Most startup financial models treat hiring plans and budgets as separate things. You plan to raise $4M, and separately you plan to hire 8 engineers. But those two numbers are connected: the engineers are funded by the round. If the round comes in at $2M instead of $4M, the hiring plan should change. In a spreadsheet, you update both manually, then check the statements tab to make sure nothing broke downstream. Change one cell, verify ten others. This is exactly the kind of fragile linking that makes spreadsheet models a liability.
Burncast now connects them directly. You can tie hiring and spending to your funding rounds, your cash position, or your revenue. Set a percentage, and the model figures out the rest.
Three budget sources, one composition model
Every team role and cost item in Burncast can now use a budget source. The concept is the same across all three: you allocate a percentage of something, and the model derives what you can afford.
Percentage of funding. Allocate a share of a funding round to a role or cost item. Burncast calculates how many hires or units that budget supports based on salary or unit cost. When you change the round size, headcount adjusts automatically. If you’re exploring whether to raise $2M or $4M, the downstream hiring plan updates in both scenarios without manual recalculation.
Percentage of cash. Allocate a share of your prior-month cash position. This creates a monthly pool that accumulates over time, drained by ongoing salary or cost commitments. Burncast adds hires or units only when the pool can afford the commitment. This models the real constraint most startups face: you can’t hire faster than your bank account allows.
This is the most advanced option, and for many startups the most useful. You set the allocation percentage and coverage period, and Burncast maximizes growth automatically within your cash constraints. As revenue grows and cash accumulates faster, the pool fills faster and hiring accelerates. If cash tightens, hiring slows down on its own. The model adapts to your financial reality each month without you touching it.
Percentage of revenue. For cost items, allocate a share of revenue as a direct fee. Payment processing at 2.9% of revenue, sales commissions at 8% of recognized revenue, platform fees that scale with your top line. The cost tracks revenue automatically, including months where revenue dips.
Budget-based hiring in practice
Consider a startup planning to hire sales reps after closing a Series A. The founder knows the round size ($4M) and the annual salary ($120K loaded). Here are three ways to model this in Burncast:
Percentage of funding, all at once. Allocate 15% of the Series A to sales hiring. Burncast derives 5 hires ($600K budget / $120K salary). All 5 appear when the round closes. If the round comes in at $3M, headcount drops to 3. One assumption drives the whole plan. Create a scenario with a smaller round to see the full downstream impact, or drag the funding amount lever and watch the hiring plan adjust in real time.
Percentage of cash, rate-capped. Allocate 5% of cash to sales hiring with a max of 1 hire per month and 24 months of coverage. Burncast builds a pool from 5% of last month’s ending cash, subtracts ongoing payroll from existing hires, and adds a new rep only when the pool accumulates enough to cover 24 months of salary. This models conservative, cash-aware hiring where you never commit to a salary you cannot sustain.
Percentage of cash, uncapped. Same as above, but with no per-month limit. If the pool can afford 3 hires in a single month, all 3 start immediately. This models aggressive scaling when cash is abundant.
The difference between rate-capped and uncapped hiring is a single field: “Max hires per month.” Leave it empty for uncapped. Set it to 1 for conservative month-by-month growth. The total cap (“Max total headcount”) still applies in both modes.
Per-employee costs that track your team
Not every cost scales with revenue or funding. Some scale with people. Burncast models this directly with per-employee cost ramps.
Set a cost to “per employee” and it tracks headcount automatically:
- Recurring per active headcount. Health insurance at $350/month per employee, SaaS seat licenses at $50/month per person. The cost scales up and down with your active team size, including hires that ramp in over time from budget-based hiring.
- One-time per new hire. Laptop and peripherals at $2,500 per hire, onboarding costs at $1,000 per new employee. Applied once when each person starts, then never again for that hire.
You can scope per-employee costs to specific departments or roles. “Engineering insurance” applies only to the engineering department. “Sales laptop” applies only to sales roles. The filtering uses the same department and role structure as your team page.
Revenue-driven fees
For costs that scale with your top line, set a cost to “percentage of revenue” and specify the allocation. Burncast multiplies the percentage by that month’s revenue to calculate the cost.
You can link to a specific revenue source (e.g., payment processing fees on the Pro Plan only) or apply it across all revenue sources. The “use revenue from” field lets you choose current month or prior month as the basis, depending on when the fee is actually incurred.
Revenue-driven fees bypass the unit and growth path entirely. There is no pool, no coverage, no rate cap. The cost is simply a percentage of revenue each month. When revenue is zero or negative, the fee is zero.
How it connects to scenarios and levers
Budget-based scaling becomes especially useful in combination with scenarios and interactive levers.
Create a scenario where the Series A is $2M instead of $4M. Every role and cost item tied to that round adjusts automatically. Headcount shrinks, per-employee costs follow, and the burn rate reflects the smaller team. You see the full cascade from a single assumption change.
With interactive levers, drag the funding amount slider and watch the hiring plan and cost structure update in real time. This is the workflow budget-based scaling was designed for: connect the assumptions that are actually connected, and let the model trace the consequences.
Coverage and commitment math
When Burncast evaluates whether the pool can afford a new hire or unit, it does not just check the monthly cost. It checks the total commitment over a coverage period.
For a $120K/year role with 24 months of coverage and a 5% annual raise, the commitment threshold is approximately $246K (24 months of salary including one raise boundary). The pool needs to accumulate that much before a hire happens. This prevents the model from adding hires that the budget can sustain for one month but not for two years.
This reflects how hiring actually works. A strong candidate is not going to accept an offer if the company can only guarantee their salary for three months. Experienced hires expect at least a year of runway behind their role, and risk-averse candidates want two. Coverage lets you model that expectation directly: set 12 months if you are hiring people comfortable with startup risk, or 24 months if you are recruiting from larger companies where stability matters.
You control the coverage period. Set it to 12 months for a one-year commitment horizon, 6 months for faster but riskier hiring, or 36 months for conservative long-term planning. The default is 12 months.
Try it
Budget-based scaling is available now for all plans. Open any team role or cost item dialog, select “Budget-based” as the hiring or spending ramp, and choose your budget source.
For the full reference, see the team hiring ramp and cost budget sources documentation.