When buying insurance, you might be tempted, or even advised, to purchase insurance with an ordinary payroll exclusion in order to lower your premiums. I urge you not to unless you have thought it through completely. Yeah, saving money is great, but only if you don't plan on paying any hourly employees during a loss. The ordinary payroll exclusion means that anything you pay to non-management employees will not be reimbursed by the insurance company.
How does this affect the loss calculation? Well, if you are calculating based on net income plus continuing expenses, that's a big ZERO where payroll should be. If it's going to be a zero anyway, then go ahead and write an ordinary payroll exclusion. But some companies with a lot of payroll, that want to keep people working through a loss should definitely think twice. Every dollar you spend on ordinary payroll is coming straight out of your own pocket.
The real penalty, though, comes when the business starts up again. If you have extended 30 day BI, don't expect to get anything past the first few days with the OPE. The people you start paying are producing revenue, which reduces the loss, but the amount you pay them is not increasing the loss like it would without an OPE. Very quickly, that revenue will reduce your loss to nothing.
Well, there's your crash course on the OPE. Maybe it's right for you, but maybe it's not.