How to use the Labor Budget Tool
The 7shifts Labor Budget Tool allows you to set projected sales and labor targets so you can efficiently schedule your staff. Located at the bottom of the Schedule page, it updates in real-time as you build your schedule to help you manage costs and maximize profitability.
Things to know
- The tool will not populate if you have selected a department that has no employees assigned to it.
- Projected sales are calculated using machine learning (AI) that considers seasonal trends with 95% accuracy.
- Sales data entered manually is applied at the Location level and cannot be filtered by Department.
- With select POS integrations, you can also allocate your Actual Sales and set your Labor Targets by Department. Read more about Department Based Budgeting here.
- When copying over an existing schedule into another week, you can also select to copy over the Labor Targets from that specific week (only if using Labor Percentage Targets).
Projected sales and forecasts
Projections help you plan your staffing needs based on expected business volume. You can populate these figures in three ways:
- POS Integration: When you enable an Actual Sales integration, your real sales and projected sales populate automatically.
- Manual Sales Importer: Use the Manual Sales Importer tool to upload data which 7shifts will use to calculate projections.
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Manual Entry: Directly enter values into the Sales row for specific days:
Syncing projections
If you have manually edited a projection and want to revert to the AI-calculated figure, click the Re-sync icon next to Sales. The icon appears green when synced to 7shifts' automatic projections and grey when manually overridden.
Setting labor targets
Labor targets act as your goalposts. As you add shifts, 7shifts calculates labor costs and highlights them in Green (on or below target) or Red (over target). Click the Target dropdown to choose your metric:
Calculated as: (Total Labor Cost / Total Sales) x 100. This determines what percentage of your earnings is being spent on labor.
After setting your labor target to Labor % you can edit specific rows within the labor budget tool. The following screenshots are an example of Labor % in action:
1) Labor % Target. In this row, you will enter in your target goal. In other words, the percentage of sales used for employee labor.
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2) Sales. An Actual Sales integration with a POS, or manually uploaded sales is required before Sales figures can be automatically provided. Alternatively, they can be entered directly into the fields (please note that this method will not calculate projections - only actual sales from a POS or the Manual Sales Importer will).
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Indication of manually entered values will appear as a grey sync icon. To reset the values to their original state, click sync icon, and it will turn green
.
A red pill means your labor costs are higher than your labor targets goal.
A green pill means your labor costs are within/below your labor target goal.
Calculated as: Total Actual Sales / Total Labor Hours. This measures the dollar value produced for every hour of labor scheduled.
Calculated as: Number of Items Sold / Total Labor Hours. This measures productivity based on physical output (e.g., how many burgers are produced per labor hour).
For example: for every 1 hour, Eugene wants to sell 50 burgers.
After setting your labor target to IPLH, you can edit specific rows within the labor budget tool. The following screenshots are an example of IPLH in action:
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IPLH Target. In this row, you will enter in your target goal. Or rather, the number of items you would like produced per hour.
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Items. The number of items sold will be automatically pulled in from a supported POS or can be manually entered in the Labor Budget Tool.
Since Eugene is integrated with Toast POS, the number of items per receipt will automatically surface here (indicated by the green sync icon).
Eugene can always override the numbers by entering a new value in the field (an indication of manually entered values will appear as a grey sync icon). To reset the values to it's original state, Eugene can click on the sync icon.
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A red pill means your labor costs are higher than your budget targets, for the number of items produced.
A green pill means your labor costs are within/below your budget targets, for the number of items produced.
Here is a list of supported POS that sync with IPLH targets:
- Aloha POS
- Dinerware POS
- Lightspeed POS (L-Series)
- Heartland POS
- Micros 3700 POS
- Micros Simphony II POS
- Positouch POS
- Revel POS
- Squirrel POS
- Square POS
- Silverware POS
- Toast POS
- Qu POS
- Positouch POS - Shift4
- Harbourtouch POS - Shift 4
- Future POS - Shift 4
- Restaurant Manager POS - Shift 4
- SpotOn POS
Comparing historical and actual sales
POS integrated customers can compare their budget Targets, Projections, and Actuals to see how they did last week or last year. These views allow you to spot trends and adjust your schedule before the week begins.
Historical sales
- Click the comparison dropdown in the tool.
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Select Compare to Last week or Compare to Last year. You'll see your Actual Sales (outlined in green) compared to your Historical Sales (outlined in red).
- In future weeks, you will see Projected Sales (Blue) compared to Historical Sales (Red):
Actual sales and labor
Note: The Labor Budget tool in Day View will let you know how much labour you're scheduling per hour - and not worked hours. It does not have the ability to display worked hours per hour (however, the Optimal Labor Tool will be able to give you this information).
Enable Compare to actuals to see how your real-world performance matched your plan.
- If you use 7punches or a POS labor integration, actual labor costs populate automatically for past days.
- If no integration is active, 7shifts uses scheduled hours as an estimate, marked with an asterisk (*).
- If you do not have a POS Actual Sales integration, these values will be replaced with your previous week's Projected Sales. If you do not have an Actual Labor integration enabled or use 7punches for time clocking, the labor costs will be based on your Employees' scheduled hours only.
To see your current day labor costs in real-time, you can view this data on the Sales vs Labor Dashboard or if you visit the Mobile Manager Dashboard on the 7shifts app.
Show or hide the tool
To maximize your screen space while scheduling, you can toggle the tool's visibility. Click the Layout icon and disable the Show labor budget tool setting to hide it temporarily.