Know what the week costs before you publish it.
Labor is usually the largest line you actually control. Add wages once and Shift Amp prices every shift as you place it, warns you before overtime lands, and shows the spend against the revenue it produced.
Free for teams up to 10. No credit card required.
- Cost updates as you move a shift
- Overtime alerts while the week is still a draft
- Free for teams up to 10
What you can do
Get the most out of your largest expense.
Labor cost is easy to review after the fact and hard to change after the fact. All four of these happen while the schedule is still a draft.
Price the schedule as you build it
Assign a wage to each employee or position and the grid starts costing itself. You are making the trade-off with the number in front of you.
- Assign wages to employees or to positions
- See what each shift costs the moment you place it
- Watch the margin per shift, not just the weekly total
- Adjust before the schedule is published, not after
Integrations
Sales in, hours out.
Labor cost only means something next to the revenue it produced. Connect your point of sale and payroll so both halves of the comparison are current.
- Pull sales data in to compare against labor
- Send approved hours out to payroll
- Keep wages and employee records in step across systems
Why it helps
Take control of your cost of labor.
Calculate as you go
The cost of a shift appears the moment you place it, so the week is priced while you can still change your mind about it.
Head off overtime
Thresholds and alerts catch overtime while the schedule is a draft, which is the only point where fixing it is free.
See the whole picture
Spend by period, by location and against revenue, so next week is built on what last week actually cost.
Compared to
Against finding out at payroll.
Most teams cost their labor once a period, in arrears, from a report. By then every decision has already been made.
| What you get | Shift AmpFree, then $2 per user | Spreadsheet + payroll report |
|---|---|---|
| Cost visible while scheduling | ||
| Overtime caught before it happens | ||
| Budget per shift and per location | If you build it yourself | |
| Alerts when the week goes over | ||
| Labor compared against sales | A manual join | |
| Wage changes reflected everywhere | Wherever you remember | |
| Hours imported from the time clock |
What actually counts as a labor cost
For business purposes, labor cost is everything remotely connected to compensating your team, not just the rate on the offer letter.
- Hourly wages
- Salaried wages
- Payroll taxes
- Overtime
- Health care
- Bonuses
- Sick days
- Vacation days
- Insurance
- Benefits
- Meals
- Supplies
- Training costs
Plenty of managers count only hourly and salaried wages. That is a large mistake, and it is the reason a schedule that looks affordable on the grid is not affordable on the books.
Why the number matters
Labor costs can average 30 to 35 percent of a business total revenue, and in some cases considerably more. They also feed prime cost, which is one of the clearest efficiency metrics you have. Whatever your business spends, it is a large amount of money leaving every year, and without control of it your margin quietly absorbs the difference.
How to calculate it
The math is straightforward once the expenses are assembled. Assembling them is the slow part. Take a full-time employee paid $13 an hour.
- Gross pay: $13 per hour across 2,080 hours is $27,040.
- Net hours worked: subtract the time actually lost. Ten days of holidays, vacation and illness is 80 hours, which leaves 2,000.
- Other annual costs: insurance, taxes, overtime and benefits for this employee come to $4,000, so annual payroll labor cost is $31,040.
- Actual hourly labor cost: $31,040 divided by 2,000 net hours is $15.52 per hour.
So the person you think of as a $13 an hour employee costs $15.52 for every hour of actual work. That gap is why scheduling against the wage alone understates what the week really costs.
Bringing it down without cutting pay
Optimizing labor cost does not mean paying people less. There are better levers, and most of them are scheduling decisions.
- Plan the schedule a month in advance.
- Tabulate the cost as you schedule rather than after.
- Use a rotating shift so the load is spread evenly.
- Cross-train people so they can fill in at other positions.
- Set clear clock-in and clock-out rules and hold to them.
- Reduce absenteeism.
- Reduce turnover, which carries hiring and training costs with it.
- Watch the trend over time instead of a single period.
Every one of those gets easier when the cost is visible while you are still building the schedule, rather than in a report you read two weeks later.
The rest of the platform
More than a labor cost calculator.
Cost control works best when it is attached to the schedule and the clock.
Employee scheduling
Build the week on a grid, publish it, and let the changes handle themselves.
Learn moreEmployee time clock
Accurate clock-ins and timesheets that are ready for payroll.
Learn moreMulti-location scheduling
Staff several sites from one schedule and compare them side by side.
Learn moreEmployee breaks
Break rules applied to shifts automatically, with reminders on the floor.
Learn moreTeam communication
Messages, group chats and announcements next to the schedule.
Learn moreTask management
Assign the shift's work and see what actually got done.
Learn moreIntegrations
Connect the point of sale, payroll and tools you already run.
Learn moreLabor compliance
Break and overtime rules for every state, kept current.
Learn moreFAQ
Labor costs, answered.
What counts as a labor cost?
Everything you pay to have people working, not just the hourly or salaried wage. Payroll taxes, overtime, health care, bonuses, sick days, vacation days, insurance, benefits, meals, supplies and training all belong in the number. Counting only wages is the most common way businesses underestimate what a schedule costs them.
Why do labor costs matter so much?
Because they can average 30 to 35 percent of total revenue, and often more. They also feed prime cost, which is a key measure of how efficiently the business runs. It is a large amount of money leaving every year, and if you do not have control of it, your margin does.
How do I track labor costs?
It comes down to record keeping and reporting, which is what the software is for. Shift Amp imports hours automatically once your team clocks in and out, applies the wages you have set, and lets you calculate and track cost over whatever period you want to look at.
Does Shift Amp calculate overtime?
Yes, as you schedule. Set the thresholds that apply to your business and Shift Amp calculates overtime while you are still building the week, alerts you when someone is about to cross the line, and keeps a record of the overtime that was worked.
Can I compare labor against sales?
Yes. You can view historical and projected sales revenue next to your labor cost, track labor as a percentage of sales, and see when labor is running ahead of the revenue it is supporting.
Can I set different budgets for different locations?
Yes. Budgets are set per shift and per location, so a quiet site and a flagship site can each be measured against a number that makes sense for them.
What does it cost?
Labor cost reporting is in both plans. Teams of up to 10 are free, forever, and past 10 people it is $2 per user, per month.
Why Shift Amp?
Because the cost sits inside the tool where the decisions get made. Scheduling, time and attendance, wages, budgets, tasks, communication, reporting and location management are all in one place, so the schedule prices itself as you build it rather than being priced by a report afterwards.
Pricing
Cost control, and the rest of the platform.
Labor cost reporting comes with the tools that produce the data: scheduling, the time clock and multi-location management.
Free
The whole platform for a team of up to 10 people.
- Every feature in Pro
- Up to 10 people
- Scheduling, time clock and labor costs
- Messaging, tasks and documents
- iOS and Android apps
- No credit card to start
Pro
The same platform once your team outgrows the free plan.
- Every feature in Free
- No cap on team size
- Multi-location scheduling
- Payroll-ready timesheets and reports
- 14-day free trial
- Pay for the seats you use
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Find out what next week costs.
Start free, add your wages, and price your first schedule before you publish it.
Free for teams up to 10. No credit card required.