Tracking Your Veterinary Practice's Payroll

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“If you want to track important costs, one of the most important in a veterinary practice is payroll. One of the things that I suggest to practice managers and owners is to look at what the benchmark for payroll is, which is approximately 22-24 percent for non-vet payroll. If for some reason you’re way above that, you should investigate why. First, you might have very long-term employees. You might be paying significantly more than you would for somebody who is new, and that would explain why you might be over. But there could be other reasons. An important one to take note of is if you have a lot of overtime. If your benchmark is higher, then you need to look at it and see if there’s overtime, and if there is overtime, start looking at why there is, and start managing your schedule better. One of the things that I often suggest is for practice managers to institute a no-overtime policy without permission.”