Position costs and headcount

Overview

This article explains how FTE, pay information, annual hours, assignments, and position status become the costs and headcount shown for a position. Use it when you need to understand a number on a position, department summary, or approval request.

FTE Tree shows two different cost views:

A vacant active Position can have Position cost and no Assigned cost. A staffed Position can have different Position and Assigned costs when assignment FTE differs from planned Position FTE. Employee records do not define a standard pay amount.

Position pages and approval requests show an annualized amount for a selected effective date. Reports can allocate that annualized amount across a month, quarter, fiscal year, or another date range. See Position costs in reports for date-range examples.

In cost tables, a hyphen means a value is unavailable or does not apply. A formatted zero, such as $0.00 or 0.0000, means the result is a real zero.

Access needed

Information used in position cost

The position must count as active on the selected date before it contributes FTE, headcount, or cost. FTE Tree then uses the approved or proposed values that apply on that date.

FTE adjustments are applied before the pay calculation. Pay rate adjustments produce the Adjusted pay rate. FTE Tree annualizes Hourly pay using annual hours; Annual pay is already full-time annual pay. It then applies adjusted FTE once and applies annual cost adjustments afterward. Funding percentages divide the completed Position cost among funding sources.

If required information is missing, a new active position or proposed active change cannot proceed. Older approved information may show zero with a warning until the missing value is corrected.

Adjustments can increase or reduce a result. FTE Tree finishes all adjustments in the FTE, pay rate, or annual cost group before checking the final value. If that value is negative, the result becomes zero and the calculation shows a zero-minimum line and warning. A negative amount that is recovered by a later adjustment is kept, and a final result of exactly zero does not show the warning.

Basic position cost example

Suppose a position has:

• FTE: 0.7500
• Annual hours per FTE: 2,080.00
• Base pay rate: $25.0000
• Pay rate basis: Hourly

Calculate each result in order:

The annualized amount describes the position’s current yearly rate. It is not the cost for a selected month or partial year.

When a position can show FTE and cost

An active position needs a department, job code, FTE, and a position pay rate of zero or greater by the first date it counts as active.

Archiving an approved position removes it from current staffing use. A position status can also be configured not to count as active while the approved position remains available for history. See Positions for archive, restore, and eligible draft-discard guidance.

FTE and headcount

FTE is the staffing amount recorded for the position. Headcount indicates whether the position meets the organization’s headcount threshold.

A position contributes 1 to headcount when all of the following are true:

• The position counts as active on the selected date.
• Its calculated FTE is greater than zero.
• Its calculated FTE is at least the organization’s Headcount FTE amount.

Example with a headcount threshold of 0.5000:

FTE totals can be fractional. Headcount counts qualifying positions, not assigned employees.

Position holders and staffing coverage

The Position holders measure counts people in positions rather than distinct employees across the organization. A person counts as a position holder when the position and employee count as active on the selected date and the person’s assignment FTE is greater than zero.

A partial assignment makes a position staffed even when some FTE remains unfilled. Position holders are also different from employee headcount: one employee holding two positions contributes two position holders but remains one distinct employee in an employee-headcount report.

Annual hours per FTE

Annual hours per FTE converts an Hourly pay rate into annualized full-time pay. A common value is 2,080.00, representing 40 hours per week for 52 weeks. Annual hours supports at most two meaningful decimal places and always displays with two. Extra trailing zeros are accepted, but a value such as 2080.001 that would require rounding is not.

Annual hours is an organization policy, not an automatic calendar-year value. If your organization uses different annual hours for a leap year or another compensation rule, add a new value starting on the appropriate date.

For Annual pay, select Annual as the Pay rate basis. A Base pay rate of $80,000.00/year is already annualized full-time pay and does not use annual hours. At 0.5000 FTE, it produces $40,000.00 before annual cost adjustments.

See Compensation settings before changing annual hours. The setting affects every hourly position using that date.

Pay used for position cost

Every position stores its own Base pay rate of zero or greater and Pay rate basis for each change date. The rate and its Hourly or Annual basis form the complete pay value used for position cost.

When the selected Job code has an effective Base pay rate, FTE Tree shows its amount and basis as a suggestion beside the Position Base pay rate field. The suggestion can come from the selected Job code or the nearest higher-level Job code with an effective rate. It does not fill, replace, or automatically update the Position Base pay rate.

Position pay and suggestion example

• FTE: 0.7500
• Annual hours per FTE: 2,080
• Position Base pay rate: $30.0000/hour
• Suggested Job code Base pay rate: $26.0000/hour

The $30.00 saved position rate is used for cost. The $26.00 job code rate remains a suggestion for the person entering or reviewing the position.

Inherited job code pay rate suggestion

Suppose a Nurse I Position is being edited. Nurse I has no pay suggestion, Nurse has a $27.0000/hour suggestion, and Clinical staff has a $26.0000/hour suggestion. The Position form suggests $27.0000/hour from Nurse because it is the nearest higher-level Job code with an effective Base pay rate.

