Last updated: January 4, 2021

Sage Intacct Planning (SIP) enables you to set up your budget plan for existing employees and projected new hires. Employee data and costs can be imported from Sage Intacct using the integration from SIP  (see Create a budget using my Sage Intacct data for more information), from an Excel spreadsheet (see Import employee data from MS Excel), or you can manually add employee budget lines to your budget and enter data. No matter how you decide to add employees to your budget, you can always go back to your employee budget lines and fill in the details later.

The employee budget line types in SIP allow you to take into account all components of employee compensation, such as salary, taxes, bonus, etc. During your budget period, you may hire new employees or existing employees might leave, or be transferred to other departments or roles.

Depending on your needs, employee budget line templates help you capture these expenses for one employee at a time, or you can create budget lines that represent expenses for multiple employees. This specific topic provides a general overview of how you can work with your employee data and add data per employee to your budget in Sage Intacct Planning (SIP).

Employee budget lines can be added to your budget under Salary & Wages groups. Salary & Wages can be placed under the Cost of Revenues or Operational Expenses groups in your budget tree. The Salary & Wages group is the parent line of every employee budget line you define and lets you enter general assumptions for employee salary and wages, such as Benefits, Payment terms, Yearly vacation days, or Yearly salary increases for all of your employees. In addition, you can define your budget currency.

Once you’ve finished adding your employee budget lines you can view employee details such as salary, bonus, and benefits, or you can add them at a later time.

The employee budget line makes it easy for you to make adjustments to employee data, if and when needed. As employee data is inherited from Salary & Wages, the ability to make adjustments to your employee budget is especially important when you need to identify employees that are an exception to the rule - like those deserving of a promotion or a bonus.

Sage Intacct Planning (SIP) offers a number of budget line types for entering employee data that can be used in planning your budget. The employee budget line types are:

As you add employee data, you can see how employee salary and wages impact your P&L or cash in the preview window.

Employee budget line types simplify the way you add general employee data. Information like Role, Employee ID, and Base Salary can be added, as well as Yearly vacation days, and employee Bonus. You can even add information on salary increases and employee benefits by adding a percentage increase to the Benefits or Yearly increase fields.

📝 When you add a yearly increase, the increase is displayed in your budget plan for the following fiscal year.

Salaries, for instance, can be calculated on a monthly or on a yearly basis from the Term field. If you select Monthly, the total base salary amount is displayed monthly. If you select Yearly, the base salary is distributed evenly over the length of a year.

You can also add salary adjustments to the base salary according to a specific start date, as shown.

Bonuses, for instance, can be calculated by a percentage of the employee’s base salary or by entering one lump sum. You can choose to pay a bonus quarterly, annually, or even semi-annually with payment after a defined number of months after the bonus period. For example, if you type 3 in the Bonus Payment After field, the bonus is paid 3 months after the defined Quarterly bonus period and the benefits calculation for that month includes the bonus.

📝 Keep in mind, if you subscribe to Project Costing in Sage Intacct, you are most likely using the Cost Rate (for fully burdened costs) in your employee records to post to your labor costs. In this case, the Base Salary reflects the overall employee cost.

Use the Employee budget line type to enter employee data per employee, like employee Role, Employee ID, and Base salary with a scheduled increase in salary. For instance, create a budget line for a specific employee and select Employee for the budget line type. The more employee data you add to the budget line, the more accurately you can plan your budget. 

From the dropdown filters in the preview window, you can choose to view your budget summary (totals only), or the details (salary + benefits = total) of your employee data.

From the Details view, click on the drill-down to the left of the Total benefits line to expand the employee benefit details. Here you can see the actual breakdown of the benefits that make up the total cost of your employee salaries. Each component is presented in a new line, such as benefits, taxes, accrued vacation, and bonuses.

From the Preview window you can also display your actuals, rolling budget, or budget vs. past data.

The Hire Date and End Date fields provide the employee date range to account for employees that are new hires or employees that have left or have been transferred during the fiscal year. So, for instance, if an employee begins working in March of a fiscal year that is from January to December, the employee salary and benefits in the preview window are displayed beginning in March of the budget date range. If the hire and end dates are left blank, the employee data will be spread across the entire budget date range.

