Inventrak Blog

One of important tasks of a merchant is to schedule employees. Merchants are seeking a balance between labor cost and scheduling enough employees to handle sales.  Do you want to know whether you schedule your employees efficiently and effectively? Let us evaluate your labor cost first.

Evaluating your labor cost

How much money should you allocate to employees’ payroll budget? You may use retail industry standards to see whether your pay too much. In retail industry, average payroll is near 10% of sales (according to Census). That means, if you have a $300,000 sales per year and your payroll is 20% ($60,000), your pay way to much more than your peers do.

If you pay more than your peers do, do you want to reduce labor cost?

Are you afraid of losing sales because of understaffed in peak periods?

 
Scheduling enough employees in peak periods

Having enough employees in peak time means keeping customers satisfied. However, you do not want to overstaffed during these periods, too. For stores using a POS system which compiles sales reports by hour, it's easy to spot the busiest times of day and ultimately add extra staffing during these peak sales periods.

If you are in a fashion industry or seasonal retail segments, when busy season is coming:

You may start with looking at your last year sales in the same season, to find sales peak time and sales peak day;

Then schedule your employees based on last year’s sales;

Plan and adjust scheduling based on labor cost against sales during hour and day.  

Do not waste labor in not busy hours

Same logics can be applied to scheduling employees to not busy hours. Based on labor cost against sales reporting during hour and day, your will find you do not need so many employees during some periods.