Use the Business Insights Dashboard to reveal and measure meaningful data in your business. Track forecast to actual variance in sales and wage metrics and set performance benchmarks. Build custom metrics to give you visibility of the demand measures unique to your business.
Before we begin, ensure you are logged into Deputy as a Location Manager or System Administrator.
In this article you will learn:
- How to access Business Insights and metrics
- Definitions of metrics and other commonly used terms
- How to build, set and track sales forecasts
- Use sales, wages and labor metrics to identify trends
- How to create your own custom metrics
- Tips for entering metric data or customising metrics
How to access Business Insights and metrics
Go to the Schedule page and click on Insights to be taken to the Business Insights Dashboard.
You will first be taken to the Summary page for Business Insights.
You can display the data on this page by:
- location and
- day, week or monthly period for the date range you select
From the left-hand side menu of the Business Insights Dashboard, you can access any of the pre-loaded metrics and also have the ability to Add metric.
Definition of metrics and other commonly used terms
Summary
A view to help you live track how your business is performing against the forecast or budget for each of the business metrics listed below
| Term | Description | Note |
|
Hours - Budgeted |
The sum of hours budgeted across all areas for the selected time period |
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Hours - Scheduled |
The sum of hours scheduled across all areas for the selected time period |
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Hours - Actual |
The sum of hours captured in timesheets across all areas for the selected time period |
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Wages - Budgeted |
The total cost of wages budgeted across all areas for the selected time period |
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Wages - Scheduled |
The total cost of wages scheduled across all areas for the selected time period |
This total includes hourly-paid wages, salary allocation, leave cost and hourly any on costs you have applied |
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Wages - Actual |
The total cost of wages captured in timesheets across all areas for the selected time period |
This total includes hourly-paid wages, salary allocation, leave cost and hourly any on costs you have applied |
|
Sales - Forecast |
A forecast of your sales based on historical data in Deputy |
Option to disable or enable and select the historical period of time Deputy uses to forecast |
|
Sales - Manager Forecast |
A forecast of Sales data entered by a manager |
Option to enable or disable |
|
Sales - Actual |
Actual sales data as entered manually or imported from integration |
Option to display hourly or 15 min blocks of data |
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Labor % - Scheduled |
The ratio of your scheduled wage cost as a percentage of your Manager Forecasted sales. |
If Manager Forecast Sales are not set then Deputy Forecast Sales will be used |
|
Labor % - Actual |
The ratio of your actual wage cost as a percentage of your actual sales |
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Sales Per Hour - Forecast |
Deputy Forecast Sales divided by Budgeted Hours |
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Sales Per Hour - Scheduled |
Manager Forecast Sales divided by Scheduled Hours |
If Manager Forecast Sales are not set then Deputy Forecast Sales will be used |
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Sales Per Hour - Actual |
Actual Sales divided by Actual Hours worked. |
BUDGETS
| Term | Description |
|
Daily Wage Budget |
Shows a summary of your wage budget vs scheduled wage budget and the cost variance for the period of time selected |
|
Daily Hour Budget |
An overview of your team member’s hourly budget vs scheduled and the time variance for the period of time selected |
METRICS
| Term | Description | Note |
|
Sales |
Pre-loaded metric |
Option to use Forecast, Manager Forecast and/or Actual Sales data (see Summary) |
|
Custom Metric |
A metric you can set up and customise with all the functionality available for the default metrics |
Option to measure by Currency or Unit |
STAFF
| Term | Description |
|
Labor Model |
Enter rules to help determine your staffing requirements for each area based on your metrics |
|
Required Staff |
Set a fixed number of staff required in each area on any given day to guide your scheduling decisions |
How to build, set and track sales forecasts
Set up your Business Insights to accurately track forecasted versus actual sales in your business using Deputy Forecasted Sales, Manager Forecasted Sales and Actual Sales.
Deputy forecasted sales
This type of sales forecast is generated by Deputy, based on your past data and Deputy Forecasting settings.
To access Deputy Forecast Settings within Business Insights, select Sales and the settings icon to review the 'Forecast' settings.
You can select what time period of sales data you want Deputy to base the forecast on from the drop-down menu:
- Average of all time.
- Average for the past X periods. A forecast period is based on the schedule view when the forecast is generated.
- example 1 - If you have one week view selected in Schedule and select 'average of last 4 periods' then the Deputy forecast will represent the average of the last four weeks of data
- example 2 - If you have a monthly view selected in Schedule and select 'average of last 6 periods' then the Deputy forecast will represent the average of the last six months of data
- Same period last year. This selection will allow you to compare the same period from 12 months ago to allow comparisons where you may have seasonal variation
- example 1 - If you have selected a one week view in the Schedule that represents the second week in February this year then the Deputy forecasted data will be drawn from the data stored from the second week of February last year.
