When GMs plan their rota, they often have a budgeted Cost of Labour % to work to. Some operators incentivise their staff to hit certain targets, for instance, COL being no greater than 30% of sales.
Because the Nory forecast updates regularly, for instance to reduce the sales forecast with a change in the weather, there is not a firm relationship between the forecast and the labour cost, so it's hard to track, train, and reward GMs’ performance.
From today, we show both the planned cost of labour and the actual, in the Schedules overview.
Planned is the COL % at the point of Publish. This is fixed in time, based on the forecasted amount at that point in time.
Actual is the COL % that actually happened.
This would be higher than the Planned COL if the forecasted revenue was too optimistic (you had fewer sales than expected), or if your staff worked more hours (overtime).
It would be lower than the Planned COL if forecasted revenue was pessimistic (you were busier than expected), or if some planned hours were not taken (staff illness, but you coped).
With this detail, you can now quickly see which branches are suffering from high planned COL (perhaps the GM needs support, or there are fundamentals to review).