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Overhead costs let you spread shared workspace expenses — rent, software, equipment, admin, and similar — across the people who carry them. Pike converts each person’s share into an hourly amount and adds it to their employment cost when calculating profitability.

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Why overhead exists

Salary or contract cost alone understates what an hour of work actually costs. Overhead closes that gap by loading shared recurring spend onto the hourly cost rate used in finance reports. For how loaded hourly cost flows into earnings, cost, and profit, see Profitability.

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Where to manage overhead

Go to Finance → Settings → Overhead costs.

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What an overhead line item contains

Each line item has: Only active, non-virtual workspace members can be assigned. Inactive or virtual members cannot be selected.

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How costs are allocated

Pike uses a simple equal split:
  1. Convert the line item amount to a monthly equivalent based on frequency.
  2. Divide that monthly amount equally across all assigned members.
  3. Convert each member’s monthly share into an hourly overhead rate.
  4. Add that hourly overhead to the member’s employment hourly cost in profitability.

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Frequency → monthly conversion

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Monthly share → hourly overhead

Each member’s hourly overhead is:
Monthly working hours come from the member’s employment contract:
  • Pike reads hours per week from the member’s effective contract.
  • It converts that to monthly hours using business days in the month:
    (business days in month ÷ 5) × hours per week
  • Weekends are excluded. Public holidays are not subtracted in this calculation.
Members assigned to overhead must have an effective contract with hours per week greater than zero. Pike rejects assignments for members without one.

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Example

  • Overhead: £4,000 / month, split across 4 members → £1,000 / month each
  • Member A: full-time contract, 37.5 h/week → ~165 working hours in a typical month
    → hourly overhead ≈ £6.06 / h
  • Member B: part-time contract, 20 h/week → ~88 working hours
    → hourly overhead ≈ £11.36 / h
Same monthly share, different contracted hours → different hourly overhead. That is intentional: equal monthly burden, higher hourly load for people who work fewer hours.
Before creating overhead items, set employment contracts for every assigned member — including hours per week. Overhead hourly rates depend on contracted capacity, so part-time and full-time members with the same monthly share will show different loaded costs per hour.

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When an overhead item applies

A line item contributes to calculations only when all of the following are true:
  • It is active
  • Today (or the calculation date) is on or after start date, if set
  • Today is on or before end date, if set
  • The member is in the item’s assigned members list
  • The item has at least one assigned member
Items with no members never apply.

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What overhead affects

Overhead feeds into cost on profitability views:
  • Actual profitability (time-based and invoice-based revenue methods)
  • Planned profitability (from resource allocations)
It does not change billable rates, invoice amounts, or task rates. It only increases the internal cost side of the profit calculation.

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Cost snapshots

When an overhead item is created or updated, Pike recalculates hourly cost snapshots for every affected member. Snapshots record, at that point in time:
  • Base hourly employment cost
  • Hourly overhead
  • Total loaded hourly cost
Snapshots are append-only. They support historical cost reconstruction when overhead or contracts change later.

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Relationship to employment contracts

Overhead and employment cost are separate inputs that combine at the hourly level: For accurate results, keep member contracts up to date (cost amount, frequency, hours per week, effective date) and assign overhead to the correct members.

Cost profile

Configure member contracts, capacity, and hourly employment cost.

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Setup checklist

  1. Set employment contracts for members (cost, frequency, hours per week).
  2. Create overhead line items in Finance → Settings.
  3. Assign members to each item (each must have an effective contract).
  4. Review profitability on Finance → Overview or a project’s Finance tab.

Profitability

How loaded hourly cost flows into earnings, cost, and profit.

Finance settings

Workspace contacts, products, invoice defaults, and overhead line items.