Stop running layoffs from “Final_RIF_v11.xlsx”.
RIFGuard turns messy reduction-in-force workbooks, severance formulas, WARN/location checks, and approval threads into a versioned preflight board before the wrong name or number reaches legal.
Validation page only. Early users get a confidential workbook-structure review, not legal advice.
RIF plan preflight
150 people · 6 gaps · 3 blockers
Scenario drift
Four employees changed after finance's cost-savings export. Severance and communications are still tied to the prior list.
WARN/location gaps
Seven affected rows have missing work-state or remote-location fields needed for legal review.
Approval mismatch
Department head approval exists in email, but not for the current scenario version.
Before the legal call
“Use scenario 11B. These six rows need correction, these three approvals are stale, and this packet maps to the exact current affected list.”
Narrow customer
People Ops, HRBP, and HR operations teams at 100-1,500 employee companies planning a confidential reduction-in-force without enterprise workforce-planning software.
Paid problem
Spreadsheet version drift can put the wrong employee list, severance number, WARN location, or approval trail into a final layoff packet.
Landing test
Join the waitlist to test whether teams will share a sanitized RIF workbook structure and pay for a confidential preflight before deep integrations exist.
Day-in-the-life pain
The list changes once. Four downstream files silently become wrong.
A People Ops lead exports a roster, adds selection criteria, asks finance for savings, asks legal for WARN review, and routes a confidential packet to department heads. Then leadership says, “What if we keep this person and cut that person instead?” The list changes, but severance, notice, communications, and approvals may still refer to yesterday’s scenario.
Input
Upload the current RIF workbook, HRIS/payroll export, location list, severance assumptions, and communications checklist. Keep it sanitized for the first concierge preflight.
Checks
RIFGuard matches employee rows across scenarios, flags missing selection criteria, tests severance assumptions, checks WARN/location completeness, and tracks legal/finance approvals.
Output
A confidential risk board, scenario diff, unresolved exception list, board-ready summary, and legal-signoff packet that maps to one exact current version.
What breaks today
Spreadsheets are flexible until every cell is evidence.
The evidence points to a pattern: HR teams do not need another generic project tracker. They need a confidential reconciliation layer that says whether the current RIF scenario is internally consistent before executives, legal, finance, and communications act on it.
Scenario diff without spreadsheet archaeology
See who was added, removed, or changed after each leadership revision, with the downstream severance, WARN, budget, and communication impact attached.
WARN and location completeness preflight
Flag affected employees whose work location, remote state, tenure, or notice bucket is missing or inconsistent before the legal review meeting.
Severance sanity checks
Tie formulas and assumptions to the current affected list so finance and HR do not approve stale numbers after a last-minute swap.
Approval evidence trail
Track legal, finance, HR, and department-head sign-off against the exact scenario version instead of a buried email thread.
Concierge confidential review
The first waitlist offer is a manual workbook preflight on sanitized structure — no HRIS integration or legal-advice claim required.
Proof from communities
Real operators are asking whether this chaos is normal.
These public threads do not prove a market by themselves. They do show specific, repeated failure modes: Excel is the system of record, but the actual job is version control, compliance completeness, and stakeholder confidence.
r/humanresources · 150-person RIF in Excel
A mid-sized tech HR team describes separate spreadsheets for employee selection, severance, WARN compliance, budget scenarios, and legal/finance/department-head email threads — already on version 11 of the final plan.
r/humanresources · repeated RIF tracking spreadsheets
A commenter who manages RIFs multiple times a year says they still use a tracking spreadsheet, with finance handling cost-savings calculations and a vendor handling severance paperwork.
r/humanresources · leave tracking in Excel
A compensation and benefits manager still tracks leave in an old Excel sheet and wants reminders, follow-ups, and FMLA/ADA notes — a parallel HR compliance workflow where rows do not equal readiness.
r/humanresources · disorganized records caused overpayment
A solo HR lead in a school district inherited disorganized HR spreadsheets and records, then uncovered two years of compensation overpayments tied to contract rules.
Why not the HRIS?
The HRIS is the roster source, not the place where confidential what-if scenarios, legal comments, cost models, and communication packets reconcile cleanly in a week.
Why not enterprise planning software?
The teams in this gap need help during a live event, before procurement, implementation, and HRIS integration are realistic.
Why not a generic project tool?
Generic tasks do not understand that a row swap can invalidate severance numbers, WARN checks, approvals, and employee communication packets.
Validation offer
Early waitlist users get a RIF workbook preflight checklist.
The validation question is simple: will HR teams share a sanitized workbook structure and pay for a confidential completeness review before RIFGuard builds any integration? Waitlist users receive the preflight template, a short risk-map interview, and first access to a concierge review slot.