The Multiple employees budget line type is used to enter one budget line to represent multiple employees in a group. This budget line type lets you average out the estimated costs for a group of employees. For instance, you can create one budget line for Software engineers in your Research & Development department. 

As you enter data for the group, the salary and wages amounts are multiplied by the number of employees in the group. 

From the Multiple employees template, you can choose to add employee data for projected new hires or for existing employees in your group. You do this from the Type field.

Projected new hires
To account for new hires, you need to know the projected cost of each new employee, including their salary and wages and benefits. Selecting New hires for the multiple employees type allows you to incorporate multiple new employees to your annual budget. Here, too, as you enter data for the group, the salary and wages amounts are multiplied by the number of projected new hires in the group. (See How to add multiple new hires for more detailed information.)

Adding to the employee headcount signals significant changes in company strategy and you may need to plan to change other areas of your budget. This template allows you to increase the employee headcount to account for changes in different areas and at different times throughout your yearly budget.

Existing employees
Selecting Existing employees for the multiple employees type lets you account for the average cost of your existing employees in a group.

The Allocated employee template lets you set up your budget to account for employee time and costs that are split, by percentage, across different locations, departments, or multiple projects in your company. So, if you have an employee that works in two different departments, for example, the employee can be added in two different places in your budget tree. The first department is the primary position, and the second department is the allocated one.

See How to move or split an employee between two departments or more for more information.

The Transferred employee template lets you budget for employees that transfer to a department or location during the budget period.

See How to move or split an employee between two departments or more for more information.

The following procedure explains how to manually add employee budget lines per employee to your budget in SIP.

If one does not exist, you need to create a Salary & Wages budget line type under Cost of Revenues or Operational Expenses, depending on where you want to add employee data. The Salary & Wages budget line can be added directly under Cost of Revenues or Operational Expenses, or you can add Salary & Wages under departments or groups within these expense categories.

In general, it is best practice set up your employee salary and wages according to your company’s budget structure. For instance, if you have different departments like Research & Development or Sales & Marketing, you will probably want to enter employee data by department. In this case, you would add Salary & Wages budget lines directly under R&D or under Sales & Marketing.

Here’s an example of how to add a Salary & Wages budget line to your budget in preparation for adding employees that work in the Research & Development department.

📝 Keep in mind that this is just one example of how to add employee data to your budget.

To create a Salary & Wages budget line:

1. Go to Inputs > Main, then click the + icon beside Cost of Revenues or Operational Expenses. 

2. Create a group budget line for a department named Research & Development.

3. Click the + icon beside Research & Development. The following window is displayed:

4. Choose Yes to add Salary & Wages.

5. From here, you can either exit the wizard to enter data in the Salary & Wages budget line from your budget tree and then add employees at a later time, or you can choose how you want to add your employees at this point.

To manually add employee data per employee:

1. Click the + icon beside the Salary & Wages group budget line in the budget tree.

A window similar to the following is displayed.

2. Click Create and enter the name(s) of each employee you want to add to the Salary & Wages budget group.

Enter details for each employee in the fields displayed in the Employee template.

1. Click on the employee name in your budget tree.

2. Enter the details relevant to the employee’s position in the company, such as Role, Employee ID, Base salary, or Yearly vacation days.

From Inputs > Tables, the Employees tab displays all of your employee budget lines in a table format. From the Employees table, you can add new employees, update employee data for existing employees (except for Advanced benefits), duplicate, move, and delete employee budget lines. In addition, you can use the filters to display  your employee data by dimensions.

From the Sheets view, you can see a report of your headcount plan in the Headcount sheet. The filter bar lets you select different options to customize the information you display. For example, let’s say you want to view the plan to hire new software engineers by month. Select Monthly from the time interval dropdown, New hires from the employees dropdown, and Software engineer from the roles dropdown. Your headcount plan may appear as follows:

In addition, you can select Headcount & Cost to display the cost impact of your headcount plan on your budget. The total impact on your budget is displayed in the Total columns to the right of the sheet and the monthly totals are displayed at the bottom.