Calculate the total cost of office administration without a misleading salary comparison

Define the comparison before filling in dollars

Write down the locations, categories of work, service hours, physical presence and specialist tasks each option covers. A full-time local employee and a remote vendor coordinator are not interchangeable simply because both appear under administration.

Choose a common period and include setup separately from ongoing cost. Use current internal payroll information and actual proposals. If a salary benchmark is needed, verify the relevant US role and geography from an appropriate source before relying on it. This worksheet intentionally supplies no market salary or SFI price.

Build a balanced worksheet

Ask the appropriate finance and HR contacts for costs rather than applying a generic employer multiplier. Some costs are incremental and some are already committed. Mark that distinction so a comparison does not call an existing expense an avoidable saving.

Do not double-count time or coverage

If employee cost already includes paid leave, do not add the same pay again as leave cost. Additional replacement coverage may still be incremental. Similarly, do not count both the full cost of a manager's time and a separate blanket overhead allowance for the same work without explaining the overlap.

Retained management time exists in all models. Track the work required to approve costs, supply missing information and review quality. A service that leaves the client chasing every provider has not removed that burden merely because it charges a monthly fee.

Use illustrative calculations carefully

Illustrative example: an internal planning model includes $72,000 of annual recurring cost and $8,000 of one-time setup, while an external proposal includes $48,000 of annual fees, $4,000 of setup and $18,000 of retained local work. The first-year totals are $80,000 and $70,000 before other differences. These are invented planning inputs, not wage benchmarks, SFI prices or a savings claim.

The example is useful only if the service scopes are equivalent. If the external option excludes daily reception the company needs, add a credible local solution or reject the comparison. Run a second-year view and a peak-workload scenario rather than presenting one total as the answer.

Bring quality into the decision

Score coverage, employee context, continuity, specialist access, visibility and ability to change scope. Explain the evidence behind each score and let decision makers adjust the importance of each factor. A lowest-cost option that cannot cover essential work is not a valid winner.

After implementation, compare assumptions with actual spending, client time and service quality. SFI can discuss a scoped proposal, but no price or economic result should be inferred from this worksheet. Financial and employment decisions remain with the client's authorized advisers and owners.