Personnel Costs
The Personnel Costs module forecasts staff costs at the employee or position level. It supports payroll employees and freelancers, handles employer social charges, vacation pay, 13th-month bonuses, and one-off perks — giving you a detailed, accurate picture of total employment cost per person per month.
The module also serves as a data source for the Project Revenue module, which reads employee capacity from it.
Creating the module
- In your Scenario, click Add a budget
- Choose Personnel Costs
- Follow the setup wizard (5 steps)
Step 1 — Introduction
Set the forecast period (start and end months). This determines which months appear in the model.
Step 2 — Configuration
Set organisation-wide defaults that apply to all employees unless overridden per person:
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Contract defaults | Default wage type (payroll vs. freelance), default social charge %, default payment frequency |
| Raise settings | Default annual raise % and which month raises are applied |
| Debt account | The payroll clearing / accrual account used for wage payables |
Wage types
| Type | How it's modelled |
|---|---|
| Payroll | Full employment — gross salary + employer social security charges + vacation money + 13th month + perks |
| Freelance | Invoiced cost — no social charges, no vacation money; just the contracted amount per month |
Step 3 — Employees
Add and configure each employee or position:
Basic details
| Field | What it defines |
|---|---|
| Name | Employee name or job title |
| Department | Used for cost breakdown in reports |
| Start date | Employment start (cost begins here) |
| End date | Employment end (leave blank for ongoing) |
| Wage type | Payroll or Freelance (overrides configuration default) |
Payroll employee — wage details
| Field | What it defines |
|---|---|
| Base salary | Monthly gross salary |
| Social security % | Employer contribution on top of gross (e.g. 28% for Belgian social charges) |
| Vacation money | Percentage of salary paid as holiday pay — either spread monthly or paid as a lump sum in one month |
| 13th month | Whether the employee receives a 13th month bonus, and which month it's paid |
| Annual raise | % increase applied each year (defaults to configuration setting) |
Perks
Add one-off or recurring extras per employee:
| Type | When it applies |
|---|---|
| One-time perk | A single additional cost (e.g. signing bonus, equipment) on a specific date |
| Recurring perk | Monthly or quarterly addition (e.g. car allowance, phone subscription) |
Freelance employee — details
For freelancers: enter the contracted monthly invoiced amount. No social charges or employer contributions are added.
Per-employee overrides
Any default from Configuration can be overridden per employee — useful when one employee has a non-standard social charge rate or their raise is already locked in at a different %.
Step 4 — Mappings
Assign budget accounts per employee (or department). This controls where the personnel cost appears in your P&L.
You can map:
- All employees to a single "Personnel Costs" budget account
- Employees by department to separate accounts (e.g. Sales personnel, R&D personnel, Operations)
- Individual employees to dedicated accounts (maximum granularity)
Step 5 — Result
Review the monthly forecast showing:
- Cost per employee (gross salary + charges + vacation + 13th month + perks)
- Total per department
- Total personnel costs per month
NMBRS integration
If you use NMBRS for payroll, import employee data directly in the Employees step:
- Click Import from NMBRS
- Monitr fetches the current employee roster with departments, salary grades, and dates
- Each employee appears pre-filled with their NMBRS data
- Layer planned hires and departures on top
NMBRS data syncs nightly. Manual changes in Monitr override the imported values for the current module.
Headcount planning
The module automatically handles headcount changes:
- Set a future start date on a new employee to model a planned hire
- Set an end date to model a departure or fixed-term contract expiry
- Monthly costs appear only within the employee's active date range
Output in reports
- P&L → personnel cost lines by department or account
- Personnel Costs dashboard → actual vs. budget comparison, headcount over time, cost per department
Because the module tracks individual employees, you can see cost variance at the headcount level — e.g. a €50k budget overage attributed to one unplanned hire.