Managing Roster Costs & Budgets

Overview

Tempus allows you to track your rostered wage costs in real-time against a budget you set.

Key Concept: Enable Costs to see any costs, you must first enable the "Show costs" toggle, usually found in the left-hand filter panel.

Setting Your Roster Budget

You can set a daily budget for a location as either a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of forecasted sales.

• Click the Budget icon (it looks like a piggy bank) in the Roster actions menu.

• In the Budget panel, click Edit Budget.

• Choose your location.

• In the "Budget setting" dropdown, choose whether your budget is a Fixed amount or % of Sales.

• Fixed amount:

  

• % of Sales:

• Go through each day of the week.If using % of sales, enter your forecasted Sales figure, and the % you are aiming for (e.g., 30%). The Budget amount will calculate automatically.If using Fixed amount, just enter the dollar Budget for each day.

• Click Save.

Viewing Shift Costs Vs. Budget

Once your budget is set and "Show costs" is on, your roster will show you how you're tracking.

You can click on the location header to see a more detailed day-by-day breakdown of Budget vs. Cost.

• Total Costs: Each location's header on the roster will show the Total Cost of all shifts for the week.

• Daily Costs: The daily subtotal will be colour-coded:

  • Normal: You are within budget.

  

  • Orange: You have exceeded the "budget warning %" (e.g., you're at 90% of your total budget).

  

  • Red: You are over budget for that day.

How Shift Costs Are Calculated & Refreshed

Shift costs are calculated using the employee's base pay rate, plus any multipliers from rules (like fixed or schedular allowances). Note: due to average day and/or average week calculation/s for leave types, shift costs for leave/public holiday not worked may display as $0.00 cost. This feature is only ever to be used as an indicative cost for a rostered shift.

What if a pay rate changes?

If you create a draft roster and then an employee's pay rate is updated, the draft roster cost may be wrong.

• To fix this, click Roster actions.

• Select Recalculate shift costs.

• The system will re-cost all shifts in the current view with the most up-to-date pay information.

Special Costing for "Salaried" Employees

Rostering a salaried employee for more than their standard 38 hours can make your roster look more expensive than it actually is.

If needed, please reach out to the Tempus support team, we will discuss whether we can tailor a rule set to meet a "salaried" outcome, which will enable more accurate roster costs (e.g. you can roster the employee for a 10-hour shift, but the roster cost will still only show the cost for 7.6 hours, giving you a more accurate budget).