Release Notes WFM: Labour Productivity: Assign Costs to Open Shifts

What’s Changing?

Introduction of the ability to assign Wage Costs against Open Shifts.

Release date: 25th March 2020

Reason for the Change

To help improve accuracy of Labour forecasts.

Customers Affected

The new functionality will only be available for customers who are on the relevant edition and use ‘Open Shifts’ functionality. This will need to be enabled. For further information please see - WFM Release Note - Labour Productivity: Open Shifts.


Release Notes

An organisation setting called Assign Costs to Open Shifts has been added. The setting will need to be enabled by a system admin.
 

• Go to Settings > Organisations and select Edit against the required organisation
• Tick the box against Assign costs to Open Shifts

Fig.1 – New Organistion Setting 

When the setting is enabled, the other setting Use average hourly rate in my location to calculate Open Shift Costs becomes available. When enabled, this setting will use the average hourly rate in a location without the need for any further configuration.

Please Note: The 'Use average hourly rate in my location' functionality is not available for any customers who are using the Gross Wage Engine (All US Customers).

Using Average Hourly Rate Setting

If this setting is enabled, the organisation will use the Location’s average hourly rate, which is updated by the system automatically**.

• Go to the Schedules tab and see the ‘Open Shifts’ row

Fig.2 - Open Shifts Use average hourly rate in my location to calculate Open Shift costs

**Only when there is at least one completed schedule for a Location, can its average hourly rate be calculated. Until then the Organisation’s rate per hour will be used (see below for how to configure the Organisation rates).

• As mentioned above, a completed schedule is required to calculate the average hourly rate. A schedule is completed when the following conditions are met (depending on the portal’s configuration)
  • For UK HR & Payroll customers – when the schedule is Submitted
  • For HR-Integrated portals (non-HR & Payroll customers) not using the Schedule Status Approval Process - when the schedule has 7 days set to act
  • For HR-Integrated portals (Non-HR & Payroll customers) using Schedule Status Approval Process – when the schedule status is “closed”
• The most recent dated completed schedule will be in the calculation of the average hourly rate. Employees Wage Cost ÷ Number of Hours = Average Hourly Rate
• Once a new schedule is completed, any future open shifts for the next 6 weeks will be recalculated using the most recent average hourly rate for that Location
• The total cost of open shifts will be displayed against the Open Shifts row box (see Fig.2)
• The total open shifts cost will be summed with the wage cost for the Location and displayed in the Wage Cost row in the Schedule by Budget widget

User Level Permissions

If not using the average hourly rate to calculate the cost of open shifts, the required Job Role rate per hour can be specified. There will be two new user level permissions (see Fig.3) which can be enabled by a system admin.

Please note: if using the Average Hourly Rate setting, the following user levels will still apply but the Location open shift role rates will be a read-only view. 
 

Fig.3 - Role Rate User Level Permissions

For users with the View/Edit Organisation Open Shift Role Rates user level permission, the settings page will be displayed in the Open Shift costs sub category.
 

• Go to Settings > Organisation Open Shift Role Rates

Fig.4 - Organisation Open Shift Role Rates Page

 
The new page will list all job roles in that Organisation.
 

• If using the Average Hourly Rate, the Organisation Role rates will need to be configured. These are the rates per hour that will be used until there is at least one completed scheduled to calculate the average hourly rate for the Location
• The Rate Per Hour boxes will need to be populated with the rate per hour for each job role for when Open Shift costs are being calculated
• When a value is entered in any of these boxes it is automatically saved after navigating away from the box
• Rate per hours can be 0-1000
• If no rate per hour is entered, then the hourly rate will be 0 per hour and no wage cost will be assigned for open shifts in that role
• The rate per hour will be a flat hourly rate. Please factor in any additional wage costs when configuring the Job Role’s rate per hours
• Job Role rates will round to 2 decimal places

In Fig.4 & Fig.5 the Job Role “TestChef” has a rate per hour of 17.50, and a shift length of 5 hours.
The Open Shifts cost is calculated as follows: 5x17.50 = £87.50
 

Fig.5 - Open Shift Cost Example

Location Open Shift Role Rates

For users with the Edit Location Open Shift Role Rates user level permission, the settings page will be displayed in the Open Shift costs sub category.
 

• Go to Settings > Location Open Shift Role Rates
• The Rate Per Hour boxes can be set at location level
   

When calculating the open shift cost, if the Location role rate per hour is entered then this will supersede the organisation rate. 

If the Location Open Shift Role Rate is specified, then this will be used to calculate the open shift rate per hour. If the location rate per hour is 0, then the organisation rate per hour will be used. If the Location rate per hour is 0 and the organisation rate per hour is 0 then there will be no wage cost used for open shifts in that Job role.
 

Fig.6 - Location Open Shift Role Rates
 

Fig.7 - Location Open Shift Role Rates (read only - Average Hourly Rate)

Please Note:
 

• If the average hourly rate is being used, the Location Open Shift Role Rates page can still be viewed to see the average hourly rate being used for open shift calculation. However, the page will be read-only. The rates themselves will be updated by the system automatically once a schedule has been completed
• The cost of Open Shifts will be displayed in the Schedule by Budget Widget
• The only report which will include cost of open shifts is the Labour Flash Report (Non-HR & Payroll Wage Cost customers only) 
• Open shifts will be treated as actual shifts only, and not forecast shifts.
• The open shift costs are not currently included in any HR & Payroll reports or Labour Trans exports
• The open shifts will not be included in the output from the Labour Productivity shift API
• The 'Use average hourly' functionality is not suitable for any customers who are using the Gross Wage Engine (All US Customers)