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How to Create a Headcount Report in Google Sheets with ChatGPT

Cody Schneider•

Creating a headcount report from scratch feels like a task that should be simple, but it quickly gets complicated with messy data and confusing formulas. Using ChatGPT as your formula-writing assistant can turn this tedious process into a surprisingly straightforward one. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to set up your data in Google Sheets and use ChatGPT to generate the formulas you need for a complete headcount report.

What is a Headcount Report and Why Bother Creating One?

A headcount report is more than just a list of employees, it’s a detailed snapshot of your organization's workforce. It provides key insights into the composition, growth, and stability of your team. For many managers, HR professionals, and founders, this report is essential for making informed decisions.

Here’s why it's so valuable:

  • Strategic Workforce Planning: It helps you understand your current team structure so you can plan for future hiring needs. You can identify which departments are growing, which roles are becoming more critical, and where you might have talent gaps.

  • Budgeting and Forecasting: Payroll is often the largest expense for a business. An accurate headcount report is fundamental for creating budgets, managing salary costs, and forecasting financial performance related to your team.

  • Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Tracking: By including demographic data (kept anonymous and used appropriately), you can measure the effectiveness of your D&I initiatives and identify areas for improvement.

  • Managing Attrition: Tracking who is leaving, from which department, and after how long can highlight potential issues with management, compensation, or company culture before they become major problems.

Ultimately, a good headcount report turns employee data into business intelligence, helping you build a stronger, more efficient organization.

Step 1: Get Your Data Organized in Google Sheets

Before you can ask ChatGPT for help, you need a solid foundation. The quality of its responses will depend entirely on how well-structured your data is. The goal is to create a clean, simple, and machine-readable table of your employee roster.

Create a new Google Sheet and dedicate one tab to your raw employee data. Name it something simple like "HR_Data". Your sheet should be structured like a database table: one employee per row, with clear headers for each column.

Essential Data Columns:

Here are the core columns you should start with. You can always add more, but these are the basics.

  • Employee ID: A unique identifier for each person.

  • Full Name: First and Last name.

  • Department: The department they belong to (e.g., Marketing, Sales, Engineering).

  • Job Title: Their specific role (e.g., Content Writer, Account Executive, Software Developer).

  • Employment Type: Differentiates between roles (e.g., Full-time, Part-time, Contractor, Intern).

  • Location: City, state, or country, or simply Remote/Office.

  • Start Date: The date they began employment.

  • End Date: The date their employment ended (leave it blank for current employees).

  • Status: Active or Inactive. This makes filtering for current employees easy.

Tips for Clean Data:

  • Be Consistent: Make sure entries are uniform. Use "Marketing" every time, not "marketing" or "Marketing Team." Use Data Validation (Data > Data validation) to create dropdown menus for columns like Department, Employment Type, and Status to enforce consistency.

  • Use Correct Date Formatting: Format your Start Date and End Date columns as dates (Format > Number > Date). This is crucial for time-based calculations.

  • No Merged Cells: Merged cells are a nightmare for formulas and data processing. Avoid them entirely in your raw data tab.

Your finished data table should look something like this:

("Google Sheet visualization showing columns A-I with headers: Employee ID, Full Name, Department, Job Title, Employment Type, Location, Start Date, End Date, Status)

Step 2: Use ChatGPT to Generate Your Formulas

Now for the fun part. Open ChatGPT and get ready to ask it for help. We’ll build our report piece by piece by asking specific questions related to our "HR_Data" sheet. For these examples, let's assume your data is in a sheet named HR_Data, with data from cell A2 to I100.

Calculating Total Active Headcount

This is the most fundamental metric. You want to count only the active employees.

Your Prompt to ChatGPT:

"I have a Google Sheet named 'HR_Data'. Column I indicates employment 'Status' ('Active' or 'Inactive'). Write a formula to count the total number of 'Active' employees."

Likely ChatGPT Response:

You can use the COUNTIF function for this. Here is the formula:

=COUNTIF(HR_Data!I:I, "Active")

Breaking Down Headcount by Department

Seeing where your talent is concentrated is one of the most useful parts of a headcount report. For this, a summary table is best, and the QUERY function is perfect.

Your Prompt to ChatGPT:

"My employee list is in 'HR_Data'. Department names are in Column C and Status is in Column I. Write a Google Sheets QUERY formula to create a summary table showing the headcount of 'Active' employees for each department. Don't include departments with zero employees."

