Sales Forecasting

How to Get There and Why

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Operations > Forecasting > Sales Forecasting

Purpose & Common Uses

Forecasted Sales and Adjustments to Projected Sales are utilized in Labor Scheduling and SvA Reporting to give you highly accurate projected labor calculations and analytics. Each schedule will apply Forecasted Sales down to the and daypart, hourly, and department levels through the following flow:

• Departments and Job Labor Codes configured in POS Admin

• Job Codes assigned to Schedules in the Labor Scheduling section of Labor Scheduling Maintenance

• Department Sales assigned to Schedules in the Activity-Based Scheduling section of Labor Setup

• Budgeted Hours per Sales Range down to the half-hour assigned to Stores in Labor Templates section of Labor Scheduling Maintenance

The ability to adjust Forecasted Sales gives managers more control in Labor Cost as a % of sales, ensuring that the right people are staffed for the right volume and sales that the area of the restaurant is going to produce.

Restaurant operators who have a firm grasp on Sales Forecasting have better metrics to work with when creating schedules, leading to

• Lower labor cost

• Lower turnover

• Higher profitability

• Higher repeat foot-traffic

For additional transparency, Last Year sales metrics are now displayed to account for cyclical changes in sales.

Sales Adjustment Example Scenarios

By Day

• “There is a local event near my store that I expect to double the foot traffic throughout the day. I need to increase my forecasted sales across all dayparts and departments”

By Day Part

• “On holidays we tend to see more business than normal during the afternoon and less in the evening. Since Monday is Memorial Day, I need to increase my Afternoon forecasted sales, and decrease them for the Evening”

By Hourly

• “The high school across the street from my store is letting students out at noon instead of 3 pm. I need to increase my forecasted sales from 12pm-2pm, and decrease them from 2 pm-4 pm”

By Department

• “Friday’s large catering event will double my sales, but I only need additional staff to deliver the food. I want to see this bump in sales reflected in my forecasted labor % on the Catering Schedule, but not on my FOH Schedule. I need to increase forecasted sales for the Catering Department”

How to Use This Page

Store and Labor Week Selections

1. Select your Store from the drop-down at the top right.

2. In the Calendar on the left, select any date in the week for which you wish to Generate Forecasted Sales.

   1. The Calendar will then select the dates in your store’s Labor Week and give them Blue Highlights.

   2. The date with Red Highlight is the current day

3. If Sales Forecasts have not yet been generated for the week, Select Generate Sales Forecast

Adjustments & Forecast

Forecasted sales can be adjusted to account for a myriad of circumstances. Examples are found below.
The Sales Forecasting page allows users to account for these in Sales Forecasts in 4 ways by adding to and/or subtracting from the Projected Sales.
 You are only allowed to make one type of adjustment per date, so you can either have adjustments by day, or by daypart, but you can not make an adjustment to both.
Save must be pressed after any changes

The fields in the Adjustment column display

• The total number of adjustments made (in parenthesis on the left), and

• The total +/- $ adjustment(s) calculated for the day.

• The difference of between Forecast and Projected

  • Projected + Adjustment = Forecast

The fields in the Forecast column display

• The total Forecasted sales or the day

• The sum of Projected and Adjustment

  • Projected + Adjustment = Forecast

If the field is Grayed-Out,, this indicates that either

• This is a previous date, or

• Adjustments were entered by daypart or hourly

  • These can be changed by clicking on the DATE in the Day column on the left

On each adjustment-by page, a Warning is visible near the top of the page if you are editing a day that has Forecasted Sales entered elsewhere.
Entering adjustments or changes to forecasted sales by any metric other than by Day in this Week view will override anything entered here.

By Day

Adjustments and changes to total Forecast sales at the day level are distributed evenly across departments.

“There is a local event near my store that I expect to double the foot traffic throughout the day. I need to increase my forecasted sales across all dayparts and departments”

1. Click into the Adjustment or Forecast field for the Date Row

   1. Enter the desired value

      1. +/- Forecasted Sales Adjustment $, or

      2. Total Forecast Value

2. Select Save at the bottom right.
   If Forecasted Sales Adjustments for a date have been made previously by day, hourly, or department, selecting Save then Yes in the warning dialogue box will clear all other adjustments.

