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HR Budgeting from Zero: Recruiting, Salaries, Education, and Automation in One System
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 29 2026
Pages: 270
Weight: 0.80
Height: 0.61 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
If you're an HR Director who walks into the budget meeting with a 40-line spreadsheet - and walks outwith half of it cut - this book is for you.
You know the drill:
- The CFO asks what's the ROI on this? and you have a feeling, not a number.
- Finance slashes your training budget first, every single year, because you can't prove what it returns.
- You inherit last year's budget, add 10%, and call it planning.
- A recruiter resigns mid-year and suddenly your approved budget has a hole nobody planned for.
Stop walking in unarmed. This book is the system.
Here's what you'll learn:
- The Zero-Base Build - construct every line from actual headcount plans, not last year's guesswork.
- The Hiring Need Calculator - why growing by 50 people means hiring 120, and how to budget for it.
- The Cost-of-Vacancy Calculator - show Finance what an unfilled role burns per week.
- The Merit Increase Matrix - a salary review that explains itself to the CFO and to every employee.
- The Training ROI Calculator - defend every learning dollar with a payback number.
- The Automation ROI Case - prove the HRIS pays for itself before you buy it.
- The Budget Defense Script - answer the five questions every CFO asks, in their language.
- The Plan-vs-Fact Tracker - catch overspend in week two, not quarter three.
57 ready-to-use templates inside - no email walls, no downloads, every template is on the page.
Boudreau and Cascio's Investing in People gives you the theory for $36.50. An HR budgeting consultantcharges $200 an hour. Mike Pritula built these budgets at STB, Wargaming, Preply, and iDeals, and trained150,000+ HR professionals. This book costs less than dinner.
Stop apologizing for your budget. Start defending every line.
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