Labor Cost Calculator
The BoardWhat you have scheduled, at your rates, against the week you expect.
The schedule gets posted on Wednesday and the payroll number arrives ten days later, by which point the week is over and there was nothing to be done about it anyway.
Next week's schedule costed at the wages you actually pay, shown against the sales you expect and the share of them you have decided you want. It shows where the payroll sits by role, because one blended figure hides whichever role moved.
About this tool
Labor Cost Calculator: what it solves
A schedule is a spending decision that nobody prices until afterwards. The Labor Cost Calculator takes the hours as written and the wage each person is actually paid, and gives the week's payroll before the week happens — broken out by role, so a kitchen that crept up is visible rather than blended into one number. Against that it puts two figures, and both are the owner's: the sales they expect, and the share of those sales they have decided payroll should be. From those it works out what the week affords at that target and how far above or below the schedule sits, in plain money rather than only in points. It will not guess next week's sales, because a tool that predicted takings from last week would be selling a forecast dressed as arithmetic. It carries no target of its own, because what share of sales your payroll should be is a decision about your business rather than a figure from a survey. And it computes nobody's take-home: tips, taxes, overtime and tip credit are specific to you, and it will not print a number it cannot show the working for.
A schedule is a spending decision, and it gets priced afterwards
You write the week on a Wednesday. You find out what it cost you eleven days later, when payroll runs and the number is already spent.
Nothing about that is necessary. The schedule is on the board, everyone’s rate is known, and multiplying the two is arithmetic a phone can do. It just never gets done at the moment it could still change anything, because doing it by hand means twenty-two people at eight rates across seven days, and there is always something more urgent on a Wednesday.
This prices the week while the week is still a draft.
Broken out by role, because one number hides the thing that moved
A single payroll figure for the week tells you almost nothing. It went up — where?
A kitchen that crept up two shifts is invisible inside a total that also contains a slow front of house. Split by role and the drift has an address. That is the difference between a number you look at and a number you act on.
Two figures are yours, and neither can come from anywhere else
What you expect to take. Not what you took last week — what you expect, which is a judgment containing a holiday, a road closure, a festival, and the fact that you know your street.
What share of that you have decided payroll should be. This is the one people expect software to supply, and it is the one software has no business supplying. What your labor ought to run at depends on whether you are counter service or full service, whether the owner works the floor, what your rent is, and what kind of business you are trying to build. A number pulled from a survey of other people’s restaurants is not an answer to that question. It is a different question’s answer, wearing a percentage sign.
From those two, this works out what the week affords and how far above or below the schedule sits — in money as well as in points, because “one point over” means nothing until you know it is four hundred dollars.
Three things it deliberately does not compute
It will not guess next week’s sales, because a tool that projected takings from last week’s would be selling you a guess dressed as arithmetic, and you would schedule against it.
It carries no target of its own. There is no default here, no suggested range, and no gentle nudge toward a figure. If you have not decided what your payroll share should be, this sheet will not decide it for you, because that decision is about your business.
It computes nobody’s take-home. Tips, taxes, overtime, tip credit and withholding are specific to you and to where you are, and this will not print a number it cannot show you the working for. This is what the schedule costs the business, not what anybody takes home.
What it replaces
The version of this that happens after the fact, in the accounting, when the week is over and the decision cannot be revisited. Or the spreadsheet that would do it, if somebody rebuilt it every time a rate changed.
You enter your people and their rates once. Every week after that is the hours as written.
Who it is for
Restaurants, bars, retail and salons — anywhere a schedule is written by hand each week and the wage bill is the largest thing you control.
What it will not do
It will not tell you the schedule is wrong. It tells you what it costs against what you said you expect. Whether that is too much is a decision that includes things a page cannot see — a new cook who needs the hours, a Saturday you cannot afford to be short on.
It will not compare you to other businesses. Nothing here comes from outside your own numbers.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. The arithmetic runs in your browser. Wage rates are among the most sensitive things a small business holds, and none of it leaves the machine you typed it on. Close the tab and it is gone.
Yours would be built the same way.
This one runs on made-up data. The version built for your business runs on yours, and you own it outright. Builds start at $1,300. That is a floor, not a quote. What yours costs is agreed before any work begins. The first conversation is free.