Staff Turnover & Replacement Cost Tracker Spreadsheet | Employee Leaver, Recruitment and Onboarding Cost Excel Google Sheets Template

🚪 STAFF TURNOVER & REPLACEMENT COST TRACKER — EXCEL & GOOGLE SHEETS

Everybody knows the percentage. Nobody knows the bill.

Turnover gets reported as a number with a per cent sign on it, and nothing
follows. Twenty-seven per cent sounds like a personnel problem.

In the worked year inside this file, those forty-four people cost $335,997 to
replace — $7,636 each — and more than half of it was a cost that has never
appeared on any report anywhere.

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EIGHT LINKED TABS

· Start Here — what each tab expects and where to type.
· Setup — two numbers and two lists: your roles and why people leave.
· Leavers — 200 rows. Nine things per person.
· By Reason — what each way of losing somebody costs.
· By Role — which seats are expensive to lose.
· By Length Of Service — the tab nobody expects.
· The Run-Up — the weeks a new person is paid in full and not yet worth it.
· Overview — the year on one screen.

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FROM THE WORKED YEAR INSIDE THE FILE

Leavers 44
People on the payroll 160
Turnover 27.5%
Weeks of empty seat, added up 210.2

The empty seat $89,384
Recruiting $46,331
Getting them in $11,155
THE RUN-UP $186,290
Anything else $2,837
WHAT IT ALL COST $335,997
Each leaver $7,636
The run-up as a share of it 55.4%

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THE BIGGEST OF THE FIVE PARTS IS THE ONE NOBODY COUNTS

A leaver costs five things, and only two of them ever reach a spreadsheet.

The empty seat. It saves you the wage, which is why it feels like nothing — and
loses you the work, which is worth more than the wage, or you would not have the
seat. 210 weeks of it, $89,384.

Recruiting. Advertising, an agency if it came to that, and the hours somebody
spent shortlisting and interviewing. $46,331.

Getting them in. Kit, uniform, checks, setting them up on everything. $11,155.

The run-up. The weeks the new person is paid in full and not yet worth it.
$186,290 — fifty-five per cent of the whole bill, and it has never appeared
anywhere, because nobody writes down the week somebody stopped being new.

Anything else. Overtime to cover, agency staff, the customer who noticed.

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$499 A WEEK. AGAINST $32.

Somebody who was here three months cost $8,433 to replace.

Somebody who was here five years cost $7,730.

Almost the same bill — for somebody who never got going. Per week they were
actually with you it is $499 against $32, which is fifteen times as much.

That is the finding that ought to change what a business does in week one, and
no turnover percentage will ever show it to you.

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THE DEAREST LEAVERS ARE THE ONES YOU DECIDED TO LET GO

In the worked year the people who did not work out cost $11,362 each — half as
much again as somebody leaving for a better offer.

You paid to hire them, paid while they learned, and then paid to do it all
again.

That is an argument for the interview, not for the exit.

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$3,116 FOR ONE SEAT. $19,928 FOR ANOTHER.

Some seats you can fill in a fortnight. Some take three months to be worth what
they cost.

By Role puts the difference in money and in weeks of what that seat is worth to
you — which is the figure to hold against whatever it would have taken to keep
somebody. In the worked file one role cost ten weeks of its own value, every
single time.

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ONE WEEK OFF EVERY RUN-UP IS WORTH $23,715

Seven per cent of the whole bill, for getting people up to speed one week
sooner. A better handover, a checklist, somebody to ask.

It is the cheapest line on the page, and the file works it out for you from your
own roles.

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IT HOLDS NO PERSONAL DATA

A reference is enough — L-101, L-102. You never need a name in it, which means
it can sit on a shared drive without anybody worrying.

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WHAT YOU GET

Two workbooks and a guide. One workbook has a whole worked year already filled
in, so you can see what every column expects before you touch anything. The
second is the same file completely blank — same tabs, same formulas — ready for
your own leavers from the first row. Two hundred rows, twelve roles, twelve
reasons. The guide is a plain-English PDF.

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EXCEL AND GOOGLE SHEETS

Built as .xlsx. Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, and Google Sheets through
File → Import → Upload. LibreOffice too. No macros, no add-ons, no account to
create, nothing to install, no subscription. You download a file and it is yours.

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QUESTIONS PEOPLE ACTUALLY ASK

I do not know what a seat is worth a week.
Start with the wage plus a third and adjust it later. Being roughly right beats
leaving it out, which is what every turnover report does.

We only lose two or three people a year.
Then the per-leaver figures matter more than the totals, and they work from the
first row. Three leavers is still a five-figure number in most businesses.

One role, not twelve?
Put one line in Setup. Everything else works exactly the same.

We use seasonal or agency staff.
Give them their own role with a short run-up. The file will show you what that
flexibility actually costs, which is usually the point of the exercise.

Is this only for one kind of business?
No. Nothing in it is specific to any trade. The roles and the reasons are all
named by you.

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WHAT THIS IS NOT

Not an HR system, a payroll system or an applicant tracker. Not accounting,
employment or legal advice. Not connected to anything — nothing syncs, nothing
logs in.

It will not stop anybody leaving. It will tell you what each one cost, which
seats are dear to lose, and what a better first month is actually worth.

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Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and the
buyer protection are all handled by Etsy. I never ask for access to anything —
no password, no payroll, no HR system. You download a file; that is the whole
transaction.

The example business is invented. The arithmetic behind every figure is not.