Know your labour cost by day

The first place I look when helping a retailer address cash-flow issues in the business is the roster.

Too often the roster is either done for convenience or for laziness: convenience to reduce owner time in the business or laziness because the roster never changes.

Identifying the daily labour cost in cash terms focuses attention. Most retailers find savings immediately on seeing the daily labour cost.

Every hour saved is a bottom line benefit to the business. While this places more pressure on the owners and or existing staff, the financial benefit is crucial – especially if the business is paying off debt.

If you don’t know your labour spend by day, work it out. Better still, use roster software which provides this.

FOOTNOTE: Here is the problem with a post like this: it is boring. While rostering to a budget is an important retail management task, it is something the majority of independent retailers do not do … to their cost.