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Try a Smart Scheduling exercise with our sample data

Caesar Li
  • Updated

Are you curious about Smart Scheduling but not sure where to start?

Or perhaps you don't have the required sales data prepared just yet?

Follow along with this exercise in setting up Smart Scheduling in your Deputy account using the sample sales data we've already prepared for you to demonstrate all our Smart Scheduling features.

  1. Prepare your account
  2. Prepare the sales data from the sample file
  3. Set up demand driven auto scheduling
  4. Budget driven scheduling

Step 1: Prepare your account

Set the business operating hours in the location settings

We need to know what hours of the day your business is operating and scheduling team members.

  1. On the Location page, select a Location and click Edit Settings
  2. In the General tab, set your operating hours for each day of the week
  3. Click Save.

Watch a 30 second video to see how to set up the operation hours:

 

Configure the settings for Sales Metric in Business Insights

  1. On the Schedule page, click Insights
  2. Select Sales from the panel on the left and click on the Settings cog icon
  3. Make sure Manager forecast and Forecast options are both set to On.
  4. Change the Forecast based on to 'Average of the last 2 periods'
  5. Click Save.

Watch a 30 second video to see how to configure settings for Sales Metric

 

Step 2: Prepare the sales data from the sample file

Download our prepared sales data file, adjust it for your business and upload it to your Deputy account:

  1. Download the sample sales data file attached below
  2. Open it up with Microsoft Excel or Google Sheet 
  3. You have to adjust the data: 
    • Change the name under the "Location" to be your own Location's Name
    • Change the name under the "Area" to be your own Area's Name
    • Change the date under the "Timestamp" - you will need to adjust the date to be your last 2 weeks from today's date (leave the time as it is)
    • Adjust the values under the "Sales" to reflect your own business' sales data (optional)
    • Save the file and upload it via Bulk import of Sales data. 
  4. On the Schedule page, click Insights and check if actual sales data has been uploaded successfully for the last 2 weeks.
  5. If you can see the Forecast data in Summary for the current week, that means your actual sales data has been uploaded successfully with no issues.

Step 3: Set up demand driven auto scheduling

We are now going to configure some rules in our Deputy account for how many team members, or Required Staff, we would need to schedule to service the forecasted sales in our Location.

Set labor models and generate required staff

  1. On the Schedule page, click Insights
  2. From the left-hand side panel, select Required Staff and click Add.
  3. Select New rule for labor model rule or New task for task based labor model
  4. Configure the labor model by selecting an Area you will schedule staff and "Forecast Sales" as the demand driver metric.
  5. Click Save to save the labor model
  6. Click Run labor model and select the future week that you want to generate the Required Staff and click Run and then Ok.
  7. After the Required Staff have been generated, you can return to the Schedule page and display the Stats panel. Hover over each hour of the day in stats panel to see how many staff is needed by checking on Required staff counter there.

Watch the video to check how to setup labor models and generate required staff

 

Auto schedule shifts with Auto Build and Auto Fill

Auto Build Shift Structure

  1. On the Schedule page click the Auto dropdown arrow and select Auto build shift structure
  2. In the Auto Build modal, add in 3 different hours for the Shift lengths in the following sequence
    1. How long do I normally schedule my employee?
    2. What will be the minimum shift hours I can schedule for my team member?
    3. During a busy day, if I need to adhoc call in more team members,  how long will that peak time will last for?
  3. Leave Shift requirements as "Required staff" and Shift start time as as ":00"
  4. Click Build Shift and once it is done, you should be able to see multiple empty shifts are created on the Schedule.
  5. Deputy is trying to match the number of empty shifts with the required staff counter on each hour during the day. Check the number of empty shifts created are reasonable and delete ot adjust as needed to make sure you are not overscheduling your employees or run short of people to take care of your business.

Auto Fill Empty Shift

  1. On the Schedule page, click the Auto dropdown arrow and select Auto-fill empty shift structure
  2. In the Auto Fill modal, set if you want to fill the shifts with lowest costs and/or providing equal hours to most of the employees. Select "as short as possible" for the waiting time and click Auto Fill Shifts.
  3. Once it is done, you should be able to see most of your empty shifts have been filled with a proper employee who:

Watch the video to check how to run Auto Build/Auto Fill to create a weekly shift based on your labor demand in just seconds

 

Step 4: Budget Driven Scheduling

Set up Budget Hours or Wages and check scheduling is within budget

  1. On the Schedule page, click Insights
  2. From the panel on the left hand-side click Add Budget 
  3. Choose to set Hour Budget or Wage Budget and click Save.
  4. You can amend the hour/wage budget from the budget view as well
  5. Compare your Budgeted hours/wages with Scheduled hours/wages to make sure you schedule team members within your budget level.

Watch the video to check how to make budget driven scheduling

 

For more details about the Smart Scheduling features, please see our other Smart Scheduling articles.

Sample sales data CSV file to download

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