Position Planning
Position Planning is one funded headcount line. Four Production Supervisors at grade 7, in the Factory Operations budget area, from July to June, at a cost you enter. You create one record per budgeted line, and together they are the year's hiring plan with money on it.
What it is for
A hiring plan is three numbers: what job, how many, how much. This screen holds exactly those three against a date range, so the plan is a record in the system rather than a spreadsheet on somebody's laptop.
One record is one planned line. If the factory is funded for four supervisors and eighteen operators, that is two records, not one with two lines. It reads oddly at first and it is deliberate: each planned line has its own value, its own quantity and its own window, and each can be revised without touching the other.
Why does this screen exist when Position Structure looks the same
Both name a position, a grade and a legal entity, so the resemblance is real. They answer different questions.
Position Structure answers is this job real. It is one list of legal combinations, with no money and no dates, and it stays true from one year to the next.
Position Planning answers how many are funded, for how much, and when. It carries a value, a quantity, a total and a date range, and it is rewritten every budget year.
The catalogue and the order. The catalogue says a Production Supervisor at grade 7 is a job that exists in this company. The plan says we are funding four of them this year in Factory Operations.
And why not just use the Organizational Structure screen
They are unrelated, despite the similar name. Organizational Structure is the settings screen where one company decides how the shared screens behave for it, which fields are compulsory and which are hidden. It holds no boxes, no headcount and no money. Position Planning is the budget for the jobs you intend to fill.
Every field, in plain words
Plan
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal Entity | The company the heads are funded in. | KHI-MFG - Korangi Manufacturing | Pick it from the list. |
| Position Planning | The short code for this planned line. | FY2526-PRDSUP | Required. Must be unique. Putting the year in the code keeps last year's plan readable beside this year's. |
| Position | The job being funded. | PRDSUP - Production Supervisor | Pick it from the list. See Position. |
| Position Grade | The level it is funded at. | G07 - Grade 7 Supervisory | Pick it from the list. The same job funded at two grades is two records. |
| Position Budget Area | The pot the heads are counted against. | FACTOPS - Factory Operations | Pick it from the list. See Position Budget Area. |
| Block | Retires a planned line. | Leave clear while the plan is live. Tick it when the year closes or the head is withdrawn. | Ticking it is the right way to cancel a planned line. Keep the record so the year can be read back. |
Budget
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Value | The budgeted cost of one head. | 1140000 | Enter it in rupees. Most clients use the annual cost to company of one person in that job. |
| Quantity | How many heads are funded. | 4 | A whole number of people. |
| Total | The budgeted cost of the whole line. | 4560000 | Enter the total for the line. Check it against Value multiplied by Quantity yourself, nothing on the screen recalculates it for you. |
Period
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date From | The first day the heads are funded. | 01-07-2025 | Normally the start of the budget year. A mid year addition starts on the month it was approved. |
| Date To | The last day the heads are funded. | 30-06-2026 | Normally the end of the budget year. |
How to configure it
- Finish Position, Position Grade and Position Budget Area. Create the year on Budget Area Period so the approved totals are on record.
- Take the approved headcount sheet and work down it one line at a time. Each line on that sheet becomes one record here.
- For the first line, pick the Legal Entity, then enter a code that carries the year, for example
FY2526-PRDSUP. - Pick the Position, the Position Grade and the Position Budget Area.
- Enter Value as the cost of one head, Quantity as the number funded, and Total as the two multiplied together.
- Enter Date From and Date To for the budget year.
- Save, and repeat for every line on the approved sheet.
- Add the totals of all your lines in a budget area and compare them with the approved figure on Budget Area Period. This comparison is yours to make, the screens record both figures but do not reconcile them for you.
Scenarios
We were approved four supervisors and eighteen operators
Two records. One for the supervisor position at its grade with quantity four, one for the operator position at its grade with quantity eighteen. Both can sit in the same budget area and the same date range.
Two more operators were approved in November
Create a third record for the operator position with quantity two, dated from the first of November to the end of the budget year. Leaving the original record untouched means the file still shows what was approved at the start of the year and what was added during it.
A funded vacancy was never filled and the year has ended
Tick Block on the record. Next year gets its own records with next year's code and dates. Blocking rather than removing keeps the answer to the question finance always asks, which is what we were funded for and did not use.
Our budget is a single number per department, not per job
You can still use the screen, by creating one record per department with the position left at the most common job and the quantity set to the department total. It is a compromise and you should say so to the client, because the plan then cannot be read job by job. The better conversation is to ask whether the client wants job level planning at all, and to skip this screen if the answer is no.
What it is connected to
- Needs Legal Entity, Position, Position Grade and Position Budget Area to exist first.
- Budget Area Period holds the approved totals for the window these lines sit inside.
- Nothing outside this screen reads a planned line. It does not block a Recruitment Requisition that exceeds the plan, and it does not stop an Organization Assignment being made for an unfunded head. Treat the plan as the recorded budget, and police it with a report and a human.
- The budget area is the link between the plan and recruitment: a requisition names a budget area, so the pot a vacancy is drawn from is the pot that was planned here.
If something looks wrong
- "The total does not match the value times the quantity" - all three are typed by hand and nothing recalculates. Fix the total.
- "It let us raise a requisition for a head we did not budget" - as designed. The plan is recorded here, not enforced on the requisition.
- "Last year's plan is mixed in with this year's" - the codes do not carry a year and the old lines are not blocked. Block the closed year and put the year in the code from now on.
- "It will not save, it says the plan code already exists" - the code is in use, which is common when the same code is reused each year. Add the year to the code.