Monthly Archives: March 2015

A new year calls for a revamp. Presenting the new goRoster designer!

March, 2015

We’re getting close to releasing our new roster designer.

Want to try it out before we go live? Contact support@goroster.com and let us know and we can switch you over.

Here are some of the changes you can expect to see:

iPad/tablet compatible (some features may not be available depending on tablet type)
The first major change we have made is the removal of the Silverlight plugin which was originally required to use the roster designer. But no more!
Quick search for any employee within your roster
Add employees quicker via a sidebar. You can search also for employees and tags also
Drag and drop to combine or replace a cell
Keyboard shortcuts using C and V when hovering to copy and paste, and DEL to delete all shifts in a cell
Sidebar menu with options (publish, favourites, copy week etc)
Roles shown by initials (you can also hover over the cell to see full role name)
Entire cell coloured by role
Change to any site roster via a dropdown
iPad/tablet compatible (some features may not be available depending on tablet type)
Break indicators

So, there you have it! We are looking forward to releasing this new version to you all. If you have a query about any of the updates (or want to use it now) please do not hesitate to contact the team at support@goroster.com.

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3 Monetary Basics You Should Continuously Be Reviewing

March, 2015

Do you know who an incredible advocate for hard work was? Mary Poppins.

Bet you didn’t expect me to bring up that name of an old matriarch like Nanny from a 1960’s Walt Disney movie. But hey, she sure shined in the hard work department! Do you know what else is hard work? Running a business. If you don’t get it right, it can become a right royal pain in the finance department.

That catchy tune she sung…what was it? The one about sugar…oh that’s right!

“A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

In my mind, the literal interpretation of this is that once you get the right recipe ingredient – it’s going to make your life a whole lot easier.

So, a spoonful of sugar huh? Lets break down what might go into this spoonfull of monetary goodness.

1. Employee Costs

The typical hospo model follows the 30,30,30,10 rule of thumb. 30% employee costs, 30% fixed costs, 30% cost of goods sold, and 10% profit. Employee costs are the most controllable costs out those I have just listed. Get these right and you’ll be chugging along just nicely. With the right tools and technology managing employee costs is like riding a bicycle.

2. Revenue

Your revenue should always be tracked directly against your employee costs. Seeing how the two track against each other gives you a much more accurate reflection of what you’re taking in at the end of the day. With a drop of revenue and a pinch of cost, you’ll be at your financial goal in only a matter of time.

3. Additional Staff or Employee Related Costs

These are comprised of different things depending on which country of which we are speaking. These cover things such as holiday entitlements, medical insurances, superannuations etc. The important part is to make sure you account for these costs each week to ensure when it comes to the end of the financial year everything matches up and all figures are succinct.

Get this recipe right to reap all the rewards you’ve dreamed of.

And who doesn’t love rewards…

Tags: business, control, costs, finance, financials, goRoster, hospitality, management, rostering
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It’s never been so easy to streamline your business operations

March, 2015

If there was an option to make things easier for yourselves…would you take it?

I’d be surprised if anyone actually said no. Especially considering the the workload many of us face from day to day, we should always be looking for ways to streamline all of our business operations in order to align both our efficiency and our effectiveness in our roles and for our business.

Tips to streamlining your business operations

Modernize your current systems – ensure you’re keeping pace with competition within your sector.
Utilize the ‘Cloud’ – With the ability to store everything online, this has not only bettered our environmental impact – but eliminated the need to write everything down and go through screeds of paper! Less paper = less filing = a de-cluttered mind!
Improve across the board – If you are involved in a business that operates across multiple locations, make sure that you improve your operations across the board. Not just to a select number of sites.
Have fewer staff meetings – The less you have, the more thorough the ones you have should be. They are more productive and the likelihood of full attendance by all members is much higher.
Limit the number of suppliers you use – The more streamlined this can be, the less double handling you have. Get as many products from as little suppliers as possible, for the most cost effective prices.
Decide what to outsource – If outsourcing some of your resources is going to be more cost effective, free up more of your time and in the end make you more profitable – you should definitely go down this route.
Seamlessly integrate your financial data into your everyday operations – The best technologies should be prevalent in your day to day business. Ensure figures are easily accessible at all times so you know exactly how you’re tracking.
Data mining – Select the numbers that are most important to you and your business. What figures give you the most transparency and reflect truly on what your financial situation is.
Communicate in real-time – I’m beating the technology drum again. Technology is your most effective path to communicating effectively to all business members despite the impact of time zones and geographic location.
What’s your biggest return? – Your knowledge of your either single or multi-location business should be so up to date that you could recite what one is providing you your greatest return. You always want to be able to identify your best performers and emulate their strategies in your lower-performing sites.

So there you have it.

We’re all about bettering your business and helping you to find ways to cut costs and streamline your operations.

If you’re interested in reading about different ways to improve your financial situation check out our main blog page here.

Tags: business, finance, goRoster, operations, rostering
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What defines a successful multi-location business?