Likely ChatGPT Response:

This QUERY formula will give you a dynamic table with department names and their corresponding active headcount:

=QUERY(HR_Data!A:I, "SELECT C, COUNT(C) WHERE I = 'Active' GROUP BY C LABEL COUNT(C) 'Headcount'", 1)

Place this formula in a new tab for your report, and it will automatically generate a clean summary table listing each department and its size.

Calculating New Hires for a Specific Period

Understanding your hiring velocity helps with resource planning. Let's ask for a formula to find new hires in the last month.

Your Prompt to ChatGPT:

"In my 'HR_Data' sheet, employees' Start Dates are in Column G. Write a formula to count the number of new hires who started in the last 30 days."

Likely ChatGPT Response:

You can achieve this using the COUNTIFS function, which allows for multiple criteria. This formula checks if the start date is within the last 30 days:

=COUNTIFS(HR_Data!G:G, ">=" & TODAY() - 30, HR_Data!G:G, "<=" & TODAY())

Tracking Employee Attrition (Turnover)

Tracking who has left the company is just as important as tracking new hires. Let's calculate the number of departures in the current quarter.

Your Prompt to ChatGPT:

"End Dates for former employees are in Column H of my 'HR_Data' sheet. I need a Google Sheets formula to count how many employees left during the first quarter of 2024 (January 1st to March 31st)."

Likely ChatGPT Response:

You can use COUNTIFS to count dates that fall within a specific range. Here is a formula for Q1 2024:

=COUNTIFS(HR_Data!H:H, ">=" & DATE(2024,1,1), HR_Data!H:H, "<=" & DATE(2024,3,31))

You can easily adjust the dates in the formula for any time period you need to analyze.

Step 3: Visualize Your Headcount Data

Now that you have your key metrics calculated, it’s time to visualize them. Charts make your data much easier to understand at a glance. You can even ask ChatGPT for help choosing the right chart type.

Let's use the summary table we created for department headcount.

Your Prompt to ChatGPT:

"I used your QUERY formula to create a table showing headcount by department in Google Sheets. What's the best chart to visualize this data, and how do I create it?"

Likely ChatGPT Response:

A Bar Chart or a Pie Chart is great for this. A bar chart is better if you have many departments, while a pie chart works well for fewer than 6-7 categories.

  1. Select the data in your summary table, including the headers.

  2. Go to the Google Sheets menu and click Insert > Chart.

  3. Google Sheets will usually default to a good chart type, but you can change it in the Chart Editor on the right. Select "Bar chart" or "Pie chart."

  4. Use the 'Customize' tab in the Chart Editor to change colors, add titles, and adjust labels to make it look professional.

Tips for Better ChatGPT Prompts

Getting useful formulas from ChatGPT is a skill. Here's how to improve your prompts:

  • Be Specific and Clear: Always mention sheet names (e.g., 'HR_Data') and column letters (e.g., 'Column C for Department'). The more specific you are, the more accurate the formula will be.

  • Explain Your Goal Simply: Start your prompt by stating what you want to achieve. For example, "I want to count the number of new hires" before you give the details.

  • Provide Context: Briefly describe your data layout. "I have a list of employees where each row is a person..." helps ChatGPT understand the structure.

  • Ask for an Explanation: Add "Explain how this formula works" to your prompt. This is a fantastic way to learn what the formula does so you can troubleshoot it yourself later.

  • Iterate and Refine: Don't expect the first answer to be perfect. If the formula is close but not quite right, tell ChatGPT what's wrong and ask for a revision. For example: "That query worked, but can you modify it to also exclude employees with the 'Contractor' employment type listed in Column E?"

Final Thoughts

By pairing the organizational power of Google Sheets with the analytical assistance of ChatGPT, you can quickly build a dynamic and insightful headcount report. The key is to start with clean, well-structured data and then ask clear, specific questions to generate the formulas and visualizations you need to understand your team's composition.

Of course, this approach still involves manually managing your Google Sheet. If your HR data lives in platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, or a dedicated HRIS, constantly exporting CSVs to keep it updated can become a chore. At Graphed , we built a tool to eliminate that step entirely. We connect directly to your data sources, allowing you to ask questions like "Show me a dashboard of active headcount by department" and get real-time, interactive charts and reports without ever needing to wrangle a spreadsheet or write a formula again.