Staffing Smarter: The Labor Percentage Report 📊🧑🍳
Running a profitable restaurant requires keeping a close eye on your team's schedule and your daily revenue. The Labor Percentage Report is designed to answer one crucial question: "What did labor cost us, what did we sell, and are those numbers in balance?"
This powerful report connects your staff's digital time card data directly to your real-time sales figures. By calculating your precise labor percentage ($\text{Labor Cost} \div \text{Net Sales}$) for every business date, labor group, and job title, you can instantly see how efficiently your venue is running!
📊 What You'll See on the Report
Every time you open the report, the NX Portal greets you with two high-level summary tables to give you instant context, followed by a deeper breakdown based on how you want to organize your data.
Summary — by Business Date 📅
This view gives you one row per date, summarizing your overall staff hours and labor costs against the day's sales.
Summary — by Labor Group 👥
This table rolls up those exact same metrics by your customized store departments (such as Front of House, Back of House, or Management).
📖 Column Definitions: What the Numbers Mean
To keep your team audits simple, here is exactly what each core efficiency column tracks:
Total Hrs: The cumulative number of hours worked across all employee time cards within that group.
Total $: Your total labor cost—the actual wages earned and paid out for those hours.
Sales $: The net sales generated on customer checks assigned to those specific employees during the period.
Labor %: Total labor cost divided by net sales ($\text{Total \$} \div \text{Sales \$}$). This is your core efficiency baseline for measuring profitability!
🔄 Grouping Options: Tailoring Your View
Directly below your main summaries, the report will build custom data tables depending on your selected Group By preference:
Job (Default Mode): Generates one table per job title (e.g., Line Cook, Bartender), showing each employee who worked that role as an individual row.
Labor Group: Generates one table per department, showing how individual job roles perform inside that group.
Nested: Displays a unified layout using your bold labor groups as section headers, with individual employees neatly listed right beneath them.
🛠️ Strategic Ways to Use This Data
Daily Cost Control: Use the Summary by Business Date table to spot immediately which shifts ran hot on labor. If your labor percentage jumps significantly above your venue's target, it gives you the perfect opportunity to address scheduling before the trend repeats!
Department Comparisons: Check your Labor Group summaries to see if your kitchen and floor ratios are in balance. If your Back of House labor percentage is climbing but sales are steady, it may point to hidden scheduling overlapping or accidental overtime.
Job-Level Accountability: The Job grouping highlights whether specific niche roles (like Expo or Food Runner) are carrying a disproportionately high labor cost relative to the actual order volume they are supporting.
Optimizing Your Schedules: Comparing your total hours against your labor percentage across different dates helps you pinpoint over-staffed or under-staffed shifts. Consistently low percentages on certain days mean you can likely schedule leaner, while high-percentage days tell you that your customer demand forecasting needs an adjustment.
Tracking Weekly Goals: If your restaurant targets an overall 30% labor cost, running this report weekly confirms you are trending in the right direction and helps identify exactly which departments or specific days are pulling your averages up.
🎛️ Filters and Visual Charts Included
Filters Available
Labor Groups: Narrow down the report view to isolate specific areas of your business (such as viewing Front of House data only).
📈 Charts Included
When you toggle visual charts on in the NX Portal, the system generates up to three clear graphics to summarize your dashboard:
Cost by Labor Group: A pie chart showing your overall labor spending split across your top 5 departments.
Cost by Job: A clean bar chart comparing your financial labor investments across all active employee job titles.
Cost by Business Day: (Available for multi-date selections) A line chart that overlays daily labor costs directly against daily sales, offering a visual trend line of your staff efficiency.
Need Help? 💡
Why is the "Sales $" column blank or $0.00 for some of my Back of House staff?
Since kitchen employees (like dishwasher or prep cook roles) don't personally ring up guest checks at the POS, their individual rows won't show direct sales. However, their hours and costs are still fully calculated in the master Back of House Labor Group table against the venue's overall sales!
An employee's hours look incorrect on the report.
This report pulls directly from active time card data. If a server forgot to clock out or logged into the wrong job role, navigate to your back-office time card management tab to adjust their punch before running this report again.