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Today's labor costs are a major concern for any business, but particularly for the restaurant industry. Recently Greg Thomas, owner of Mama Roni's Pizza in Colorado, spoke with SpeedLine's Brad Brooks about how he makes his restaurant more efficient: watch the recorded webinar.

Sometimes cutting costs by running with fewer employees is a temptation, but often causes service or food quality to suffer. The smarter option is to use a mix of managerial know-how and technology tools to effectively schedule and utilize workers.

Your point of sale can help monitor and track labor costs, control clock-ins, and can even alert you to things like employees approaching overtime.

When you were dealing with learning the basic functions of your new POS, labor tools may have been something you planned to take a look at later. With rising minimum wages and a dip in staff availability, now is the time! Here are some tools in SpeedLine designed to help you monitor and cut labor costs:

1. Labor vs. Sales Chart

This graphical report lets you keep a close watch on your labor metrics throughout the day, so you can reassign staff or send them home during slow times. Each employee unnecessarily on the clock cuts into your bottom line. 

To view the report, in the Terminal User screen, touch Labor Stats.
This report can be customized in Store Manager. Press F1 and search the help Index tab for "Labor vs. Sales Report, customizing."

2. Sales Forecasting

The sales history your SpeedLine POS captures is used by the Operations Planning feature to predict future sales. The resulting Sales Forecast predicts the volume of business you can expect each day, by the hour—and even broken out by day part and order type. 

The forecast sales aren't set in stone. You can use your own past experience and knowledge of upcoming events to adjust sales projections. Look at events, weather, road construction, and big pre-orders that could have an impact—and adjust the values in the Store Projection row of the forecast to increase its accuracy, and therefore the accuracy of scheduling recommendations and resulting labor cost savings.

For full setup steps, and to see how to interpret the forecast, on the Store Manager Help menu, click Tutorials, and then click the Sales Forecasting SpeedStart Tutorial link.

3. Scheduling & Labor Goals

Once you set up the Sales Forecast by entering your day parts and order types, it automatically starts feeding sales projections into SpeedLine Scheduling, so you can staff intelligently to meet your labor targets, rather than relying solely on gut instinct and guesswork.

SpeedLine Scheduling uses labor overhead information to calculate and display your total labor costs. To ensure accuracy in the labor cost figures, enter the value of payroll taxes, worker's compensation, employee benefits, and any other labor costs that are added to wages.

Next, add your labor goals, labor hour yield, and base hours. Now the schedule has the information it needs to let you know if scheduled hours are meeting labor targets. 

Once you've entered employee shifts for the week, you can view a weekly summary that shows whether you've met your target, or how much you're off by.

For full setup steps, and to see how to interpret the Weekly Summary, on the Store Manager Help menu, click Tutorials, and then click the Scheduling SpeedStart Tutorial link.

4. Hourly Stats Report

Just one of several key labor reports, the Hourly Stats report will show you the variance between your predicted sales and labor costs, and what is actually happening during the current day. This helps determine if your scheduling was accurate, or whether the forecast needs tweaking. It also features key metrics like Cost of Labor % and Labor Yield.

On the Terminal User screen, touch Hourly Stats. To adjust the start and end times, in Store Manager, go to Settings> End of Day> Hourly Stats. To capture all stats, the Start time should be set to before the first possible employee clock-in, or to before the first time a deferred ticket could activate, whichever is earlier.

5. Time Clock Controls

The SpeedLine time clock can check the schedule, and prevent clock-in without a manager override if the employee is not scheduled to work, or is outside the clock-in or clock-out window. Break times can be regulated in the same way. Ensure you’re paying only for the hours scheduled and actually worked. 

Use biometric security to build accountability and eliminate "buddy punching." Fingerprint sensors integrate fully with many POS systems, including SpeedLine.

Set up a link between the schedule and time clock on the Settings> People> Scheduling Options> Terminal Settings tab. Set up break controls on the People> Employee Options> Breaks tab. Press F1 on either tab for help.

6. Time Clock Edits

While the time clock tracks work hours, it can be edited by managers with permission, in order to clock out employees who have left without clocking out, or to correct mistakes. To detect time clock padding abuse, run the Time Clock Edits report in Store Manager to show all time clock edits, and who made them.

7. Alerts of Approaching Overtime

Avoid the extra costs associated with overtime. Employee work restrictions are age-based, but can be applied to all employees by setting the age to "99" or a similar value. You can use restrictions to display a manager alert if employees are approaching the maximum hours before overtime rates kick in.

On the Store Manager Settings tab, click People> Minor Employee Restrictions. Press F1 for help.

8. Shift Snapshots

Shift Snapshots capture your store sales, delivery, labor, and cash stats at a moment in time during the business day. You can set snapshots to be taken when a manager clocks out, or you can take them at any time from the Terminal Manager screen. Take a Shift Snapshot to review labor metrics with a supervisor.

Find out more in this previous issue of POS Quick Tips.

9. Job Pay Rates

Cross-training pays off. It makes it easier to replace someone who can't come in, and no one sits idle. You'll save labor costs with a more versatile employee, but you’ll also be giving them confidence and improve retention by investing in their development.

In SpeedLine, you can apply different pay scales for different skill sets. This means you can schedule an employee for three hours as a driver and four as a cook, and the system will track the correct pay rate applied to each position.

Add jobs on the People, Employee Options, Jobs tab. Assign the jobs and enter a rate for each on the Jobs tab in each employee's profile. Employees will be prompted to select the job they are working when they clock in.

10. Employee Sales Reporting

Linking pay to performance can motivate staff and increase upselling. When you give employees a stake in your success, they have an incentive to give their best.

Tie rewards to employees’ performance: reward service staff for upselling, cooks for meeting food cost targets, drivers for on-time deliveries, and managers for meeting key targets.

Whether you implement a contest or an incentive program, you can use your point of sale system’s reporting tools to keep tabs and reward your top performers.

Take a look at reports in the Sales section of the Store Manager Reports tab, like Employee Item Sales, Employee Category Sales, or Employee Sales Summary for selling contests, Server Statistics Details for server performance, or the Driver Summary section of the Delivery Performance report for drivers.