What the job costs #
Salary is the part everyone quotes and the smallest part of the decision. Here is the employment cost at the national median, using the rates in force for the 2026 to 2027 tax year.
£37,306
Median salary
ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 3551
£43,084
Employment cost a year
Salary, employer NI and minimum pension
£25
Per hour worked
37.5 hour week, 46.4 working weeks
| Item | A year | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Median salary | £37,306 | ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 3551 |
| Employer National Insurance | £4,846 | 15 per cent above £5,000 |
| Minimum workplace pension | £932 | 3 per cent of qualifying earnings |
| Employment cost | £43,084 | About £25 an hour on a 37.5 hour week |
Recruitment, equipment, software seats, training and cover for holiday and sickness all sit on top, and they vary too much between businesses to put a number on here.
If you want to run your own figures, the true cost of an employee tool does this with your salary, hours and on costs.
What the week is actually made of #
Here is the job as it usually runs in a business, split by whether the work follows a fixed pattern or needs a person to decide something. This split is our analysis, not a survey, and your version of the role will differ.
Runs to a pattern (8 of 12)
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Raise purchase orders against approved requisitions daily
Approval rules and a template.
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Send orders to suppliers and collect acknowledgements daily
Send, log, chase.
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Chase late orders and update expected dates daily
An exception list and a reminder loop.
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Check order confirmations against the purchase order daily
A three field comparison.
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Maintain supplier price files and contract terms weekly
Bulk data maintenance.
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Get three quotes for comparison weekly
A defined request, a defined comparison.
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Watch stock levels and reorder points daily
Thresholds and forecasts.
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Report spend by supplier and category monthly
A saved analysis.
Needs a person (4 of 12)
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Resolve delivery and invoice discrepancies with accounts weekly
Working out who is wrong and what to do.
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Onboard new suppliers and collect compliance documents monthly
Assessing whether a supplier is safe to use.
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Negotiate small improvements on price and lead time monthly
A relationship and a commercial call.
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Manage returns to supplier and credit claims weekly
Evidence and persuasion.
What to do before you advertise #
The question is not whether to hire. It is what the person will be doing on a Tuesday afternoon in March. Two things are worth doing first, and both take less effort than writing the advert:
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Count the week you are about to buy
Write down the jobs this role would pick up, how long each takes and how often it happens. The cost of admin time calculator adds it up and puts a cost on it.
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Separate the pattern from the judgement
If most of the hours sit in the first list above, a hire will absorb the pressure rather than remove it, and the same pressure returns when the business grows again.
Plenty of businesses do both: automate the repeated half, then hire someone to do the half that needs a person, often part time or at a level that keeps them interested. That is a better job than the one the advert usually describes.
Where this role usually sits #
This job turns up most often in wholesale , trades and installers , logistics and haulage , care and cleaning and facilities , and the admin around it looks different in each.
A note on the pay figure #
£37,306 is the median for full time employees in SOC 3551, Buyers and procurement officers, from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 (provisional). ONS publishes a coefficient of variation with every figure, and this one is 4.4 per cent, which ONS treats as reliable.
It is a national figure covering every employer size and region. What a specific business pays depends on where it is, how specialised the job is, and what else is on offer nearby.