Auto-Scheduling based on previous schedules or historical revenue

[Dulcedo_Coffee]

Team Management: Shifts

I would appreciate having an intelligent auto scheduling feature.  Essentially, a single click function that would create a suggested schedule based on known data points.  These data points can be weighted against others or selected as exclusionary.

Data Points can include:

• Auto-schedule based on previous scheduling patterns by day of the week and by position.  Assuming there are different roles and positions, very similar to a copy schedule function but maybe without defining the person that will go in that slot.  Maybe more of a copy schedule by position and then you fill in the person afterwards.
• Auto-schedule based on previous revenue trends (without having to go look at the reporting section).  This is somewhat of a demand-based scheduling.  These metrics could look at how many employees were able to support a particular amount of revenue in a given hour on a given day...and then replicate it.  Obviously, it should allow for the ability to edit based on prudential judgement.

With the click of a button, Auto-scheduling should be able to look at my previous scheduling patterns by position, by day, and then look at revenue per employee and intelligently determine my staffing needs for any given day.

It should know that if on Monday at 10:00 am I typically have $600 in sales revenue, then it should also know I typically have four people of various positions...so build it as an auto-schedule.

Thanks

-Oscar

[grovetealounge]

Hello!  

 Throwing this suggestion into the ring for a feature request.  I guess, technically, its a request to bring a feature BACK 🙂

On this landing page (https://squareup.com/us/en/point-of-sale/team-management/features)

shouting out the features of Square's team management, there's a picture part way down that shows a scheduling being created (pictured below). Within this picture, you can clearly see that under each Team Member's name, it shows the number of hours they are being scheduled for and the equivalent labor cost for those scheduled hours

My feature request is this: Please bring back the Labor Cost ($) field under each team members name when building a schedule! As an owner and manager, balancing labor cost with our team's availability AND ensuring we have adequate coverage throughout the week is a basic function of running our business.  Looking backwards at past days/weeks to see labor cost data is helpful but only in so much that we are able to then translate what we observe into real-time, actionable data when building the next one.  Without this labor cost being calculated for each team member while actively building a schedule, my managers and I now must switch back and forth between the scheduling software on Square and a spreadsheet (or calculator and paper) to manually calculate how much our labor cost is.  We have specific labor cost targets to ensure we maintain profitability and as the seasons change (Hi from Michigan by the way!), our sales fluctuate and staffing needs must be adjusted

I'm no coder or programer, but it would seem to me that Square already has the data within each employee's information card to calculate this pretty easily. And the fact that it was a prior feature means there's a precedent for it, which (in theory) should make it easier to turn back on than if it were a brand new feature being worked on. I can already feel the eye rolls coming from the IT/coding staff lol

I was working with some amazing support team ladies yesterday on the chat and was informed that this USED to be a feature but it has since been discontinued (they didn't say WHEN it was taken away though). I was very disappointed to hear this, TBH.  Any insight into why this was taken away?

Thanks for your consideration on this request

[Dulcedo_Coffee]

Sounds reasonable and I also liked that feature...though, there might need to be the option to hide labor cost.  For example, a print view might not need it or what if someone out there is displaying it live on a screen somewhere.

[Dulcedo_Coffee]

This feature request could be part of labor forecasting.  Assume, that there is a known ratio or desired of labor cost per revenue...the auto-scheduling could then propose a schedule to meet that criteria.

[grovetealounge]

@Dulcedo_Coffee a feature like that would be helpful! Or at least have the default be that when you go to print, it automatically excludes the labor cost piece.  With all of our staff having the schedule on their phones, there isn't much of a need for us to print out and post physical schedules, so that part doesn't affect us. But I could see how, if that's the preference of the business, that you'd want to be able to hide it upon printing

My personal opinion would be 2 fold:

1. I think seeing labor cost calculated in real time while building the schedule overrides the annoyance of having to manually white out or cover up labor cost should hiding it not be available within Square when you want to print it out.

2. While it *is* up to the employee whether he/she feels comfortable sharing his/her pay rate, I have no problem with our staff talking about what they are paid with each other. So posting that info only matters to the extent that the employees care whether it's shared or not. So if someone on staff would prefer to keep their pay private, then we'd have to remove that info somehow for sure

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @Dulcedo_Coffee - 

I’ve gone ahead and changed the status of this feature request to “Open”. You provided a great assessment on the potential business use/need for something like this on our platform from a seller’s perspective. This is a useful tool for our Product Team to use as they build the future of our products. As more information becomes available, a Community moderator will come in and change the status letting all of the subscribed sellers know.

[Kassi_]

Hi @grovetealounge - this request has been previously submitted by another seller.

We appreciate you sharing your business use case and why it would be valuable for you. I have merged your submission with the other request here. If you know of any fellow Seller Community members who would like to see this built out as well, feel free to tag them in your post so they can share their thoughts as well! The more sellers chime in to the request, the more likely it is to catch our product team's eye.

[meldarbfam1]

I would love to be able to see Labor Cost for the entire week that is scheduled as well as for individual employees. If you add this feature I may also suggest that you add a button that also allows you to hide labor cost for printing the the schedule. Thanks.