A location’s plan defines its daily staffing needs based on long-term budgeted and shorter-term forecast targets. The plan takes corporate targets for a variety of measurements and derives a labor budget, expressed in both dollars and hours. This budget can be based on targets for sales, the average hourly rate (AHR) of the staff, the ratio of wage cost to sales, sales per associate hour (SPAH), or other factors.
The location’s forecast for the week uses some of these budgeted values, combined with historical data, to create more specific targets for the week.
After the budget has been created and you’ve run the forecast for your location, you can adjust the sales target and the amount of non-service hours for your location. These adjustments should take into account your knowledge of local conditions and trends. For example, if you notice customers shopping for the holiday season earlier than expected, you’d adjust the sales target higher.
The entire planning process has a trickle-down effect from long-term, more general plans, to shorter- and immediate-term, specific plans:
- Corporate’s long-term plans and goals for sales, AHR, and wage % drive the budget for labor costs.
- Historical data from up to several weeks ago modifies the long-term budget as forecasts are run week-to-week. Forecast numbers are more specific, shorter-term goals that take into account how your location performed in the previous several weeks to refine the budget numbers.
- Your adjustments to the forecast sales and non-service hours take into account local conditions in the immediate-term, specific to your location.
The result of all this planning is several metrics, such as total hours and labor cost, which help you to create an optimal schedule for your location. See Schedule Your Staff.
Although the budget has already been configured in Dayforce, it’s useful to understand how these numbers impact your location. The following subsections describe each set of figures in your location’s plan: