The Labor Budget Tool allows you to set your Projected Sales and Labor Targets so you can efficiently schedule your staff. This tool can be accessed at the bottom of the Schedule page.
⚠️ Managers and Assistant Managers will require ' Can Manage Schedules' permissions to access the Labor Budget Tool
SKIP AHEAD TO:
Projected Sales and Forecasts
Setting your Labor Targets
Comparing Historical Sales
Comparing Actual Sales and Labor
Projected Sales and Forecasts
Manually entering Projected Sales:
By clicking the highlighted field below, you can enter your Projected Sales and corresponding Labor Targets for each day.
Automatic Sales Projections and how they work:
1. As soon as you enable a POS integration to bring in your Actual Sale data into 7shifts, your Actual Sales and Projected Sales will populate automatically in the Labor Budget Tool.
How your Projected Sales are calculated takes into account seasonality, since our sales forecasting system is comprised of separate algorithms. These algorithms forecast short-term, mid-term, and long-term trends respectively with 95% accuracy. Through machine learning (AI), your Projected Sales will become smarter over time with more data.
2. You can still make adjustments to your Projected Sales, as needed, by clicking the highlighted field below. Simply enter the corresponding Labor Targets for each day.
3. If you wish to revert any manual changes you made to your Projected Sales, you can go back to the projections calculated by 7shifts. Click on the 'Re-sync' icon on the far left (shown below).
This icon will appear green when your projections have been synced/reverted back to the projections 7shifts automatically provides.
Labor Targets
As you start scheduling your staff, the budget tool calculates your labor costs. It updates in real-time to show you how much of your sales are allotted to labor.
To help guide you, the Labor Targets will appear in either red or green.
1. By clicking the highlighted fields below, you'll be able to enter in your Labor Target goal for each day of the week.
2. Click the 'Target' dropdown to change between the following Labor Target options:
Labor Percentage Target determines if there are specific periods in which your labor costs are eating up your earnings. It is calculated as:
= ( total labor cost total sales
100 )
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.
(click on the image to expand)
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).
(click on the image to expand)
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
.
SPLH is regarded as the total dollar of sales per employee hour scheduled. It is calculated as:
= ( total actual sales total labor hours )
= ( the number of items sold total labor hours )
For example: for every 1 hour, Eugene wants to sell 50 burgers.
IPLH Target. In this row, you will enter in your target goal. Or rather, the number of items you would like produced per hour.
(click on the image to expand it)
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.
(click on the image to expand it)
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
3. 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).
Read more about Department Based Budgeting here.
Comparing Historical Sales
POS integrated customers can compare their budget Targets, Projections, and Actuals to see how they did last week or last year. If this past sales data is available in your account, this can help you forecast while building your Schedule and make more efficient labor decisions.
To view your Historical Sales:
1. Click the dropdown (shown below) and select either 'Compare to Last week' or 'Compare to Last year.'
2. Here's the Historical Sales view when looking at the current week or a week in the past:
You'll see your Actual Sales (outlined in green) compared to your Historical Sales (outlined in red).
3. Here's the Historical Sales view when looking at a future week:
You'll see your Projected Sales (outlined in blue) compared to your Historical Sales (outlined in red).
Comparing Actuals Sales and Labor
You will be able to review your Labor Target progress for previous days by enabling the 'Compare to actuals' view. This can aid in making scheduling adjustments as the week progresses and help you stay on target.
Enable this option on the Labor Budgeting Tool to compare your Projected Sales and Labor costs vs your Actual Sales and Labor costs.
If you are using 7punches or have an active POS labor integration, your Actual Labor costs will populate automatically in the Labor Budget Tool.
To begin comparing to your Actual Sales and Labor data:
1. Click on the dropdown (shown below) and select 'Compare to actuals.'
2. You can view what days your Actual Sales and Labor costs were equal to or below your Target goals in green. If they were higher than your Target goals, they will be shown in red.
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.
Your Labor Budget Tool and Targets will be marked with an asterisk (*) letting you know that these calculations are only estimates and not based on your Actual Sales or the Employees' actual worked hours.