Another source of economic concern for a school system is the indirect cost of benefits. A benefit is a form of indirect compensation that does not require additional services beyond those required by the contract, as noted in Table 8.4, and may be categorized as either uniform or variable. Uniform benefits provide the same coverage to all personnel. By contrast, with variable benefits, each employee receives the amount of money the system allocates for benefit purposes and may then spend that money any way he or she chooses.