize the following values via the Parameter Setting page; changes apply report-wide, affecting every team and user simultaneously.
- Available Capacity Buffer: The tolerance band around 100% goal achievement.
- % of Expected Days Worked: Accounts for PTO, holidays, and part-time schedules.
- Low Available Capacity Threshold and High Available Capacity Threshold: The cutoffs that sort users into the Low/Medium/High tiers. These are worth aligning with HR and finance leadership up front, since they determine how aggressively the report flags reallocation opportunities.
The challenge you're facing
Most HR and finance teams face the same version of this problem when planning headcount:
- You suspect some teams are overstaffed or understaffed relative to current workload, but the only evidence is anecdotal.
- Backfill and new-hire requests get approved without checking whether existing capacity - spread across a few underutilized users - could absorb the work instead.
- Burnout risk from consistently over-capacity employees goes unnoticed until it shows up as attrition, because there's no systematic way to flag it earlier.
- When cost-cutting conversations happen, teams get compared on raw headcount or payroll dollars rather than actual utilization, which unfairly penalizes larger teams and can miss the smaller team with the worse utilization problem.
How to solve it
ActivTrak for BI - Headcount Planning answers each of these challenges with a specific metric:
- Instead of anecdotes, Available Capacity Cost and Available Capacity FTE give you a concrete dollar figure and headcount-equivalent for unused capacity, by user, team, or the whole org.
- The Available Capacity Buffer filters out normal month-to-month variance, so only a real, sustained pattern shows up as available capacity.
- The User Available Capacity tiers rank users by how much capacity they have free, so you can check existing capacity before approving a new req.
- Tracking users over multiple months, rather than a single snapshot, distinguishes a one-time crunch from a chronic burnout risk.
- Available Capacity Cost Ratio and Available Capacity FTE Ratio normalize for team size, so a small team with a high ratio surfaces just as clearly as a large team with a lower one.
How to read this report
ActivTrak for BI - Headcount Planning includes two report pages: Headcount Planning Summary and Analysis by Team & Level.
Glossary: ActivTrak for BI - Headcount Planning
For a deep dive into each of the terms and metrics found in ActivTrak for BI - Headcount Planning, check out the supporting Glossary.
Focus your attention
Both report pages can be customized using the filter controls at the top of the page:
-
Year Month: Select the reporting period (for example, March2026)
Note: All cards and charts update to reflect that month, except the Workforce Capacity Trend chart, which always shows the trailing 12 months regardless of this filter.
- Employee Level: Filter to a specific level (VP, Director, Manager, Professional, Associate)
- Team: Filter to a specific team (for example, Engineering, Marketing, Sales) or All.
- User: Filter to a single user or All - useful when following up on a specific person flagged in the User Capacity Summary table.
Headcount Planning Summary
The Headcount Planning Summary page is the executive view - six overview cards on the left plus an Available Capacity Cost breakdown by team on the right.
Overview
The six cards give you the big picture at a glance: Total Paid Salary, Available Capacity Cost, Available Capacity FTE, High Available Capacity, Medium Available Capacity, and Low Available Capacity. The sparkline under each number shows how that metric has trended over the month.
What this tells you: In March 2026, Total Paid Salary was $1.2M ($14M annualized) against $43.7K ($523.9K annualized) in Available Capacity Cost - about 3.6% of payroll tied to unused time. That unused time breaks down to 4.1 Available Capacity FTE (full-time equivalent), split across 2 High, 2 Medium, and 7 Low Available Capacity workers.
Available Capacity Cost
This chart breaks Available Capacity Cost down by Team or Employee Level (use the toggle at the top of the chart), letting you see where unused capacity dollars are concentrated.
What this tells you: For March 2026, Engineering carries the largest share of Available Capacity Cost at $29.8K - more than the next four teams combined (Marketing $5.3K, Sales $4.5K, Solutions $2.1K, and Customer Success $2.1K). That's a clear signal to start a capacity review: Engineering alone accounts for roughly 68% of the org's total Available Capacity Cost for the month.
Analysis by Team & Level
The Analysis by Team & Level lets you move from the org-wide picture to the specific teams, levels, and individuals driving it.
Available Capacity
A horizontal bar chart that breaks the selected metric down by Team or Employee Level (use the toggle at the top of the chart). Four buttons above the chart let you choose the capacity metric: Available Capacity Cost, Available Capacity Cost Ratio, Available Capacity FTE, and Available Capacity FTE Ratio.
What this tells you: With Available Capacity Cost selected and the view toggled to Employee Level, VP-level users carry the highest Available Capacity Cost at $17.0K, followed by Professional at $13.9K, Associate at $6.9K, Manager at $3.3K, and Director at $2.5K.
Workforce Capacity Trend - Last 1 Year
This chart plots Total Paid Salary (blue bars), Available Capacity Cost (light blue bars), and Available Capacity FTE Ratio (orange line) across the trailing 12 months, independent of the Year Month filter.
What this tells you: Total Paid Salary has held steady around $1.2M-$1.3M for the past year, with Available Capacity Cost consistently in the $0.1M-$0.2M range. The Available Capacity FTE Ratio line tells the more interesting story: it spiked to roughly 13% in September 2025 and has trended downward since December 2025, reaching nearly 3% by February and March 2026.
User Capacity Summary
This table lists all users within the current filter scope, along with their Available Capacity Cost, Available Capacity FTE, and User Available Capacity classification.
What this tells you: For March 2026, Zoe T. tops the table at $17,005 in Available Capacity Cost and 0.97 Available Capacity FTE - High Available Capacity. Michelle P. follows at $5,799 and 0.99 FTE, also High. Angela Y. and Alicia F. fall in the Medium tier ($3,832/0.42 FTE and $3,617/0.39 FTE, respectively), while Oscar B., Joe O., Allison E., Jackson Y., Mary E., and George V. round out the Low tier, each with Available Capacity Cost under $2,500. This table is where a capacity review shifts from "which team" to "which person," and it's the natural jumping-off point for a conversation with a manager about reallocating work.
Practical applications
Prioritizing reallocation before backfill
Before approving a new hire or backfill request, check the requesting team's Available Capacity FTE and User Available Capacity tiers on the Analysis by Team & Level page. If a High Available Capacity user already exists on or near the requesting team, a project reassignment may solve the immediate need faster - and at lower cost - than a new hire, especially when the hiring process itself would take longer than shifting existing work.
Catching burnout risk early
Filter the Analysis by Team & Level page to a single user, then check their Available Capacity FTE in the User Capacity Summary table across a few consecutive Year Month selections. Available Capacity FTE that keeps shrinking toward zero over multiple months — rather than in a single month — points to a sustained increase in workload that warrants a manager check-in.
Building a cost-optimization case
Use the Available Capacity Cost by Team chart on the Headcount Planning Summary page to identify the team with the largest annualized Available Capacity Cost, then cross-reference with Available Capacity Cost Ratio on the Analysis by Team & Level page to confirm the finding holds up once team size is accounted for. A team that ranks high on both the absolute dollar figure and the ratio is the strongest candidate for a formal cost-optimization review.