💼 Why Labour Cost Forecasting Matters
As a rule of thumb total labour costs are a massive 70% of an organisation’s expenses. Some companies will obviously be less, some more but for a median of 70%, why wouldn’t you want be as careful as you possibly can to control a huge overhead.
So its good to know that Forecast 5 has a really powerful salaries and wages modelling feature that allows you to do just that; keep close track of your total employee costs.
🧮 What You Can Model
Consider - the calculations are based on the following built in features:
🔹Employer & employee contributions to National Insurance in the UK
🔹PAYE tax rates (including Scotland)
🔹Multiple pension schemes for both employer and employee
🔹Bonuses and commissions, linked to sales, formulas or manual entries
🔹Seasonal workers, hourly/weekly/monthly rates
🔹Bulk importing of large payrolls and allocation across cost or profit centres
🔍 Transparency & Traceability
Once actuals are entered, Forecast 5 makes it easy to perform a Variance Analysis. You can see what was budgeted for the month and year-to-date, with variances displayed as percentages or in monetary terms (£/$). This empowers the Board to quickly identify, scrutinise, and question any significant discrepancies or unusual patterns. Additionally, there’s a comprehensive Employee Report that shows budgeted figures for each employee—or groups of employees—across the organisation, including NI, PAYE, and pension deductions.
Every forecasted payment is fully traceable: salaries and expenses link directly to the P&L, while liabilities such as HMRC and pension contributions are mapped to the Balance Sheet. This ensures complete transparency and auditability—how much clearer can it get? For organisations that prefer restricted salary visibility, Forecast 5 also offers the Admin Pack, which allows executive and C-suite salaries to remain confidential while maintaining all the other reporting and auditing benefits.
🚀 Flexible Levels of Detail
Some organisations need deep detail, others need a broad brush. Forecast 5 caters to both:
🔹Detailed modelling down to individual employee level
🔹High‑level budgeting for Wages & Salaries and tax/NI if granular modelling isn’t required.
✅ Bringing It All Together
If you’re searching for a tool to really control costs, Forecast 5 ticks the boxes: rapid modelling, full transparency and flexibility. With labour costs such a large piece of the pie, staying ahead with insight is essential.
