Where these numbers come from.
Panya estimates what a contract may actually leave you after taxes and housing. This page explains the whole method — what Panya uses, what it assumes, and what it deliberately will not guess.
What Panya actually knows
Panya keeps contract facts separate from estimates and assumptions.
Your federal rate is one you can see and change. The state estimate comes from the assignment state. FICA is applied at 7.65%.
Housing is either a number you entered or a local estimate Panya can use for that location. If neither exists, Panya subtracts nothing and says so.
The order it works in
- Read the package as quoted — base pay, housing stipend, meals stipend, and any other recurring compensation.
- Separate taxable pay from tax-free stipends. They are taxed differently, and the split changes the result.
- Estimate tax on the taxable part only: your federal effective rate, plus the assignment state’s rate, plus FICA at 7.65%. FICA is added separately. Leaving it out would make taxable-heavy contracts look better than they really are.
- Treat one-time money — like a sign-on bonus or travel reimbursement — separately, and spread it across the contract for display. It is never counted toward your weekly target, because a one-time payment cannot close a permanent weekly gap.
- Subtract your expected housing cost, or the local estimate you chose to use.
- What remains is your estimated weekly take-home after housing.
Housing
Where the rent figure comes from
It depends on how precisely the assignment is located, and these are not all the same kind of number.
- If Panya has a ZIP code — Panya can use the published Small Area Fair Market Rent for that ZIP.
- If Panya has a city — Panya uses the median of that city’s ZIP-level one-bedroom estimates. That city number is Panya’s own calculation from the underlying ZIP data. It is not itself a published federal city figure, so Panya labels it as a city estimate.
- If Panya has neither — Panya does not invent a housing cost. The result stays on a before-housing basis and tells you that housing has not been included.
A city is deliberately enough for the main estimate. Few travelers know the ZIP code of a workplace they have not started at yet, and a worksite ZIP can be a very precise answer to the wrong question: it prices the worksite ZIP even though you may rent somewhere else across the city.
An empty housing box means “I don’t have a figure”
It does not mean zero.
Panya keeps four things separate:
- the housing cost you entered;
- Panya’s local housing estimate;
- whether the agency provides housing;
- which housing figure the calculation is currently using.
If you choose to use Panya’s estimate, that number is placed into the housing field so you can always see what is being applied.
What Panya deliberately does not model
This is the part many tools leave out.
Knowing where an estimate stops is part of being able to trust it.
Overtime
There is no overtime input.
Hours above a guarantee are not reliable enough to price from a typical travel offer, so Panya does not guess at them.
If the contract guarantees 48 hours, enter 48 guaranteed hours. Those hours are part of the contract. Only hours above the guarantee are excluded.
Panya can still recognize overtime language in something you paste. If it sees overtime, it tells you that the term was present but was not priced. It does not price that term at the base rate, and it does not invent an overtime multiplier.
Guaranteed hours themselves are priced at the base rate, including any above a standard 40-hour week. Panya does not model an overtime premium, so a 48-hour guarantee is priced as 48 hours at base. The result says so, and says your real pay may be higher than the estimate.
So Panya does not simply “ignore overtime.” It separates what is guaranteed from what is uncertain.
Also not modeled
- A contractual callback minimum. Panya can tell you that the term is missing and help you ask your recruiter about it, but it does not invent a dollar value for one. Callback-dependent pay therefore stays separate from dependable standby pay.
- Federal per-diem comparison for Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. territories. Those are marked unavailable rather than estimated.
- Your own out-of-pocket costs. Flights home, licensing, parking, scrubs, commuting, and similar expenses are real money, but they are not included in these figures.
- Free-form extra payments. There is no generic “add an adjustment” box. Older saved offers that already contain one keep it, but Panya does not let new arbitrary adjustments get invented.
- Federal per-diem comparison without a ZIP code. That comparison is component-level and requires ZIP-level evidence. A city-only assignment simply shows no federal per-diem comparison instead of borrowing a nearby ZIP.
Rounding and limitations
Rounding
Panya settles money to the cent and does not re-create one figure by subtracting two already-rounded numbers.
When Panya suggests an amount to ask for, it rounds upward rather than downward — for example, to the nearest 25 cents on a rate or the nearest $25 on a one-time payment.
That way, the rounded request does not quietly fall short of the gap it was supposed to close.
Panya then runs the rounded suggestion back through the same calculator, so the improvement you see is still the engine’s own result rather than an estimate of an estimate.
What this is not
These are estimates, not payroll withholding, and not tax, legal, or financial advice.
Your actual paycheck will differ. Withholding is not the same as the tax you ultimately owe, and stipends are only tax-free when you genuinely qualify for that treatment.
Panya guarantees nothing. The one thing described as guaranteed is your guaranteed hours per week, because that is the contract term provided to Panya as guaranteed.
Panya also does not tell you what a contract should pay. It does not currently have a market rate to quote, and it will not invent one.
Who built this
I’m a working travel rad tech. Every figure here is one I wanted to understand for myself first.
Why I built Panya, and how it stays independent, is on About.
If something looks wrong or confusing, tell me. Panya is still in open beta, and support is answered by a real person.