What a person answering the phone actually costs

Someone hired at the Portuguese minimum wage costs the company around 1,470 € a month, not the 920 € written on the contract. That is more than five hundred euros a month almost nobody counts before deciding.

This calculation uses the figures in force in Portugal in 2026, with the official source for every line. It is for anyone thinking about hiring a person to answer the phone, book appointments, or reply to messages.

The four starting numbers

The meal allowance days follow standard payroll practice: eleven months, twenty-two days, which gives 242 days a year.

The math

With the meal allowance paid in cash:

On top of that comes workplace accident insurance, which is mandatory and puts the figure between 1,458 € and 1,468 € a month depending on the policy.

Most companies pay the allowance on a card, because the tax-exempt limit is higher. In that case the annual total rises to 18,470 € and the month to 1,539 €.

One note on the mechanics: within the exempt limit, the meal allowance pays no social security. That is why it does not enter the 23.75% base.

And if it is not minimum wage

A front desk is hired at minimum wage. An administrative assistant is not.

In Portugal salaries are discussed net, by what the person takes home. The reference for someone in their first year, outside a large company, is around 1,200 € clean. Under the 2026 withholding tables, single with no dependents, that is 1,550 € gross.

Nearly thirty thousand euros a year, with the insurance still on top. That is what an assistant on 1,200 € net costs.

The money is half the answer

The other half is the schedule, and it is the half that usually gets left out.

One full-time person works forty hours a week. A week has one hundred and sixty-eight. Even paying for the whole month, the phone is covered 24% of the time. The other one hundred and twenty-eight hours go unanswered, and that is where the nights, the weekends and the lunch hour live.

Take out vacation and about 220 working days remain, or 1,760 hours a year. On the 17,427 € from the first calculation, each hour answered costs 9.90 €.

Then there are the hours you pay for with nobody there: vacation, sick leave, training, and the time the person spends on the phone with one caller and therefore misses the next. That varies from company to company and does not go in a table, but it counts.

What to do with this number

This is not an argument against hiring. There is work only a person does, and whoever works the front desk knows the customers by name.

What this number changes is the question. Instead of comparing a monthly fee to a gross salary, you compare it to the real cost and to the hours that cost covers.

From there the decision stops being one thing or the other. It becomes a question of what you take off the plate of the person already there.

A system answering after hours does not replace the receptionist. It gives back the calls she could not catch and the time she spent rescheduling.

Sources

Minimum wage: Decree-Law 139/2025. Contribution rate: general social security scheme. Meal allowance: public sector figure for 2026. Withholding tables: mainland Portugal, 2026, Table I, employment income.