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Operating schedules · in 1 model

Driver-based budget: volume, price, heads and cost per head

The plan by month, built from drivers.

By Surojit Chakraverti, founder of L3VLUP and an investor running a long-short healthcare and technology equities strategy.

On this subject: driver-based budget: volume, price, heads and cost per head.Updated 4 November 2026

What it does

The plan a board approves, built so that it can be compared with what happens. Each product’s annual volume is phased across the months by a seasonality curve and priced at a plan price, with a plan unit cost for the direct cost; each department’s cost is its planned heads in each month times a fully loaded cost per head, plus a non-pay budget. Because every line is a driver times a rate, a variance can later be split into the driver and the rate, which a budget typed as revenue and cost lines never allows.

Where it lives

The same schedule in each model that carries it, with the rows to open. Open a model in the browser, go to the sheet, and click the lines.

FP&A budget and variance model
  • Assumptions, rows 10–19: Premium: plan volume, full year, Premium: plan price, Premium: plan unit cost, Core: plan volume, full year…
  • Assumptions, rows 22–33: Sales and marketing: cost per head, Sales and marketing: non-pay, full year, Sales and marketing: heads at the start of the year, Sales and marketing: planned heads…
  • Plan, rows 6–11: Units, Price, Revenue, Unit cost…
  • Plan, rows 14–19: Units, Price, Revenue, Unit cost…
  • Plan, rows 22–27: Units, Price, Revenue, Unit cost…
  • Plan, rows 30–34: Units, Revenue, Direct cost, Gross margin…
  • Plan, rows 37–41: Heads, Cost per head, Pay, Non-pay…
  • Plan, rows 44–48: Heads, Cost per head, Pay, Non-pay…
  • Plan, rows 51–55: Heads, Cost per head, Pay, Non-pay…
  • Plan, rows 58–61: Heads, Pay, Non-pay, Operating costs
  • Plan, rows 64–65: EBITDA, EBITDA margin
  • Headcount, rows 6–12: Sales and marketing: planned heads, Sales and marketing: planned net hires, Supply chain: planned heads, Supply chain: planned net hires…
  • Headcount, rows 28–30: Planned heads in December, Forecast heads in December, Planned net hires over the year
Inspect it in the browser Worked model

What a reviewer looks for

  • Revenue typed by month, so nothing can say later whether a shortfall was price or volume.
  • A seasonality curve that does not sum to 100%, so the months do not add up to the annual plan.
  • Pay on year-end heads rather than the heads in each month, so a hire in December costs a full year.

Learn it, then build it

Read · Guide · 11 min

Financial Modelling Best Practices: The Conventions That Make a Model Auditable

Vocabulary: Gross Margin, EBITDA.

Other operating schedules

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