Labor forecast

The labor forecast turns a published sales forecast into a staffing plan using your labor matrix, then exports it to your scheduling system.

Page: Forecasting -> Labor Forecast (/forecasting/labor)

Prerequisites

• A published sales forecast for the location and week. Draft forecasts cannot generate labor.
• Job positions and a labor matrix for the location.

Step 1: Select the sales forecast

1. Go to Forecasting -> Labor Forecast.
2. Open the Sales Forecast dropdown. Entries read Location - Week of Mon DD (Status).
3. Select the one marked (Published).

The page loads the sales context and shows a Generate Labor Forecast button.

Step 2: Generate

Click Generate Labor Forecast and wait a few seconds. UnitOps applies the matrix rules to each period and produces:

Output	Meaning
Total labor hours	Hours across all positions for the week
Total labor cost	Hours multiplied by the hourly rate on each position
Overtime hours	Projected hours beyond the overtime threshold
SPLH	Sales per labor hour: forecast sales divided by labor hours
Labor cost %	Labor cost as a share of forecast sales

Step 3: Review by day and position

1. Click a day in the week view.
2. The Day View shows hour-by-hour staffing, the headcount per job position for each block, and your day-part colors.

Read it as the answer to "how many Servers, Cooks, and Hosts does this projected volume require".

Step 4: Adjust (optional)

1. In the Day View, click the cell for a position and time block.
2. Enter the override value.
3. Click Save Adjustments.

Adjusted cells are highlighted and the weekly totals update. Use overrides for training shifts, deep cleans, and other work the matrix does not model, then consider updating the matrix if the same override repeats every week.

Step 5: Export the schedule

1. Return to the week view.
2. Click Export CSV or Export Excel.

The file contains: Date, Day, Time Start, Time End, Job Position, Employees, Labor Hours, Hourly Rate, Cost. Only non-zero slots are included, so it imports cleanly into scheduling tools such as HotSchedules or 7shifts.

Reading the numbers

Metric	Typical target
Labor cost %	25 to 35 percent of sales for most full-service concepts
SPLH	Higher is more efficient; compare against your own trailing weeks, not an industry number
Overtime hours	Approaching zero; recurring overtime usually means the matrix bands are too generous at peak

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
Generate button missing	The selected sales forecast is not Published
A position never appears	The position is inactive, or no matrix rule covers it
Staffing is zero at high volume	The top matrix band has an upper limit; leave "volume to" empty on the last band
Cost is zero	The job position has no hourly rate
Numbers changed after re-generating	Re-generating re-applies the current matrix and discards prior overrides; re-enter them or update the matrix