Fully Burdened Cost per Technician:
Track True Labor Costs in Excel

How to Calculate Fully Burdened Cost per Technician in Excel

1. Create a Role Check Table

• Start by creating a small lookup table that lists each unique role or job title.
• Use the UNIQUE function on the Role or Job Title column.
• Review that list and mark each role as either:
  • 1 = Technician
  • 0 = Not a Technician
• This gives you a simple tech-check table you can use throughout the model.

This step is important because your dataset may include dispatchers, customer service staff, installers, service technicians, and other roles that should not all be counted the same way.

2. Add the Total Payroll Cost Column

• Create a new column for total payroll cost.
• In this column, add together:
  • Gross pay
  • FICA
  • Unemployment
  • Workers’ comp
  • Benefits
• This creates the fully loaded payroll cost for each employee record.

Once completed, this column gives you the burdened labor cost needed for the KPI.

3. Add the End-of-Month Column

• Create another helper column for the month grouping.
• Use the EOMONTH function based on the pay-period date.
• Set it to return the end of the current month so that every payroll record rolls up into the correct monthly bucket.

This makes it easier to summarize the KPI by month for reporting and visualization.

4. Flag Each Record as Tech or Non-Tech

• Use the role check table you created earlier.
• Bring the technician flag into the main dataset using VLOOKUP.
• This returns a 1 or 0 for each row depending on whether that role is considered a technician.

You could also use XLOOKUP or INDEX-MATCH, but the video uses VLOOKUP for this step.

5. Create a Unique List of Months

• In your summary area, create a row or column of distinct months.
• Use the UNIQUE function on the End-of-Month column you created earlier.
• Format the results as dates so the timeline is easy to read.

This becomes the foundation of the monthly KPI table.

6. Calculate Total Payroll Cost for Technicians Only

• For each month, calculate the total fully burdened payroll cost for technician records only.
• Use SUMIFS with two conditions:
  • The row must belong to the selected month
  • The technician flag must equal 1
• Format the results as currency.

This gives you the total burdened labor cost for technicians in each month.

7. Count the Number of Technicians per Month

This part takes a few steps because technicians can appear more than once in the same month due to multiple pay periods.

• Use the FILTER function to pull only the employee names for:
  • The selected month
  • Rows where the technician flag equals 1
• Combine the criteria correctly so both conditions must be true.
• Wrap that result in UNIQUE to remove duplicate employee names.
• Then use COUNTA to count how many unique technicians were paid in that month.

This gives you an accurate technician count instead of overstating headcount from repeated payroll entries.

8. Calculate the Monthly Average

• Divide monthly technician payroll cost by the monthly technician count.
• Copy the formula across all months in your summary table.
• Format the result as currency.

This gives you the monthly fully burdened cost per technician.

9. Build the Chart

• Highlight the month labels and the average values.
• Insert a Column Chart.
• Update the chart title to reflect the KPI name.
• Use a column chart instead of a line chart for a clearer monthly comparison.

This creates the final KPI visualization.

10. Add Optional Formatting and Targets

• Add a target line by placing target values in cells, copying them, and pasting them into the chart.
• Add data labels if needed, though the video notes that too many labels can make the chart look cluttered.
• If you do use labels, consider only showing the high and low points to keep the chart readable.

11. Finalize the Dashboard

• Review the monthly trend in technician count and burdened cost.
• Make sure the technician count reflects unique employees, not payroll rows.
• Confirm that the chart and summary table update correctly based on your monthly structure.

Once these pieces are in place, you have a completed monthly view of Fully Burdened Cost per Technician built directly from payroll-style data.