Why Workforce Planning in Excel Is Holding You Back

If your workforce planning still lives in spreadsheets, you’re making things harder than they need to be.

Let’s be honest—Excel wasn’t built for workforce planning. Yet, finance teams everywhere still rely on fragile formulas, disconnected tabs, and endless back-and-forth emails to manage one of the biggest expenses in their business: personnel costs.

🔴 One mistake in a formula can throw off an entire year’s forecast.
🔴 Version control nightmares leave you wondering which spreadsheet is accurate.
🔴 Allocating salaries, benefits, and taxes across departments is a manual headache.

Sound familiar?

We sat down with Olga Melnik (Director of Consulting) and Kate Drenckhahn (Senior Product Manager) at Centage to discuss how businesses can ditch the Excel chaos and start planning their workforce expenses with precision, confidence, and ease.

👇 Watch the full conversation or keep reading to see what you’re missing.

The Workforce Planning Struggle: Why Excel Falls Short

1. Too Many Spreadsheets, Not Enough Control

Most finance teams using Excel for workforce planning don’t have one source of truth.

Instead, they’re managing:
❌ Multiple workbooks for each department or cost center
❌ Manual formulas that break as soon as someone touches them
❌ Disconnected sheets where updates don’t flow into the P&L

🚨 Olga has seen it happen again and again:

"We see different sheets for every department, each with separate assumptions. Then at the end of the process, someone has to manually consolidate everything into the P&L. That’s where errors happen."

It’s a time-consuming and high-risk process. One miscalculation could mean underestimating costs by millions—or worse, realizing mid-year that you don’t have the cash flow to support your workforce.

2. The Hidden Costs of Spreadsheet Errors

Personnel expenses aren’t just salaries. You also have:
✔ Taxes & benefits (which change by region & role)
✔ Bonuses & incentives (accrued but paid later)
✔ Allocations across departments, projects, and locations

Most Excel users oversimplify these costs, adding a blanket 15-20% on top of salaries instead of accurately modeling real expenses.

🚨 Why is this a problem?

"If you miscalculate workforce costs, you could be looking at major cash flow issues. One company I worked with was forced to lay off employees because their Excel budget had completely underestimated real payroll expenses.” – Olga

Would you rather guess or know your numbers down to the penny?

How Centage Transforms Workforce Planning

The good news? Workforce planning doesn’t have to be this painful.

Centage was designed to eliminate the frustration of spreadsheets and give finance teams an easier, more accurate way to plan for personnel expenses.

🚀 Here’s how:

✅ 1. Ditch the Manual Work—Automate Payroll Data Imports

No more manual exports, uploads, or reformatting. Centage connects directly to your payroll system (Paylocity, UKG, ADP, etc.) so your workforce data is always up to date.

💡 Kate shared exciting news:

"We surveyed our customers and overwhelmingly heard that they wanted self-serve payroll integrations. That’s coming soon—finance teams will be able to pull in payroll data with the click of a button."

👉 No more waiting on IT. No more outdated employee lists. Just real-time, accurate workforce planning.

✅ 2. Allocate Salaries & Expenses Without Spreadsheets

Instead of juggling 10+ Excel tabs for different cost centers, Centage lets you allocate personnel costs dynamically:

✔ Split salaries across departments (e.g., 70% HR, 30% Finance)
✔ Adjust allocations month by month as workforce needs change
✔ Get a real-time view of how personnel costs impact the overall budget

🚨 Why does this matter?

"Businesses with high turnover—like restaurants, retail, or consulting firms—need flexible allocations. Centage lets you model changes dynamically, rather than relying on static Excel estimates." – Olga

✅ 3. Stop the Version Control Nightmare—Lock Down Data Security

Your payroll data is sensitive. Excel isn’t built to protect it.

With Centage, you can:
✔ Control who sees what—no more emailing around salary details
✔ Give department heads access only to their team’s budget
✔ Keep a single, real-time workforce plan—no more conflicting files

🚨 Paul (Centage’s CEO) summed it up best:

"One of the biggest Excel problems is security. You can’t give 10 managers access to a spreadsheet with salary data without exposing confidential information. Centage fixes that."

✅ 4. Forecast Workforce Costs Down to the Penny

Instead of using vague salary assumptions, Centage gives you full precision:

✔ Automatically calculates taxes, benefits, and bonuses
✔ Models cash flow impact (weekly, biweekly, or monthly payroll cycles)
✔ Accounts for accruals—so you’re not caught off guard by payouts

🚨 This is a game-changer:

"Excel can’t connect payroll timing to cash flow. Centage does. It calculates exactly when payroll hits your balance sheet—so you’re never surprised by an unexpected cash crunch." – Kate

Is It Time to Move Beyond Spreadsheets?

Workforce planning is one of the most complex parts of FP&A—but it doesn’t have to be a nightmare.

If you’re tired of managing endless Excel sheets, here’s your next step:

1. Watch the full expert Q&A video to hear Kate & Olga break it all down
2. Book a demo to see how Centage can help you forecast workforce costs with precision

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📊 Stop guessing. Start planning smarter.

🔗 See Centage in Action →

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