How can I represent part-time personnel in my forecast? Follow

The Personnel section of the LivePlan forecast defaults to representing full-time employees. If you need to enter one or more part-time employees, there are two options for customizing your personnel entry.

Method 1: representing part-time personnel through salary amounts

The simpler way to enter part-time personnel is to create a regular entry, but use salary amounts that represent part-time wages. Below are two ways to create these entries:

Entering one or more part-time employees who makes the same amount each month:

1. Begin by setting up a personnel entry as shown in Entering Personnel. You can choose either Individual or Group of employees, depending on your needs. You can also choose either Regular labor or Direct Labor.
2. For the salary entry, choose Constant amount.
3. Enter the total amount you'll pay this employee each month: 
   
4. Click Save & Close to save the entry.

Note: LivePlan can accept a total monthly or annual salary only. It is not configured to accept hourly wages.

Entering a varying number of part-time employees who make the same amount each month:

This method works well if you pay part-time staff the same amount each month, but the number of employees you have fluctuates from month to month.

1. Begin by setting up a personnel entry as shown in Entering Personnel. Choose Group of Employees.
2. For the number of employees in the group, choose Varying numbers. Enter the number of part-time employees you will have in each month: 
   
3. Select either Regular labor or Direct labor.
4. For the salary amount, choose Constant amount. Enter the salary amount you'll pay one employee each month:
   
5. Click Save & Close to save the entry.
6. Notice that in the Personnel chart, the salary amounts per month are correctly calculated. But the Head Count is still reflecting full-time employees, as this is LivePlan's default calculation:

This method will work well for many types of businesses, as the dollar amounts are generally more important to the business plan than the head count. If your business needs to represent a more accurate head count in the plan, use the method below.

Method 2: representing part-time personnel through Head Count

LivePlan defaults to representing only full-time employees in the head count. For businesses that have part-time staff and need to show an accurate head count in the plan, the method below is a good workaround. Admittedly, however, it is a bit labor-intensive and involves some manual calculation.

Entering a single part-time employee with an accurate head count:

1. Begin by setting up a personnel entry as shown in Entering Personnel. Choose Group of Employees, even though you are only representing a single employee. This is because in a group entry, you can customize the number of employees. In the example below, we're representing one employee who works 20 hours per week, or half of the standard full-time work week. So we've set the number of employees as 0.5:
    
2. You can customize the decimal number you'll use according to the average percentage of a standard full-time work week your employee will work. As another example, a part-time employee who works 30 hours per week is working 75% of the standard full-time work week. So we could represent this employee with a decimal of .75 instead.
3. For the salary amount, use a number representing a full-time equivalent of what you'll pay this employee. This is because we've used a decimal to represent the employee number. For the salary to calculate correctly, we need to use a full-time salary amount. In this example, we will pay our part-time employee $1500 per month. Since we entered a number of employees as .5, we'll enter the full-time salary of $3000: 
   
4. Click Save & Close to save the entry.
5. In the Personnel table below, we see that the Head Count now accurately shows several full-time employees alongside our part-time employee. We can also see that the salary amount has calculated correctly:

Entering a group of part-time employees with an accurate head count:

1. Begin by setting up a personnel entry as shown in Entering Personnel. Choose Group of Employees.
2. For the number of employees in the group, use a manual calculation to represent the decimal number for each member of the group. This can get a bit complex. In the example below, we're representing a group of three part-time employees. Two of them are working 20 hours per week, so they can each be represented as 0.5 employees (since they're working 50% of a standard full-time work week). The third employee is working 30 hours per week, or 75% of a standard full-time work week. This employee can be represented as 0.75. To come up with a total for the group, we add the three numbers: 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.75 = 1.75 employees: 
   
3. For the salary amount, use a number representing a full-time equivalent of what you'll pay one employee in this group. This is because we've used a decimal to represent the employee number. For the salary to calculate correctly, we need to use a full-time salary amount: 
   
4. Click Save & Close to save the entry.

More on personnel:

• What is the difference between direct labor and regular labor?
• Changing the Burden Rate for employee-related expenses
• Understanding head count details for personnel
• Entering commission payments in LivePlan
• How do I locate my salaries and wages in the Profit and Loss?