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

Method 1: representing part-time personnel through salary amounts

The more straightforward 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 make the same amount each month:

  1. Begin by setting up a personnel entry as shown in Entering Personnel. Name the personnel entry, select whether it will be an individual or group of employees, regular or direct labor, and whether they will be on-staff employees or contract workers. Click Next or Amount to continue to the next step:
    personnel entry full screen.png

  2. Enter the total amount you'll pay each employee per month and any planned annual raises: 
    personnel entry second step.png

  3. Click Create & Exit to save the entry
    create and exit.png

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 monthly.

  1. Begin by setting up a personnel entry as shown in Entering Personnel. Choose Group of Employees:
    individual or group of personnel.png

  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: 
    varying number of employees detail.png
  3. Select either Regular labor or Direct labor and indicate whether these are On-staff employees or Contract workers:
    direct labor and on staff indicator detail.png

  4. Click Next:
    next button detail.png

  5. For the salary amount, choose Constant amount. Enter the salary amount you'll pay one employee each month:
    Personnel monthly pay and annual raise.png

  6. Click Create & Exit to save the entry:
    create and exit.png

  7. Notice that the salary amounts per month are correct in the Personnel chart. However, the Head Count still reflects full-time employees since it is LivePlan's default calculation.
    part time staff headcount and salary highlighted.png

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. Use the method below if your business needs to represent a more accurate head count in the plan.

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 illustrated 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 only represent a single employee. This is because you can customize the number of employees in a group entry. In the example below, we represent 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:
    personnel entry example part time head count.pngYou 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.

  2. Select either Regular labor or Direct labor and indicate whether these are On-staff employees or Contract workers:
    direct labor and on staff indicator detail.png
  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 the number of employees as .5, we'll enter the full-time salary of $3000: 
    how much will you pay per employee detail.png

  4. Click Create & Exit to save the entry:
    create and exit.png

  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: part-time-personnel3.png#asset:2012

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:
    individual or group of personnel.png

  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: 
    how many employees in this group example detail.png
    Note: If you use the Varying amounts over time entry method, you will calculate the head count for each month of your forecast.
  3. Select either Regular labor or Direct labor and indicate whether these are On-staff employees or Contract workers:
    direct labor and on staff indicator detail.png
  4. Click Next: 
    next button detail.png

  5. 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: 
    personnel detail example.png

  6. Click Create & Exit to save the entry:
    create and exit.png

More on personnel:

Was this article helpful?
3 out of 4 found this helpful