Formula needed to leverage hours to dollars

[dsami0122]

I have a budget NTE 100,000
I have 5 staff people all different rates
How can I use a formula to determine the best mix to get close to the 100,000 without exceeding

Column B Line 3-14 is the Employee Name
Columbe G Line 3-14 is their Rate
Column J Line 19 is the NTE budget

Thanks in advance

 

[KRice]

Yours sounds like an optimization problem, but information is missing. Your posts mention that you have 5 staff, but do you really have 12, since their names and rates are described in rows 3:14? And you want to choose what?...exactly 5 of them?...or no more than 5? And the budget for those chosen cannot exceed 100,000? What does 100,000 represent?...is that a total cost resulting from the hourly rates multiplied by the number of hours worked on some project and those results summed? If so, does that project requires a minimum number of hours to complete? Or does 100,000 represent an annual cost? What other constraints do you have? Are there different staff types, and you need to have perhaps 1 supervisor and 4 clerical? Are they each allowed to work an unlimited number of hours? Do they need to work some cumulative number of hours? Are you trying to minimize the amount spent while using the fewest staff, come closest to spending the allocated budget of 100,000 while employing the most staff, or the fewest staff? As written, there are too many unknowns to offer guidance.