Payroll cost calculator

What does the entered paid roster cost, including the employer-cost allowance?

FreeNo signupU.S. dollarsUpdated October 4, 2026

Starting example

Whole company: four cleaner employees plus paid working-owner replacement labor, five costed working roles. Weighted wage and burden aggregate the unequal roles; this is not the offer to an individual worker or a legal owner payroll classification.

The company costs two experienced cleaners at $22 per hour, two cleaners at $20 and a working owner at $30, each for 40 paid hours per week over 51.96 planning weeks. Equal paid hours produce the $22.80 blended wage. The effective employer burden combines a 12% base allowance, $100 monthly total employer benefits for each of five roles, and employer cost on assumed reported tips at the mature $250 service invoice. Tips themselves pass through outside service revenue and base wages. The resulting annual cost rounds to mature forecast payroll.

Costed working roleswhole people

Use equivalent paid schedules and the stated weighted wage. A costed owner role does not establish legal payroll classification.

Paid hours per workerhours / paid week

Include paid nonproductive time once. This tool does not calculate overtime rules.

Paid planning weeksweeks / year

May be fractional. Paid leave within these weeks is already paid; do not add it a second time.

Hourly wageUSD / paid worker-hour

Use gross wages before employer burden. For mixed roles, use a documented weighted wage.

Employer burden% of gross wages

Additional employer costs divided by gross wages. Include relevant taxes, insurance and benefits once. No statutory rate is supplied.

Your entered scenario

Starting example

Calculation updated using the entered assumptions.

Annual employer cost$273,240.67

Monthly allocation$22,770.06

One paid week's cost$5,258.67

Cost per paid worker-hour$26.29

Annual paid worker-hours: 10,392.00
Annual gross wages: $236,937.60
Annual employer burden: $36,303.07

Read the formula ↓

Read this result in its stated scope

Five is the whole-company count of costed roles, including paid owner replacement labor. The $22.80 wage is a weighted planning average, not an offer to an individual cleaner or a legal classification of owner payroll. Adding or removing a role requires rebuilding the wage mix.
The effective burden embeds fixed benefit dollars and the mature route's employer tip allowance. Changing wages, paid hours, weeks or headcount scales those embedded costs mechanically. Recompute the rate from the revised roster, benefit commitments and sales/tip scenario before reconciling it to a revised forecast.
The 12% base allowance combines federal FICA with authored effective unemployment and workers' compensation provisions. Those provisions are not statutory rates on every wage or tip dollar; wage bases, state rules, coverage and entity-specific owner treatment need separate calculation. The $100 benefit allowance is total employer cost, not a quoted health plan.
This payroll preset uses the mature $250 service invoice; job and crew presets project employer tip costs at their separate $251.27 target quote. Align the sales and tip basis before comparing totals. Employee tips themselves and employee withholding are not added again as employer expense. Paid leave and nonbillable hours are already in paid wages.
Overtime, minimum wages, tax thresholds and legal worker classifications are not calculated.
Paid leave already inside paid hours must not be counted again. Add relevant employer costs once, using your actual jurisdiction and arrangements.

Review the business evidence and assumptions →

Preset sources: Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2025; Publication 15 (2026), Employer's Tax Guide; House cleaning business insurance costs

Formula and interpretation: Maren Whitcombe

Responsible editor: Adrian Kelwick

Publisher review by the site owner recorded October 7, 2026. Scope: The site owner stated that all three packages look excellent, that everything was checked, and authorized publication on October 7, 2026. This accepts the exact combined website candidate and its recorded changed dependencies, including financial scenarios, evidence, conclusions, calculators, metadata, alt text, structured data and HTML planning illustrations. Only owner-review metadata and superseded editorial-status wording changed when recording that acceptance. It does not establish local fieldwork, native paid-file formulas, payment, fulfillment, a named editor's review, personal author adoption or activation of deferred Custom services..

Authors and editors AI assistance and human review

Formula and interpretation

Annual paid worker-hours = headcount × weekly paid hours × paid planning weeks

Gross wages = paid worker-hours × hourly wage

Employer cost = gross wages × (1 + employer burden fraction)

Monthly cost = annual cost ÷ 12

To reproduce the worked example, choose Hypothetical arithmetic example under Starting example. Business presets have their own inputs; compare the selected values before applying the result.

Weekly results describe one paid planning week. Monthly results allocate the annual total evenly across twelve months.

Use a weighted wage only for a roster whose hours and roles are understood. The weighted amount is not an individual job offer.

Worked example: two people paid 40 hours for each of 52 weeks at $20 per hour cost $83,200 in gross wages. A selected 20% addition is $16,640, giving $99,840 annually or $8,320 per average month.

The Cleaning Company business preset uses its own paid roster and wage mix. Cost the working owner once and check who covers travel, leave and absence before applying the total to route capacity.

Employer burden is an addition divided by gross wages. A published benefit share of total compensation has a different denominator; converting a benefit share to a wage-based addition requires share ÷ (1 − share), with cost categories counted once.

Definitions and sources

These references support definitions and calculation boundaries, not the selected amounts. Worked examples below use the hypothetical arithmetic inputs. A selected business preset has its own roster, cost allocation and evidence; its results can differ without a formula error.

Employer compensation concepts — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Supports wage and benefit categories and the distinction between shares of compensation and a burden divided by wages. No observed rate is used. Accessed October 4, 2026.

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Continue with a related calculation

Crew hourly rate

What hourly crew rate covers the paid roster and allocated monthly costs?

Open calculator →

Cleaning job pricing

What visit price recovers the entered costs at your selected surplus share?

Open calculator →

Connect the calculation to a complete operating plan

Review startup uses, staffing, annual results and input evidence alongside the relevant worksheets. A single calculation does not replace local quotes or a dated cash schedule.

Read the Cleaning Company modeled case assumptions →
Explore the financial model →

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