Headcount budgeting · Nigeria
Employer Total Cost of Employment Calculator — Nigeria
Proposed gross salary
Total cost of employment
₦0.00
Enter a gross salary to compute.
| Line | Basis | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | |||
A hire costs more than the gross salary
The gross salary on an offer letter is not what an employee costs. On top of gross, a Nigerian employer carries pension at 10% of basic, housing and transport, NSITF at 1% of payroll, an ITF accrual, and NHIA health contributions. This calculator adds every employer-side statutory line to the gross you enter and returns the true monthly and annual cost of the hire — the number your budget actually needs.
These contributions never appear on the payslip, which is why they are so often missed: budgeting headcount from gross alone understates the cost by a double-digit percentage — 14.62% in the worked example below.
Enter the proposed gross salary
- Gross salary, monthly or annual, with the basic / housing / transport split if known.
- Employer pension rate — the statutory minimum of 10% of BHT by default.
- NSITF at 1% of total monthly payroll.
- ITF accrual at 1% of annual payroll, where your headcount or turnover makes you liable.
- NHIA / HMO employer share, per your scheme.
- An optional benefits budget for non-statutory extras.
Your full monthly and annual cost
Take the same package as our homepage payslip: gross ₦650,000.00 a month, of which basic is ₦300,000.00 and basic + housing + transport is ₦520,000.00.
| Line | Basis | Rate | Paid by | Monthly ₦ | Annual ₦ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gross salary | — | — | Employer | 650,000.00 | 7,800,000.00 |
| Pension (employer) | BHT | 10% | Employer | 52,000.00 | 624,000.00 |
| NSITF | Total payroll | 1% | Employer | 6,500.00 | 78,000.00 |
| ITF (accrual) | Annual payroll | 1% | Employer | 6,500.00 | 78,000.00 |
| NHIA (employer share) | Basic | 10% (per scheme) | Employer | 30,000.00 | 360,000.00 |
| Total cost of employment | 745,000.00 | 8,940,000.00 |
On this package the employee's net pay is ₦522,388.00 a month; the employer's cost is ₦745,000.00. The gap — ₦222,612.00 every month — is the number this page exists to make visible.
The employer-side statutory lines, briefly
Pension (employer)
A minimum of 10% of the employee's basic, housing and transport, remitted to the employee's RSA together with the employee's own 8% within seven working days of salary payment. Full detail on every line is in statutory deductions in Nigeria payroll.
NSITF
1% of total monthly payroll, employer-only, funding the Employees' Compensation Scheme. It applies to all employers and is remitted monthly.
ITF
1% of annual payroll for employers with 5 or more employees or annual turnover of ₦50,000,000 and above. It is accrued monthly for cash-flow visibility and remitted annually, on or before 1 April of the following year.
NHIA
Health-insurance cover is mandatory for employers with 5 or more employees. The common pattern is 10% of basic from the employer and 5% from the employee, but the exact split is scheme-dependent.
Budgeting headcount with KoboHR
- KoboHR accrues every employer-side line automatically on each payrun — pension, NSITF, ITF, NHIA — at the rates in force for the tax year.
- Dashboards show each scheme's remittance as due or overdue, so an accrual never quietly becomes a penalty.
- The same engine that pays your staff produces the schedules you file — no separate budgeting spreadsheet drifting away from payroll reality.
Working the other direction — from a candidate's net demand to the gross and then to your cost — chain the net-to-gross salary calculator into this one. Both run the same rules as our payroll software for Nigeria; firms budgeting for clients should also see payroll for consulting and accounting firms.
Budget a real headcount plan on the engine that will actually run the payroll.
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