WFM UK: Activity-Based Scheduling: Labour Costs

Overview

In Activity-Based Scheduling, it is possible to implement and manage Department labour costs. An Organisation setting and user-level permission need to be applied for users to be able to do this. This functionality is available to all customers using Activity-Based Scheduling.

Organisation Setting

The organisation setting will need to be applied by a system administrator.

• Go to Settings > Organisations and select Edit against the required Organisation
• Scroll down and tick the box against Schedule by Budget Widget Enabled?
• Scroll further down and Save

Fig.1 - Schedule By Budget Widget Enabled?

User-Level Permission

A user-level permission needs to be applied for a user to view and manage the Costs tab (see Fig.2).

• Go to Settings > User Configuration > User Levels
• Select Edit against the required User Level
• Tick the box against View Schedule By Budget Widget, scroll down and then Save

Costs Tab - Schedule View

With these settings applied, a Costs tab will be displayed within the Schedule. The day that the user is currently viewing will be highlighted in light blue. The weekly totals are displayed in at the top of the Costs tab, with a link to a Weekly Totals pop up. 

Fig.2 - Daily view - Costs tab

Costs Table

As shown in Fig.2, the following figures will show against each day: 

Sales - The total sum of all activity drivers that have been configured to be used in the Department's wage cost calculations. 

Budget - The allowed-for wages value. Based on a % of forecast sales, or calculated from actual sales if available. 

Cost - The total wage, employee, and contractor costs. Displayed in green if wage cost is within the wage budget. Displayed in red if wage cost is greater than wage budget.

Variance - The variance of wage cost vs wage budget. 

When users access the Schedule page, the wage cost is updated and a notification is shown.

Updating Costs from the Schedule Page

When shift changes are made, the Costs tab will need to be recalculated and updated. The tab will grey out and an Update Costs button will be displayed.

• Select Update Costs

The table will update and a "Costs have been updated" notification will display. 

Fig.3 - Updating costs

Employee Costs

A new user-level permission has been created to view the employee costs of the solution.

• Go to Settings > User Levels
• Select Edit against the required User Level
• Tick the box against View Costs on Schedule, scroll down, and Save

If users have both permissions; View Schedule by Budget Widget and View costs on Schedule, they will be able to view individual employee wage costs. These are displayed in the Weekly schedule view and are the employees' total wage cost for that schedule week.

Fig.4 - Weekly view - employee costs

Costs by Session

If a Department is using more than one session, a Costs by Sessions switch will be displayed in the Costs tab in the Daily schedule view (see Fig.5).

• Select Costs by Sessions

Costs will then be displayed per session in the table.

• The sessions can be expanded using the arrow to view the total number of hours and the total cost per job role, per session

The total cost is calculated on basic pay only. The system will calculate an hourly rate per employee and multiply this by the number of hours scheduled in each session.

Fig.5 - Costs by Sessions switch

Upon any shift changes, the costs by session will need to be updated.

• Select the Update Costs button to update the data in the Costs by Sessions table

Fig.6 - Update Costs by Sessions

If a user has the permission 'View costs on Schedule' enabled, they will be able to select Show Details... (shown at the top of Fig.6).

When selected, the costs by sessions will automatically be updated with the latest data and display in a pop-up (see Fig.7).

• In the pop-up, there are two separate tabs for viewing Employee Costs per session and Contractor Costs per session
• Each session can be expanded to display the employees that are scheduled for shifts

Fig.7 - Cost By Sessions Report

The total cost is calculated on basic pay only. The system will calculate an hourly rate per employee and multiply this by the number of hours scheduled in each session.