Education Budget and Value Calculator

Do not have these numbers yet? Most clinical educators are never given access to them, and most finance partners hand them over the moment someone asks properly. Print the companion request form, fill in the three lines at the top, and send it once. It explains all fourteen figures and why each one matters, so you get the whole set back at once and reuse it for the rest of the fiscal year. Download the Education Budget Data Request (PDF) Editable Word version

What are you costing out?

Step 1

Program name

Type of education

Nurses per offering

Times offered per year

Contact hours awarded per nurse

Benefit and tax load on wages (%) A percentage of wages, not of total compensation. The two are not the same number. What is this and how do I find mine?

Cost of running it once

Per offering

Nurse time away from the unit Hours per nurse × average hourly wage, with your benefit load applied

×$

Coverage for the vacated shifts Only the hours you actually backfill, at the rate you pay to backfill them

×$

Educator and preceptor delivery time Teaching, simulation, and skills validation hours for this offering

×$

Guest speaker or contracted instructor fee Honoraria, vendor trainers, external faculty

Materials and supplies per nurse Workbooks, printing, skills lab consumables, badges

Food and refreshments per nurse Leave at zero if the day is unpaid meal time

Space, AV, simulation equipment, room rental Total for the offering, not per nurse

Per offering, multiplied by 1$0

One-time and annual cost

Charged once per year

Curriculum design and build hours Development, revision, and evaluation build, at the educator rate above

hrs

Platform, licensing, or software LMS seats, simulation software, subscription content

Contact hour and accreditation cost Nurse planner review time, provider unit fees, certificate issuance

Other cost Anything the categories above do not cover

One-time and annual subtotal$0

Conference attendance

Per nurse sent

Registration per nurse Use the early bird rate if you can commit to the deadline

Airfare or mileage per nurse

Lodging Nights × nightly rate, per nurse

×$

Meals and per diem Days × daily rate, per nurse

×$

Ground transport, parking, baggage per nurse

Paid time away per nurse Conference and travel hours paid at wage plus benefit load

×$

Per nurse $0, multiplied by 0$0

What it gives back

Step 2

RN departures you expect this to prevent Number of nurses × your cost to replace one RN. Default is the 2026 national average, replace it with your finance team's figure.

×$

Orientation shortened Orientees affected × hours cut from orientation × combined orientee and preceptor hourly rate

× ×$

Contract, agency, or overtime hours avoided Hours × the premium you pay above a staff hour

×$

External tuition avoided by teaching in house Seats × what the same course costs on the open market

×$

Safety or quality events avoided Use only a figure your quality department will stand behind

×$

Other measurable return Name it so leadership knows what they are looking at

Conservative factor Discount the whole return so the case survives a skeptical CFO. Most NPD business cases are stronger at 50 percent than at 100.

—

Projected return after the conservative factor$0

Paragraph for the budget meeting

The short version

Name the education and pick its type. The worksheet hides the sections that do not apply.
Fill in what it costs. Nurse time away is almost always the largest line, and it is the one most often left out.
Fill in only the returns you can defend out loud. A blank line is stronger than an invented one.
Set the conservative factor to 50 or 75 percent. A discounted case that holds up beats a full case that gets picked apart.
Print to PDF and bring the one page to the meeting.

The one number people get wrong: benefit and tax load

A nurse earning $42 an hour does not cost the organization $42 an hour. On top of the wage sit the employer share of payroll taxes, health and dental insurance, retirement match, workers compensation, unemployment insurance, disability, and in most models paid time off accrual. The load is that stack expressed as a percentage.

Here is the trap. This field wants a percentage of wages. The figures published nationally are usually percentages of total compensation, and they are not interchangeable. For private industry in March 2026, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported average wages of $32.60 an hour and average benefits of $14.01 an hour. Benefits were 30.1 percent of total compensation, but that same $14.01 sitting on top of $32.60 in wages is a 43 percent load. Type 30 into this field because you read 30 percent in a press release and you have understated your program cost by roughly a third. For state and local government employers the same math produces a load closer to 63 percent.

The field defaults to 30 percent because hospital fringe rates quoted with paid time off excluded commonly land between 25 and 35 percent. That makes it a reasonable placeholder and a poor substitute for your own figure. When you ask finance for it, ask three things: the percentage, whether it is calculated on wages or on total compensation, and whether paid leave is inside it.

The Education Budget Data Request form asks all three questions for you, along with the other thirteen figures this worksheet needs. Hand it to your finance business partner once and you are set for the year.

Where the numbers come from

Benefit and tax load. Covered above. Ask for it on wages, and confirm whether paid leave is included.
Coverage hours. Only count shifts you truly backfill. If nurses attend on a scheduled non-productive day, this line is zero.
Cost to replace one RN. The default is the national average from the 2026 NSI report. Your finance team may hold a facility-specific number, and that number always wins in a budget conversation.
Departures prevented. This is the line leadership will press hardest. Anchor it in something real: your first-year turnover rate, exit interview themes, or a prior cohort's retention. If you cannot anchor it, lower it.

What the conservative factor does

It multiplies your entire projected return before anything is compared to cost. Presenting a program that clears its cost at 50 percent confidence is far more persuasive than one that only works if every assumption lands perfectly.

Worked example

A one-day periop specialty class, run twice a year, 20 nurses each time.

Nurse time away: 20 × 8 hrs × $42 × 1.30	$8,736
Educator delivery: 10 hrs × $52 × 1.30	$676
Materials: 20 × $15	$300
Per offering	$9,712
Both offerings (× 2)	$19,424
Curriculum build: 24 hrs × $52 × 1.30	$1,622
Total investment	$21,046

Two departures prevented at $60,090 each is $120,180. Discounted to a conservative 50 percent, the projected return is $60,090. Net position is a positive $39,044, which is $2.86 returned for every dollar spent. Best of all, the class covers its own cost by preventing just 0.4 of a single RN departure across the forty nurses who go through it in a year. That is the sentence to lead with.

Saving your work

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