What does your team really cost?
Base salary is only part of the story. This calculator adds overhead to show the fully-loaded annual, monthly, and per-person cost of your team.
What it means
Fully-loaded team cost is total compensation plus overhead — benefits, taxes, tools, and other costs of employing someone — rolled up across the whole team and expressed annually, monthly, and per member.
Why it matters
Pricing and hiring decisions based on base salary alone consistently understate what a team actually costs. Knowing the fully-loaded number is the floor every rate and retainer should be measured against.
Try it with your own numbers
Your team costs about $406,250/year fully loaded
$406,250
Total annual team cost
$33,854
Monthly team cost
$81,250
Fully-loaded cost per member
$16,250
Overhead cost per member
Recommendations
- Use this fully-loaded number as the floor when pricing projects and retainers, not just base salary.
- Revisit overhead assumptions yearly as benefits, tools, and taxes change.
- Compare cost per member against revenue per member to see if the team is sized correctly.
Suggested next steps
- Add each team member's loaded cost to your project management tool for accurate margin tracking.
- Share this number with leadership when setting billing rates for the next quarter.
Relevant Sarion features
Never lose track of a payment
Overdue invoices get chased before they turn into bad debt.
- Paid
- Unpaid
- Overdue
Work together, cleanly
Everyone works from the same source of truth, with no oversharing.
- Owner access
- Team member access
- Shared workflows
What's typical
Typical fully-loaded overhead
20-35% above base salary
Overhead includes
Benefits, payroll tax, software, equipment
Review cadence for overhead assumptions
Annually
What actually moves this number
- Use the fully-loaded cost as the floor for pricing decisions, not base salary alone.
- Revisit overhead assumptions at least once a year as benefits and tool costs change.
- Compare cost per member against revenue per member to catch a team that's grown out of balance with revenue.
Where this usually goes wrong
- Pricing services based on salary alone, ignoring the real cost of benefits, taxes, and tools.
- Not accounting for non-billable roles (ops, sales, management) when estimating overall team cost.
- Using a single overhead percentage for a team with wildly different benefits packages across roles.
Common questions
What should I include in 'overhead percent'?
Payroll taxes, benefits, software licenses, equipment, office costs, and any other cost of employing someone beyond their base pay.
Should contractors be included in team size?
Yes, if you want a full picture of delivery capacity cost — just use their effective annual cost in place of a salary.
How is this different from an hourly rate calculator?
This calculates total team cost at the org level; an hourly rate calculator works out what to bill for an individual's time. Use both together when setting prices.
Put these numbers to work
Sarion is where the client records, invoicing, and portal behind these numbers actually live.