What exactly is a Personenmonat?

A Personenmonat is the work effort of one person over one month relative to their working time. If a person only works on the project part-time, the Personenmonat is counted proportionally.

How many hours is 1 Personenmonat?

That depends on the contractual working time (e.g. full-time vs. part-time). What matters is a consistent derivation from your working-time arrangement and your documentation.

Do I have to specify Personenmonate for the Forschungszulage?

Not necessarily – but Personenmonate are a very practical planning and plausibility unit for presenting effort and personnel costs in a traceable way.

What does "Forschungszulage Personenmonat" mean in practice?

It refers to the question of how project-related personnel effort is planned in Personenmonate, documented, and translated into eligible personnel costs – so that the application is traceable and audit-proof.

How can dieforschungszulage.de help with this?

We help structure the effort (including Personenmonate) cleanly, document it clearly, and prepare it in a way that minimises follow-up questions and speeds up the process – with clear expert perspective from real-world practice.

What Does a Personenmonat Mean for the Forschungszulage?

Date: February 7, 2026•Author: Erich Lehmann

TL;DR – Summary

TL;DR: A Personenmonat (PM) describes the work effort of one person in a month that is assigned to an innovation project. For the Forschungszulage it is a key building block for documenting personnel costs cleanly and

justifying them in a traceable way to the tax office

. Companies that plan and document Personenmonate correctly reduce follow-up questions, increase approval certainty, and

speed up payment

Why This Article Matters

In practice I regularly see companies with excellent innovation projects lose time unnecessarily – not because of the idea, but because of unclear effort logic. The Personenmonat is a key term here: it connects project work, time tracking, and the eligible costs of the Forschungszulage.

Once you understand how Personenmonate work, you can:

present innovation effort in a plausible and audit-proof way,
integrate the Forschungszulage Personenmonat logic cleanly into your project planning,
avoid typical mistakes that lead to queries or reductions.

What Is a Personenmonat (PM)?

A Personenmonat is a standardised unit of work effort: 1 Personenmonat = the work output of one person over one month (relative to their contractual working time).

Important: it is not about "calendar days" but about attributable effort on the innovation project. If a person only works part-time on the project, only a proportional Personenmonat is counted.

Example:

Employee A works 50% on the innovation project in a given month → 0.5 Personenmonat
Employee B works 100% on the project → 1.0 Personenmonat
Total for the month: 1.5 Personenmonate

Personenmonat vs. Person-Day vs. Hours – What Counts in the Forschungszulage?

For the Forschungszulage, what ultimately matters is eligible personnel costs – but the presentation of effort must be traceable. Companies often use:

Hours (very precise, but more effort),
Person-days (a good middle ground),
Personenmonate (very well suited for planning, controlling, and plausibility).

I particularly recommend Personenmonate when you:

have multiple roles / teams working on the project,
plan effort across months / phases,
need a clear and audit-friendly logic.

How Are Personenmonate and Eligible Personnel Costs Connected?

For the Forschungszulage, personnel costs are in many cases the largest cost block. Personenmonate help assign these costs transparently to the innovation project.

Typical process:

Define roles and work packages in the innovation project
Plan effort in Personenmonate per phase
Support the effort with time tracking / project records
Derive and justify personnel costs from these records (audit-proof)

You can find more background on how we set this up in practice at dieforschungszulage.de.

Common Mistakes with Personenmonate (and How to Avoid Them)

From my advisory practice, these are the classic pitfalls:

Unclear project delimitation: "Everything the team does" is not automatically innovation effort.
No consistent logic: Planning in PM, documenting in "approximate hours" without derivation.
Effort without a link to results: Personenmonate should correspond to work packages, hypotheses, tests, or technical uncertainties.
Documentation too late: Best practice is to document in parallel with the project – not to "reconstruct" it months later.

Why the Forschungszulage Is So Attractive for Innovation Projects

The Forschungszulage is for many companies one of the most effective ways to offset innovation costs financially – regardless of industry and (in many cases) regardless of whether there is a classic "R&D department".

My goal is that you:

master the funding-logic language with confidence (e.g. Personenmonat),
keep the process lean,
and maximise the chance of a smooth funding process.

If you want to prepare the certification efficiently: the official point of contact for the application is bescheinigung-forschungszulage.de (official platform). Further guidance and practical guides are available at dieforschungszulage.de.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Check out our guides about applications and funding