   

3. Selecting Week at the top-left of the page will take you back to the Sales Forecasting Weekly view.

By Day Part

Adjustments and changes to total Forecast sales at the daypart level are distributed evenly across hours and departments.

“On holidays we tend to see more business than normal during the afternoon and less in the evening. Since Monday is Memorial Day, I need to increase my Afternoon forecasted sales, and decrease them for the Evening”

1. Click the Date in the Day column

2. Select Day Part at the top-right, below the Store drop-down

3. Click into the Adjustment or Forecast field for the Date Row

4. Enter the desired value

   1. +/- Forecasted Sales Adjustment $, or

   2. Total Forecast Value

5. Enter the +/- Forecasted Sales Adjustment $ value(s)

6. Save at the bottom right.
   If Forecasted Sales Adjustments for a date have been made previously by day, department, or hourly, selecting Save then Yes in the warning dialogue box will clear all other adjustments.

   

7. Selecting Week at the top-left of the page will take you back to the Sales Forecasting Weekly view.

By Hourly

Adjustments and changes to total Forecast sales at the daypart level are distributed evenly across departments.

“The high school across the street from my store is letting students out at noon instead of 3pm. I need to increase my forecasted sales from 12pm-2pm, and decrease them from 2pm-4pm”

1. Click the DATE in the Day column

2. Select Hourly at the top-right, below the Store drop-down

3. Click into the Adjustment or Forecast field for the Date Row

4. Enter the desired value

   1. +/- Forecasted Sales Adjustment $, or

   2. Total Forecast Value

5. Save at the bottom right.
   If Forecasted Sales Adjustments for a date have been made previously by day, department, or hourly, selecting Save then Yes in the warning dialogue box will clear all other adjustments.

   

6. Selecting Week at the top-left of the page will take you back to the Sales Forecasting Weekly view.

By Department

Forecasted Sales Adjustments can be more precisely narrowed to the department level.

Once the Day Part or Hourly choice has been made the adjustments can be further tuned to department sales.

Departments, or Sales Types, displayed are reflective of those assigned to schedules in which there are active Employees with Job Codes and Job Roles assigned to the schedule for the store.

• For example, a Schedule in with Catering Department Sales included has Job Code “Catering Staff” assigned. The Catering department will be displayed for Forecasted Sales Adjustments when there are active employees on the roster for the store with Job Code ”Catering Staff” (via Job Roles Catering Driver, Catering Prep. etc) assigned to the Schedule in Labor Scheduling Maintenance.

“Friday’s large catering event will double my sales, but I only need additional staff to deliver the food. I want to see this bump in sales reflected in my forecasted labor % on the Catering Schedule, but not on my FOH Schedule. I need to increase forecasted sales for the Catering Department”

• To expand on the given this scenario, I can make adjustments to Catering Department sales, but it has to be by either Daypart or Hourly. If my first DayPart is 9am-4pm but I know that the catering event is only from 1 pm-2 pm, I don’t need to increase projected sales for the entire DayPart since I will only have additional staff for 30 minutes before and after the event, ~40% of the DayPart.

1. Click the DATE in the Day column

2. Select DayPart or Hourly as the Forecasted Sales Adjustment granularity

3. Click the ^ icon to the left of the Time Column as needed

4. Enter the Forecasted Department Sales Adjustments Forecast field for the Date Row

5. Enter the desired value

   1. +/- Forecasted Sales Adjustment $, or

   2. Total Forecast Value

6. Click ❌ Clear to remove any Hourly or Paypart forecast adjustments

7. The Save button will ask for verification of overriding any other adjustments made at the day, department, or hourly level.

Note that when making forecasted adjustments at the Department sales level by Hours and DayParts, the hours and daypart outside of the specific granularity can still be adjusted without department sales specifics.

Sales Calculations

Projected Sales + Adjustments = Forecast

Projected Sales

Per Day of the Week, the projected sales are calculated as an average of the last 6 weeks with sales > $0.
If any one day in this calculation has sales +/- 1.5 standard deviations of the average, the day is omitted from the calculation.

This equation is used to avoid Projected Sales being skewed by 1 day of very high or low sales.

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