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Free Employer Tool • Money Leak Diagnostic

Payroll Leak Calculator

Find the hidden labor waste your P&L does not show you. This calculator combines overtime, absenteeism, vacancy drag, turnover, and employee relations time into one monthly leak number, then tells you which driver to attack first.

This tool produces planning estimates from your inputs and standard assumptions, not audited figures. It separates operational cost from compliance exposure and is not legal, tax, or accounting advice.

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How This Works

Methodology


One leak number, five drivers

The calculator estimates five leak streams separately: avoidable overtime (overtime spend times an avoidable share based on its cause), absenteeism (absence days priced at loaded labor cost with a coverage factor), vacancy drag (payroll-based daily output value per empty seat), turnover (departures priced with a replacement-cost factor), and employee relations drag (leadership time priced at its loaded value). Then it stacks them into one monthly figure.

Loaded labor cost, not base wage

Every time-based stream uses wage times a burden multiplier for taxes, benefits, and employer costs: 1.25 for small private employers and nonprofits, 1.35 for public employers, 1.40 for benefits-heavy organizations. Base-wage math understates every leak.

A range, not one big number

One dramatic number invites distrust, so the result shows a conservative, expected, and high-risk band. The conservative figure assumes your patterns are milder than reported; the high-risk figure assumes the leak streams are compounding, which they usually are.

Common Questions

Frequently Asked Questions


Why does the leak not show up on my P&L?

Because each stream hides inside a line that looks normal: overtime hides in wages, vacancy drag hides in work not done, turnover hides across recruiting and training lines, and leadership drag hides in salaries that get paid either way. The leak is real spend and lost output; it just is not labeled.

Is this double counting overtime and vacancy?

No. Vacancy drag here is priced on payroll-based output only, and overtime is counted once in the overtime stream. If your overtime is mostly vacancy coverage, pick that cause: the avoidable share adjusts instead of the dollars being counted twice.

What is a normal payroll leak rate?

Most small and mid-size employers who run this land between 3% and 10% of annual payroll. Above 10% usually means one driver is broken, not that everything is: the top-driver ranking tells you which one.

What should I do with the result?

Attack the top driver first with its dedicated calculator, which this tool links for you. The leak rate is a symptom; the driver-level tools find the operational cause.

Go Deeper

Related Answers and Services


The Leak Has a Cause

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