Calculate the true cost of staffing your in-house service desk

Start by entering salary and tax details

Total number of service desk engineers required Normally 3 for business hours or 6 (minimum) for 24/7
Annual salary per engineer	$	$0 $100,000
Annual bonuses per engineer Assumed 2% of annual salary, or adjust to reflect your numbers	$	$0 $5000
Annual insurance costs Single coverage. Adjust to reflect your numbers	$	$0 $20,000
Annual employment taxes per engineer Adjust to reflect your numbers	$	$0 $15000
Annual IT spend per employee	$	$0 $15,000
Annual overhead per engineer Including apportioned rent, utilities, mileage etc.	$	$0 $2,000
Total base annual labour costs per engineer	$

Now work out your total availability and utilisation rates

Annual working days Typically 260 working days		0
Sick days per engineer per year		0 15
Vacation days per engineer per year		0 30
Days off for training per year		0 30
Working hours per day Typically 6.5 to 7 hours		0h 8h
Daily utilisation % per engineer Typically 75 – 80% utilisation	%	0% 100%
Total annual productive hours per engineer

Then factor in the cost of hiring one engineer

Job ad cost	$	$0 $5000
Hourly rate The rate for you or the supervisor/manager doing the hiring	$	$0 $500
Hours spent hiring Including time spent writing job posts, posting job ads, conducting interviews, completing background checks etc.		0h 20h
Background checks	$	$0 $1000
Total cost to hire one engineer	$

Don’t forget training, management time and staff attrition costs

Annual training costs per engineer Estimate your training costs	$	$0 $50,000
Average number of weeks required to train an engineer At least 3 months training is typically required		0 20
Number of engineers hired each year Assume 1 engineer is lost each year to turnover		0 10
Technology set-up cost for new engineer	$	$0 $10,000
Weekly supervisory hours per engineer		0 20
Annual supervisory cost Calculated from the hourly rate you entered above	$
Total training, management and staff attrition costs	$

The true cost of staffing your service desk

Annual operating cost	$
Number of users supported today If you don’t have this, typically assume 1.2 devices per user		0 100
Monthly cost per device	$
True annual cost per engineer	$
Burdened hourly rate per engineer	$

This calculator was developed by GMS Live Expert to help you calculate the true costs of staffing your in-house service desk.

Please be aware that the figures produced by the calculator are provided for illustrative purposes only. Click here to read terms of use.

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