Located under the Sales > Schedule Forecasting section of the Reports tab of both iOffice and SuperSalon is a tool that can assist business owners in more effective staffing. Matching the correct number of employees on hand to the correct amount of customer flow makes payroll costs more efficient, and this blog post will show how the Schedule Forecasting report can help do that.
The image above shows the Schedule Forecasting report, run just recently for this location. The lightly shaded columns are gross estimated sales for the hour. This column is the average net sales generated from tickets started during that hour over the date range run. The darker shaded columns are the number of employees needed for the hour.
This is calculated by dividing the number from the first column by the Assume Production rate entered prior to running the report. These are expressed in decimals. We know you cannot have 3.65 employees working, but you can round up or down according to your needs.
The Forecaster considers all past sales that occurred when the customer walked in, not when they were serviced. This allows the estimates to be based off of when the customer actually wanted to receive their service, not when it was actually received.
For the purposes of this report, walk-outs are considered tickets that were placed in waiting and then subsequently voided. Look N’ Walks are customers who entered the salon but left before a ticket could be created. The walk value is the assumed loss the location is taking with each lost customer.
The last variable is the Assume production rate. Enter what you assume to be a reasonable rate of production for your employees. The closer this number is to what your employees actually perform at, the better the results will be on the report.
If you are unsure as to what number to use, the Net Services a Hour section of Store Totals on the “Production Report”, ran for the same date range as the schedule forecaster, provides an accurate view of what employee performance is at on average.
As always, if you have any questions about this, or any other aspect of SuperSalon or iOffice, we will be happy to assist you via phone or email.