New Cost Category: Personnel

Outside of major cost categories (product costs, transaction costs, handling costs, and shipping costs), the Custom costs tab can handle almost any other business expense you throw at it.

But as a few users pointed out, they're not quite optimized for capturing some of the nuances of personnel costs.

So to help you incorporate salaries, contractor payments, burden rates, and other personnel details into your P&L, we created a new Personnel tab in the Cost & expenses section of your account.

Below is a quick walkthrough of how to enter and track your personnel costs using the new features.

How to enter personnel costs in the new tab

1. Click over to your Personnel costs tab in the Cost & expense section of your account
2. If you have any employees that receive benefits, click the white "Burden rate" button, enter an estimated burden rate, and click "Save and close"
3. Click the blue "+ Add personnel cost" button
4. Enter the name of an employee/contract worker and click "Next"
5. Select whether the personnel member is an on-staff employee or a contract worker and click "Next" (this ensures we only calculate and add burden rates for on-staff employees)
6. Enter details such the worker's monthly (or annual) pay, start and end dates (if applicable), and any context on yearly raises, then click "Create personnel cost"
7. Confirm that the information you entered is correct. If you need to edit it, just click on the small pencil icon next to the worker's name

Items in your personnel costs table can be edited by clicking the pencil icon next to a worker's name or deleted by clicking the trash bin next to a name. You can quickly find any entries by using the search bar located above the table.

Where to find personnel costs in the Income Statement

You can track all of your personnel costs in the new “Personnel” line item in the Operating Expenses section of your Income Statement.

👉 Note: The costs associated with a worker are averaged out across all days that they work. For example, if you pay a contract worker $4000/month, the Income Statement will average this across each day of the month as if you paid the worker a daily rate (about $130/day in this case).

Let us know what you think!

Feel free to reach out to us hello@lifetimely.io with any questions, comments, or ideas related to the new tab.

And if you have any ideas for other new features, we'd love to hear them on our feature request board!

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