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Employers Furlough Calculator

On this page you will find an online calculator that allows you to calculate the furlough amount for several employees to support a claim for furlough via HMRC. With this furlough calculator you can calculate the amount of furlough for upto 50 employees at the same time. In addition, we have provided detailed furlough information and furlough Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Our aim being twofold, firstly to provide a comprehensive free tool for the calculation of furlough online that you can print and/or email to yourself to support your furlough application and secondly, to identify the shortfall in the employee(s) wages so you can understand the impact of furlough on your employees and make up any shortfall as required/practicable to reduce the impact on your employees.

Note that this calculator is designed to provide furlough calculations on a month by month basis. Please complete the calculations for each month you intend to claim furlough for, you can email the furlough calculation to yourself for reference as you go along.

The Employer furlough Calculator below has a simple interface that we hope should be fairly intuitive for those who have employees and are familiar with payroll cost calculations and forecasts. If you are unsure about some of the inputs on the Employer Furlough Calculator, please review the guide below which covers how to calculate furlough for several employees.

Employers Furlough Calculator
Select the Annual Salary Amount or Payment period for your employees
Calculate and Print / Email your Furlough Calculation

If you found this furlough calculator useful, please take a second to leave a rating and/or share to your favourite social network to allow other employers to calculate furlough for their employees in preparation for furlough claims through HMRC.

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How to calculate 80% of your employees wages for furlough for several employees

The Employer Furlough Calculator is designed to be intuitive, but we feel it is always useful to have a step-by-step guide to using the calculator to ensure you, the user, get the most out of this tool and the best experience whilst using iCalculator. We will start by covering a step by step process for using the Employer Furlough Calculator as most employers will already be familiar with the basics of Payroll Contributions. After reviewing the steps required to calculate furlough employer NIC's, we cover furlough FAQ and provide information on rates, thresholds and allowances. We also provide some links to other employer calculators and tools which we feel you may also find useful.

  1. Select the tax year you wish to calculate furlough for. Why? The furlough period announced by the UK PM Boris Johnson and UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak, covers two separate tax years, the 2019 tax year which ended on the 31 March 2020 and the 2020 tax year which started on the 1st April 2020. This means that your payments would alter slightly due to the changes in tax allowances from each respective tax year, you can view the tax allowances for each year here: 2019 Tax Year, 2020 Tax Year.
  2. Choose whether or not to include the Employers NI Employment allowance (£ 3,000.00 for the 2020 tax year)
  3. Choose the payment period for your employees. This allows you to use the calculator for annual salaries or monthly, weekly, hourly rates etc. The Calculator will automatically work out the annual salary based on the amount and pay period you enter, it will then calculate 80% of this "annual salary" and, in turn, factor in the number of days you wish to calculate furlough for and provide the amount of wages due for the furlough period.
  4. Choose the number of employees that you wish to calculate furlough for. Note that the Employer Furlough Calculator will provide individual wage costs for each employee under furlough. The calculator will also provide a link to a supporting salary example for each employee which provides details of how the ENIC's were calculated and the associated salary costs and tax home pay information, note that this link is for a 100% of wages, not the reduced amount paid due to furlough during coronavirus measures.
  5. [Optional] Enter the name of your employees. This is useful if you want to email the results for later reference when entering the furlough amount into the HMRC portal.
  6. Enter the salary or wage for Each Employee. This should be the total salary/wage per payment period as selected at step 2.
  7. Enter the number of days that each employee has been subject to furlough.
  8. Press calculate. The Employer Furlough Calculator will then produce a furlough calculation for each of your employees.

Note: You can calculate furlough wages for one employee, simply by setting the number of employees to one, the remainder of the steps are the same.

Limitations of the Employer Furlough Calculator

This calculator is designed to provide a quick overview of furlough amounts based on the 80% rule with a maximum monthly amount of £ 2,500.00 per employee. The calculator works by defining an annualised salary and producing an indicative daily rate based on 260 working days per year as a benchmark. For detailed employee costs we suggest you use our tax and NI calculator for employers which allows individual tax codes and NI categorisation selection, you can also use the tax and NI calculator for employers to calculate self-employed NI contributions. This calculator:

  1. Assumes all employees are on standard Class 1 NI contributions. There are no NI exemptions, voluntary contributions or alternate classes applied.
  2. Does not factor in company pension costs and/or salary sacrifice schemes. We do provide separate calculators for salary sacrifice and employer cost of employment calculation. See the links below or use the site search feature to access these tools.

What is the current rate of furlough?

The current rates for furlough are 80% of wages capped at a maximum of £ 2,500.00 per month. The government provides slightly misleading guidance on the daily maximum wage amount. Gov.uk states that the daily rates are:

Furlough Daily Rates of Pay as published on Gov.uk
MonthDaily maxiumum wage amount
March 2020£80.65 per day
April 2020£83.34 per day
May 2020£80.65 per day

These daily rates are in fact misleading, why? The daily rates for furlough published on Gov.uk are based on an individual working every single day of the month which is of course completely ludicrous. The average person is likely to work five days a week, maybe 23 days on average in a month (in fact, there are 22 working days in March 2020, 22 working days in April 2020 and 21 working days in May 2020, 22 working Days in June and so forth). So, lets use the standard working days per month as an example and then reproduce the daily furlough rates to match that calculation:

Furlough Daily Rates of Pay based on working days per month
MonthDaily maximum wage amountNumber of Working Days
March 2020£ 113.64 per day23
April 2020£ 113.64 per day22
May 2020£ 119.05per day21
June 2020£ 113.64per day22
July 2020£ 108.70per day23
August 2020£ 119.05per day21
September 2020£ 113.64per day22
October 2020£ 113.64per day22
November 2020£ 119.05per day21
December 2020£ 108.70per day23
January 2021£ 108.70per day23
Febuary 2021£ 125.00per day20
March 2021£ 108.70per day23
April 2021£ 113.64per day22

It is important to understand that the daily maximum amount here is based on the employee working every single one of those working days. Your employees may normally work shifts so the amount of days is almost irrelevant as shift workers (say four days on, four days off working 12 hour shifts, may only work 12 days one month and 20 the next. Paying those workers based on the government inferred maximum daily amount would significantly reduce the amount of furlough received.

So, Gov.uk suggests a "Maximum Daily Wage Amount" which really is misleading and the true maximum daily wage amount is £ 2,500.00 per month, why? because the daily amount is in fact irrelevant, the furlough scheme is set up based on a monthly amount, not a daily limit. So, furlough wages should in fact be calculated as a number of days worked per month, times 80% and capped at £2500. If, as an employer, you use the daily limits published by Gov.uk and your employees do not normally work every single day then you will be calculating their furlough incorrectly. More importantly, if your staff are working full days every day without a break, you are most likely breaching employment laws in one manner of another.

Does the furlough amount ever change?

The furlough amounts and rates are determined by Government as part of the support package surrounding coronavirus. The rates and amounts can be changed though it is unlikely as the support will be finite in duration

What is the maximum amount of furlough?

The maximum amount of furlough per employee is £ 2,500.00 per month, you can choose to top up your employees wages but this is entirely voluntary