The user still enters the position base pay rate that should be requested. If the inherited suggestion changes on July 1, the saved position base pay rate and reports do not change automatically. Update the position base pay rate separately when the organization decides to adopt the new suggested amount.

Assigned cost

Assigned cost is calculated separately for each active assignment and then added together. It uses the Position’s effective Base pay rate and Pay rate basis.

Position adjustments apply to Position cost, not Assigned cost. Assigned cost uses assignment FTE instead of adjusted Position FTE, annualizes the Position Base pay rate according to its basis, and does not apply pay rate or annual cost adjustments.

Example with a Position pay assumption:

• Assignment FTE: 1.0000
• Effective Position Base pay rate: $25.0000/hour
• Annual hours per FTE: 2,080

Employee status changes apply on their own effective dates. An assignment contributes Assigned cost only while its Employee status counts as active. A dated Position pay change splits a report so each period uses the Position assumption that applied then.

Vacant and shared positions

An active vacant position can keep its position cost for budgeting while assigned cost is zero.

When more than one employee fills a position, FTE Tree calculates each active assignment and adds the results. For example:

Assignment FTE can differ from position FTE, so position cost and assigned cost may differ even when the position is fully staffed.

Pay range comparison

When a Job code has a Pay grade with a pay range, FTE Tree can compare a Position Base pay rate with the range effective on the selected date. Both the pay rate and range have an Hourly or Annual basis. If their bases differ, FTE Tree annualizes both before comparing them; an Hourly value requires annual hours for that date.

For a $22.00 minimum, $30.00 maximum, and $25.00 pay:

Pay ranges provide a comparison; they do not replace the position base pay rate.

Precision and rounding

FTE Tree uses a precision rule based on what each number represents. Enter values only to the supported precision; imports and forms reject extra decimal places rather than silently changing the submitted value.

FTE Tree currently supports U.S. dollars only. Money displayed on a page uses $ and exactly two decimal places. Headers remain clear labels such as Position cost and Pay rate without adding USD. When entering or importing money, use the numeric value without $ or grouping commas. Exported money cells also omit those display symbols.

A percentage is entered in the web form as a whole percentage, so enter 12.50 for 12.50%, not 0.1250. The corresponding decimal adjustment rate is 0.1250, preserving the percentage’s two decimal places. A percentage-based FTE adjustment uses that exact rate, while its resulting FTE impact is rounded to four decimal places.

Where rounding occurs

FTE Tree rounds the completed result line rather than the amounts used along the way. This avoids changing a cost merely because a displayed hours value has more than two decimal places.

The principal rounding points are:

1. Each FTE adjustment line is rounded to four decimal places before the next adjustment uses it.
2. Each Hourly pay rate adjustment line is rounded to four decimal places; each Annual pay rate or annual cost adjustment line is rounded to cents before the next adjustment uses it.
3. Adjusted annualized full-time pay is rounded to cents after an Hourly rate is multiplied by annual hours, or directly from an Annual rate. Position cost is rounded to cents after FTE is applied once.
4. Each active assignment cost is rounded to cents, then assignment costs are added to produce assigned cost.
5. A date-range report allocates annualized cost across its periods and reconciles the rounded period lines to the displayed total.
6. Funding allocations are rounded to cents and reconciled so their displayed amounts equal the cost being allocated.

FTE Tree uses conventional half-up rounding at these boundaries: a value exactly halfway to the next displayed unit rounds away from zero. For example, $1.005 rounds to $1.01 when it becomes a currency result.

Derived hours are displayed, not prematurely rounded

Hours display with two decimal places, but derived position hours do not become an independent input to the cost formula. FTE Tree calculates annualized cost from the full multiplication:

The displayed 693.26 hours are not multiplied by $20.00. Rounding hours before the final multiplication would produce $13,865.20, which would understate the position cost by eight cents.

How one-cent funding differences are assigned

Funding percentages must total exactly 100.00%. When independently rounded funding amounts would be a cent short or over, FTE Tree assigns the remaining cent to one funding line so the funding lines equal the cost total.

For a $10.00 cost allocated 33.33%, 33.33%, and 33.34%, the displayed funding amounts are $3.33, $3.33, and $3.34. They total $10.00; FTE Tree does not leave the funding total at $9.99.

Why values are not treated as whole cents

Currency results use two decimal places, but FTE, hours, and percentages are not currency. Keeping each value in its natural unit makes the formulas and exports understandable while still applying money rounding wherever a monetary result is finalized.

The same rules apply on position pages, approval previews, reports, and imports. A summary and its detail may cover different dates or records, but they do not use different decimal policies.

When a result looks wrong

Start with the effective date, then review the items that affect the specific result.

For adjustment examples, see Position adjustment examples. For exact annualized and Assigned cost rules, see Position cost calculation reference. For final-period remainders and export boundaries, see Report period allocation and rounding. Use Reconcile position costs for the analyst worksheet.