Cost Of living Allowance (COLA)
What is a Cost of Living Allowance (COLA)?
A Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) is the amount of money that an employee gets over and above their current salary, to compensate for a higher cost of living.
What is the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) Report Calculator?
The COLA report calculates how much additional allowance (over and above your current salary) you need to earn in another location to compensate for a higher cost of living, hardship and the exchange rate, in order to have the same relative spending power and as a result have a similar standard of living as you have in your current location. This is recommended for the calculation of a cost of living allowance for short-term assignments.
How do you run a Cost of Living Allowance Calculator (COLA) Report?
- 1) Login using your username and password.
- 2) Check that you have subscribed to 2 or more locations.
- 3) Select Report Calculators from the menu.
- 4) Choose the Cost of Living Allowance Report Calculator.
- The calculator will prompt you for the following inputs:
- 5) Reference Information: Give your report a reference and the name of the individual for whom you are running the report. This will help you identify your reports for future reference.
- 6) Locations: Select the location that is being relocated FROM and the location that is being relocated TO.
- 7) Cost Allocations: Select the basket costs that will be paid for by the employee from his own salary (column on right) and what will be provided for by the employer or state, for the employee (column on left). Basket costs that are provided are not included in the cost of living calculation. The default is that all basket costs will be paid for by the employee from their own salary unless otherwise specified. Note that there is no point in selecting that all costs are provided for the employee by the employer, as then theoretically the employee would not need to earn a salary.
- 8) Currency Details: Select the appropriate currency. You can choose any currency, it does not have to be the currency of the selected locations. Enter the current salary amount in the current location. This is used as the basis of the Xpatulator calculation. You can choose the salary you wish to use as the basis for the calculation. For example depending on your salary structure you may choose to use Basic Salary, Base Salary, Guaranteed Cash, Total Cash, Total Remuneration or any other structure.
- 9) Run Report: When you are sure that all your selection criteria are correct, click on run report. Reports can be re-run for the period that you have purchased your subscription for.
- 10) Your report will be created immediately and will look like this Demo COLA Report
To get started:
Register, then login using your email address and password, and subscribe to your locations online. Please note that credit card verification time is usually a few minutes, but can take a few hours. Once your locations have loaded you can run the premium content calculators and receive your reports online within minutes.
If you have not registered yet: Register Now.