Don't forget to click Save before you close the window.
Deputy Forecasted Sales can be seen in the Stats Panel on the Schedule page as a thick dashed magenta line. Hovering the cursor over the dotted line provides a pop-up legend of the Stats Panel data.
Manager forecasted sales
This type of sales forecast can be used to enter in your own projections for your future Sales, viewable across the week to roster your team members to your expected pattern of Sales.
To access Manager Forecast Settings within Business Insights, select Sales and Edit Data to review the 'Forecast' settings.
Then select 'Manager Forecast' and enter your data. You can enter daily or hourly amounts and can Adjust selected cells by a %.
See Tips for Entering Data for shortcuts on adding data to the cells.
Manager Forecasted Sales can be seen in the Stats Panel on the Schedule page as a thin dashed magenta line. Hovering the cursor over the dotted line provides a pop-up legend of the Stats Panel data.
Use sales, wages, labor and staff metrics to identify trends
Using the Business Insights to view sales, wages, labor and staff metrics using Business Insights.
Use the Summary to identify all these metrics in one simple view or drill down to each metric as stated below.
Sales trends
To see sales trends, select Sales in Business Insights.
The location, time period and dates to view data can be selected. You can compare last year’s actual sales to today’s actual sales. This year's actual sales will be underneath the Actual heading.
You can also compare Actual Sales to Forecasted Sales amounts. The Variance shows the difference between Actual and Manager Forecasted in the example below.
When you mouse over the Variance column you can see the value expressed as a %.
To enter sales data you can:
- connect a third party POS system via an integration to upload your actual sales data OR
- use a Dropbox Sales Integration OR
- use our bulk import sales tool to import any metric data including Sales/Budget OR
- or enter it manually.
Wage trends
To see wage trends, select Daily Wage Budget in Business Insights. The location, time period and dates to view data can be selected.
You can compare Budgeted Wages to Scheduled Wages with a variance calculation displayed. When you mouse over the Variance column you can see this value expressed as a %.
You can set the Wage Budget Daily or Hourly in Wage budget settings. You can also set it by Location or Area.
Read more about setting Wage Budgets.
Labour Trends
To see labour trends, select Daily Hour Budget in Business Insights. The location, time period and dates to view data can be selected.
You can compare Budgeted Hours to Scheduled Hours with a variance calculation displayed. When you mouse over the Variance column you can see this value expressed as a %.
How to create your own custom metrics
You can create your own Custom Metric to the Stats panel by clicking Add metric in Business Insights.
You can name your custom metric and set whether you are measuring it in currency or by the unit. Set whether you'd like Deputy provide forecasting based on historical performance or have Managers enter their own forecast.
You can see the new metric will appear in the list under the default Sales.
You can edit the settings of this metric by clicking on it in the menu then clicking on the Settings icon.
You can edit the name of the metric or set a colour to differentiate it from Sales data on your Stats panel. You can edit any of the other settings you configured when you created the metric.
This is also the screen you use to Delete any new metrics you no longer need.
Don't forget to click Save before you leave this window.
Your custom metrics work the same as Sales data, allowing you to enter manual forecasts, actual data and also utilise Deputy’s smart forecasting.
Tips for entering data or customising metrics
Quick edit data
Enter or amend data on the fly with simple in-line edit. Just click on the number you want to change, type the new number and click the tick.
Spreadsheet-like metric data editor
If you are entering or amending large sets of data into your sales or custom metrics, it’s easy with the metrics data editor which features spreadsheet-like functionality and usability.
Use copy and paste, or click and drag cells to fill your cells with data much faster
Bulk adjust data by %
If you need to make an adjustment to one or many cells in your metrics data just select the cells you need to change and click Adjust. Enter the percentage you'd like to adjust the amounts by and click Apply.
Select your location to enter data
If you notice that the Edit Data button has disappeared from your metric page, check that you have selected a location on the top left.
You can't enter data when the location selector is set to show All Locations.
Customise metrics in Settings.
You can customise the configuration for every metric by clicking on the Settings icon within each metric's page on the dashboard.
Read more about our other Smart Scheduling features.
We would like to hear your feedback regarding Business Insights or Labor Optimisation - book a 30min meeting with us.
Otherwise for help with Smart Scheduling please get in touch with our 24/7 support team.