Healthcare staffing firms face a unique challenge: creating accurate pay packages for travel nurses and locum tenens positions. Calculating base rates, housing stipends, meal allowances, and travel reimbursements all while following GSA guidelines and state regulations can be a recipe for errors that cost both money and candidate trust.
Newbury’s Deal Sheet solves this problem. This specialized Bullhorn add-on helps recruiters create precise healthcare compensation packages in real time. It’s not just another calculator—it’s a purpose-built tool that understands the complexities of healthcare staffing and integrates directly with your existing Bullhorn environment.
Let’s look at how it can transform your compensation process and give your recruiters a competitive edge.
Why Computing Pay Packages is Challenging
Let’s face it; healthcare staffing pay packages are complicated. While other staffing firms deal with straightforward hourly or salary rates, you’re juggling base pay, housing stipends, meal allowances, travel reimbursements, and shift differentials for your travel nurses and locum tenens professionals. Add in GSA regulations and different tax rules for each state, and it’s easy to see why mistakes happen.
The numbers don’t lie. The IRS reports that 33 percent of employers make payroll errors, costing billions in penalties annually.1 For healthcare staffing, these errors hit even harder:
- Wrong stipend calculations can break GSA compliance rules
- Quoting incorrect take-home pay destroys candidate trust
- Calculation mistakes cut into your margins
- Hours spent double-checking numbers means less time recruiting
Most staffing firms still use basic spreadsheets or generic tools that weren’t built for healthcare staffing’s unique needs. In today’s competitive market for healthcare talent, you can’t afford these errors. Candidates expect accurate, transparent pay details, and your business needs reliable margin protection.
What is the Deal Sheet? And How Can It Help You?
The Deal Sheet is a specialized calculator that lives inside your Bullhorn system. It’s not a separate program you need to open or a spreadsheet you have to maintain—it’s right there in Bullhorn as a custom tab on both candidate and job order pages.
Think of it as your compensation command center designed specifically for healthcare staffing. Unlike basic spreadsheets, the Deal Sheet understands the complexities of travel nursing and locum tenens compensation. It pulls data directly from your Bullhorn system to automatically create accurate pay packages in minutes.
Here’s what makes it specifically built for healthcare staffing:
- GSA Compliance: It automatically applies the right GSA rates for travel healthcare positions, ensuring your housing stipends and per diems stay compliant.
- Healthcare-Specific Models: Whether you’re staffing travel nurses with weekly pay and stipends or locum tenens with daily rates, the Deal Sheet adapts to different healthcare staffing models.
- State-Specific Rules: It accounts for different state tax requirements and regulations that affect healthcare professionals working across state lines.
- Variable Cost Handling: Easily adjust for shift differentials, on-call pay, and other variables common in healthcare placements.
The Deal Sheet connects directly to your Bullhorn job orders and candidate profiles, so you don’t waste time re-entering information. When you make changes to a pay package, it recalculates everything instantly, showing you both the candidate’s take-home pay and your expected margins.
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Real Benefits for Healthcare Recruiters
What does the Deal Sheet actually do for your day-to-day operations? Here’s how it makes a real difference for healthcare staffing recruiters:
1. Real-Time Calculations, Even During Candidate Calls
When a travel nurse calls about a position in California, you need answers fast. With Deal Sheet, you can pull up the job, select the candidate, and generate an accurate pay package on the spot. No more “I’ll get back to you with the details” or scrambling to make calculations while the candidate waits.
Say you used to spend 15-20 minutes calculating packages for each travel nurse. Now you can create accurate quotes in under 2 minutes during the initial call. This improves your response time and conversion rates.
The system pulls data directly from your Bullhorn environment – including candidate requirements, job details, and company parameters – to build a complete package automatically. When a candidate asks, “What if the housing stipend was higher and the hourly rate lower?” you can make those adjustments in seconds while they’re still on the phone, showing exactly how changes affect their total compensation.
2. Guaranteed GSA Compliance Without the Headache
A travel nurse assignment in Boston has different GSA rates than one in Dallas. Deal Sheet automatically applies the correct GSA rates based on location, ensuring your housing stipends and per diems stay compliant.
For example, when moving a candidate from a low-cost area to a high-cost one, Deal Sheet automatically adjusts the stipend maximums to match GSA guidelines. This prevents compliance issues that could cost your firm in penalties.
The tool maintains an updated database of GSA rates for different locations, so you don’t need to manually research and apply these figures. When tax-free stipends are involved, Deal Sheet ensures you stay within compliant limits while optimizing the package for both the candidate and your margins.
This eliminates the compliance guesswork that often leads to either overly cautious packages that aren’t competitive or aggressive ones that create liability.
3. Protect Your Margins While Staying Competitive
Know exactly where your margins stand with every offer. If a locum tenens physician requests a higher daily rate, Deal Sheet shows in real-time how that affects your profitability.
When a hiring manager asks for a rate reduction, you can quickly simulate different scenarios to find one that works for everyone. Deal Sheet lets you adjust individual components of the pay package while maintaining your target gross margins.
4. Build Trust With Transparent Pay Packages
Healthcare professionals want clarity about their compensation. Deal Sheet helps you provide it by breaking down exactly what they’ll earn, including all stipends and reimbursements.
When discussing a 13-week travel nursing contract, you can clearly show how the weekly pay, housing stipend, and travel reimbursement add up to their total compensation. This transparency builds trust and increases acceptance rates.
The tool generates clear, professional pay breakdowns that can be instantly shared with candidates, eliminating the need for confusing explanations or multiple sources. Deal Sheet provides transparent documentation candidates can reference, and recruiters can quickly adjust for tax or benefit changes, turning questions into productive discussions.
This is especially valuable in healthcare staffing, where compensation packages are complex and professionals compare offers from multiple agencies.
5. Focus on Relationships, Not Math
Instead of being buried in spreadsheets, your recruiters can focus on what matters—building relationships with candidates and clients.
A recruiter who previously managed 15 travel nurses can now effectively handle 20+ because they’re spending less time on calculations and more time on connections. This improves both placement numbers and recruiter satisfaction.
Ready to transform your healthcare staffing process?
The Newbury Deal Sheet changes how healthcare staffing firms create and manage pay packages. Whether you’re calculating travel nurse stipends or setting up locum tenens rates, you’ll have the tools to make competitive offers while protecting your margins.
Contact Newbury Partners to see how the Deal Sheet can streamline your compensation process and help your recruiters create accurate pay packages with confidence. Let’s help your recruiters create accurate pay packages with confidence. Get in touch with us today and start the ball rolling with a demo!
Reference
1. Moran, John. “Online Payroll: Reducing Human Error in Payroll Processing.” How The Market Works, www.howthemarketworks.com/online-payroll-can-reduce-human-error-in-the-payroll-process/.
