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Labor is your biggest controllable cost, and the only one you can still fix mid-week. Labor in the sidebar shows what you’re actually spending against what you’re selling. Hours flow in from the POS automatically; nobody types timesheets. The Labor Overview: total labor as a percent of sales, FOH vs. BOH, overtime, and break compliance

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Read the top card

The big number is Total Labor Cost as a percent of sales, with a letter grade next to it. This store: 39.74% of sales ($2,414.09), graded C, flagged red because it’s over the 30% threshold. The card breaks it down:
  • Hourly Labor: 18.44% of sales ($1,120.29). The part the schedule controls.
  • Salary Labor: 18.04% ($1,095.89). Fixed. When sales dip, this percent balloons even though nothing changed. Know which half is moving before you panic.
  • Payroll Tax/Fees: 3.26% ($197.91). Rides along with wages.
  • Overtime and Spread of Hours are broken out on the right so premium pay never hides inside the total.

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FOH vs. BOH

The right-hand cards split Front of House (17.46% of sales) and Back of House (5.25%), each with its own threshold and a See Details drill-down to the people and shifts behind the number. This split only works if roles are mapped to departments; set that under Payroll.

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Kill overtime early

The overtime view lists the exact shifts driving overtime, by person.
  1. Open it midweek, not after payroll.
  2. Find who’s already trending toward overtime.
  3. Fix the schedule for the back half of the week.
Overtime found on payday is money already spent. Overtime found Wednesday is a schedule edit.

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Compliance

Two cards to take seriously:
  • Break Compliance %: the share of shifts where required breaks were actually taken. 8.33% is not a rounding problem; it’s systematic. Fix the floor habit, not the report.
  • Spread of Hours: premium pay owed when a workday spans too long (NY rule). $33.00 this week is small; the point is you see it accrue instead of discovering it in an audit.
Review the compliance detail weekly and fix the repeat offenders. These get expensive when ignored.

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Sales vs. Labor chart

The bottom chart plots sales against labor cost, toggled By Day / By Week / By Month / By Hour / By Day of Week. The by-hour view next to your by-hour sales is how you find the leak: four people on for a $100 hour.

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The weekly habit

  1. Wednesday: open Labor, check the overtime table, adjust the back half of the week.
  2. Monday: review last week’s labor %, FOH/BOH split, and compliance.
  3. Labor % up? Check whether sales dropped or hours grew. Different problems, different fixes.

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Know-how

  • The comparison (“vs. last year”) uses the same dates a year earlier. The +14.2% of sales badge means labor as a share of sales grew that much, not dollars.
  • Grades and thresholds (>30% red, ≤20% green for BOH) are targets to react to, not decoration. Chronic red is a schedule structure problem: too many opening hours for the volume.
  • Salaried managers make small-sales weeks look terrible. Judge hourly labor % week to week; judge total labor % monthly.
  • Numbers missing for someone? Their POS profile probably isn’t linked. Check Employee Mappings under Settings.