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Roster budgets

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Effectively control and optimise your wage expenses through strategic roster budgeting

When it comes to managing your wage costs during the rostering process, we've got you covered!

Say goodbye to the hassle of keeping track of wage expenditures with our innovative budgeting tool. You have the ability to set up a budget for each roster, allowing you to establish wage cost goals for your roster managers to meet on a per-roster basis. 

But that's not all - our budgeting tool also gives you the power to prevent your managers from publishing a roster when it exceeds the budget. This means you can rest easy knowing that your wage costs are always within the set limits. 

In this article, we will cover:

  • Setting a budget for your rosters
  • Preventing your admins from publishing an over-budget roster
  • Importing your roster budgets

  If you're looking for other ways to analyse your labour costs when rostering, such as by hour or number of staff, then please refer to our guide on Roster Analytics.

Setting a budget on your roster

Setting a budget for your employee labour can help you manage your wage costs effectively. You have the flexibility to set individual budgets for each roster, this can be done for an entire week or per day.

  Permission Reminder: Admins must have the 'Manage Roster Budget' permission enabled to set a budget. To view a budget, Admins will need the 'View Employee Pay Rates' permission.

To set a budget on a roster:

  1. In the quick menu navigate to Work > Rosters and select your Roster.

  2. Select the Tools menu, then Enter roster budget.

    From the Roster budget drawer, complete the following relevant fields:

    • Specify the interval for the budget; this can be either:
      • Weekly budget
      • Daily budget 
    • Add your budget. The budget can be for either or both of the following:
      • Wages
      • Hours

  3. To set your budget, select Apply budget.

Importing a roster budget

If you need to set a budget for multiple rosters per operation for a week or a month at a time, the roster budget import feature is your go-to.

You can easily import these roster budgets in bulk, so when your roster manager is ready to build the roster for each week, they can quickly see the budget they are working with right away. 

  Permission Reminder: Admins must have the 'Access Roster Budget Import' permission enabled to import a budget.  

 

Export Roster Budgets

The first step when using this feature is to export your existing rosters. This will provide you with the formatting required when importing your budgets.

Additionally, you can use this export to review or update your current budgets.

To export a roster budget:

  1. Navigate to the main menu Import/ Export > Roster Budget Import.
  2. From this page, select the following:
    • Week Starting - Roster period start date.
    • Operations - Choose the operation for the rosters required. 
    • Rosters - Leave this blank to export all rosters either with a current budget or without a budget for the required operation. 
  3. Choose whether you want to:
    • Export rosters with an existing budget 
    • Export rosters with no current budget

      When using the Export rosters with an existing budget option, only rosters with an existing budget for your period selected are exported. Alternatively, only rosters without a budget are exported for the Export rosters with no current budget.
    • Download sample CSV - This will download a sample document to assist you with the correct formatting to use when importing.  

  4. To export, select Export Rosters.

 

Import Roster Budgets

Once you have exported the relevant CSV, you will need to complete the relevant fields to upload it.

If you use the Roster Budget Import regularly, save the exported CSV and use it as a template for faster uploads. The key benefit of doing this is that you can:

  • Have the document in the required formatting.
  • Compile a complete list of all of your rosters. 
  • Add additional periods by adding them in the Week Starting field. 
  • Bulk delete all of your roster budgets. 

To import a roster budget:

  1. Navigate to the main menu Import/ Export > Roster Budget Import.
  2. Upload the roster budget CSV file.
  3. Select 'Import Rosters'.
  4. Navigate to the relevant roster via Work > Rosters and see the roster budget has now been applied. 

In the below example, we have exported our roster budget for the week and have entered the following wages for each day into the CSV file. We have then imported the updated roster budget CSV file and can see that this has flowed through to the roster:  

Viewing the roster budget

Once you've set your roster budget and added shifts, you can easily keep track of your budget and monitor your usage from 2 different places.

These are the Roster Analytics Bar and the Roster Efficiency Drawer. Let's look at both of these below. 

  Permission Reminder: Admins must have the 'View Roster Efficiency' permission enabled to view the Roster Efficiency Drawer.

 

Roster Analytics Bar

The Roster Analytics Bar is a quick snapshot summary of your running weekly totals, for all your shifts on all rosters filtered.

Within the bar, the Est. Wages field is the main field used with your budget; by hovering over this field, you can efficiently see the percentage of your budget used, as it displays differently depending on the percentage of the budget used. 

  • Green (Under Budget) - Less than 90% of the budget used.

  • Orange (Approaching Budget) - Between 90 - 100% of the budget used.

  • Red (Over Budget) - Above 100% of the budget used.

      Hot tip: When you have multiple rosters filtered on your screen, the Est. Wages analytic will combine all wages and budgets. Hover over this to see how many rosters have budgets added, as this may appear to be over budget when you include rosters that do not have a budget. 
     

Roster Efficiency Drawer 

For a more detailed analysis of your roster budget vs wages, you can navigate to the Roster Efficiency Drawer by selecting the chevron (up arrow) when Analytics is displayed at the bottom of the screen. 

In the Roster Efficiency Drawer, you can see the percentage of your weekly budget spent in addition to a breakdown of your daily totals for your rosters. The options available will depend on the type of budget set.

Each of these analytics can be located:

  • Budget Dials - These will show the percentage of the weekly budget spent in dollars and hours (this will depend on the type of budget entered). 
  • Breakdown - The analytics at the bottom of this screen provide a daily breakdown of your:
    • Wages Budget 
    • Hours Budget
    • Wages Budget (% Spent)
    • Hours Budget (% Spent)

      To efficiently see the percentage of your budget used, the Wages Budget (% Spent) and Hours Budget (% Spent) will display differently. These are Green (Under Budget) and Red (Over Budget).

  If you are looking for a complete list of other available analytics, please refer to our article on Roster Analytics.

Prevent the roster from being published when over budget

Are labour costs a concern for your business? Are you looking for a way to prevent the roster from being published if it is over budget?

Great news! Updating your platform settings can prevent all managers from publishing over-budget rosters. Since this is a platform setting, it will apply to all published rosters.

To turn on this setting:

  1. Navigate to the main menu > Platform Settings > Work Defaults.

  2. Locate the setting 'Disable roster publishing when over budget' and select Yes.
     

  3. To save your changes, select Save from the taskbar.  

Now, when the roster is over budget, the following will appear when publishing, the roster will need to be brought back to budget to publish.

            

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