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.
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 - Sales vs. estimated labor costs
- SPLH (Sales Per Labor Hour) - The total dollar of sales per employee hour worked
- Hours - Total scheduled labor hours for this Location
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.