March, 2015

Remember that ol’ green eyed monster? Yeah. You know the one.

Full of envy.

We’ve all befriended him at some point within our careers. It’s only natural. To a degree it can be rather healthy.

Multi-location businesses when run effectively can be a fantastic ‘shooting star’ with regards to a typical growth-share matrix. But hold up a moment. There’s no need to envy them though. You just need to understand them.

Multi-location businesses today continue to dominate the hospitality sector with their increased efficiency and scintillating ways of eliminating time and space into a mere puff of smoke. Hospitality franchises employ over 80,000 workers, mostly full time (1) and 52% of all hospitality franchises within the New Zealand area are now multi-unit operations (2). A pretty enlightening and warming set of statistics.

For most of these businesses – they’ve found the right formula. But that’s not to say that it came without its hurdles. Everyone takes the wrong road before they find the right one.

When a business begins to experience significant growth, often they consider expanding their business into other areas. Sometimes it’s the opening of the same business in another location, or they diversify their current brand by opening a site completely different to that of which is already established within the market.

The key is to implement systems and processes into your business the standardize the way you run your all of your locations, and most importantly; how you communicate with them all.

Their strengths?

They learn – They learn the specific needs of each site, and cater to them. These needs should always be incorporated with your communication strategy.
They stay in touch – Irrespective of distance or time, head office is never far away – and they should always present in the running of your business.
They employ the right people – CEO’s and Directors employ strong and influential on-site managers and leaders.
They adopt new technology – They keep pace with the upcoming technological trends in the sector. Whilst this can be considered disruptive, if you’re to remain competitive within your industry it’s important to implement these new technologies and iron out the creases as they appear.
They include all of their sites – There’s an active involvement of all site leaders in company decision making.
They ensure company values – They ensure top down company values and for consistency reasons, they check in that these are reiterated at each individual site.
They benchmark – They benchmark their performance against their other sites.

If you end up cutting corners, you compromise profitability.

And you certainly don’t want that if you’re looking at turning yourself into a multi-location business.

If you would like to try your hand at aligning all of your businesses sites and exploring the financial benefits that goRoster provides, feel free to give our 14 day free trial a go here.

(1) “Survey finds franchise sector resilient and growing”. http://www.franchise.co.nz/article/1167

(2) “How the digital future can impact franchisee performance”. http://www.franchise.co.nz/article/1659/

Tags: business, finance, financial, hospitality, location, multi, success
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So, where are you sitting financially?

March, 2015

As the owner or director of a business there’s always the fear of uncertainty, and the pain of implementation if ever comes the time where you need to change something that already works considerably well for you.

Why change something when it already does the job?

Ask yourselves the hard questions. Is it giving you a level of transparency necessary at the level of your position within your business? Is it giving you enough clarity, so that when it’s time for you to discuss with the board your current financial standing – you know exactly where your money has and hasn’t been going? It’s not uncommon that many people cannot answer those questions with a firm yes.

In business, nothing is more important that being on top of your financial game. There is no single formula alone that every business should abide by for determining actual employee costs because the required contributions vary from business to business. Policies also can be different from one company to another. What’s for sure is that all these costs can add up to what the true costs of employing your workforce are.

What’s alarming is that these costs can significantly shoot up because of poor staff management. Under-staffing, over-staffing, failing to hire the right people, inability to utilise people’s potential, overworked or low performing personnel and other manifestations of a poorly planned human resources strategy can bring sizeable, often undetected expenses to a company.

So, where are you sitting financially?

goRoster helps to gain much more clarity with respect to your financial standing. We’re here to help ensure you gain enough understanding each week in knowing exactly what your breakdown of costs are. Click here to give our free trial a go and see how we can help you gain control over your costs again.

Tags: cost, director, employee, finance, goRoster, owner business, rostering
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Quit getting it wrong and eliminate human error

March, 2015

You would think with the continual developments in technology today that the possibility of human error would have been eliminated. It’s certainly a nice thought to entertain.

But it’s just not the case.

A number of businesses still hold tight to their old fashioned ways and I hate to say it – but Microsoft Excel, is most certainly one of those. Why is it that often we hate to get rid of the things we’ believe’ serve us so well, but we ‘know’ to be outdated.

We develop this close bond with them and they create what we call a safety net for our business.

Let’s be honest. There will come a time in the near future where you’re investment in current software is going to leave you in the dust of your competition. It’s up to you to decide if you’re going to jump ship before it sinks, or whether you’re going down with it.

Here are some quick tips to help you begin your journey towards rightly accounting for those employee costs:

Incorporate ALL the additional costs for your employees each week (superannuation, annual leave, insurance). Doing this weekly ensures you don’t get any surprises come end of the financial year
Communicate these figures with your head office and always work to a weekly budget
Highlight your most important metrics (e.g. wage cost)
Use indicators and warnings to identify when you’re getting close to your budget.

goRoster helps to gain much more clarity with respect to where you’re sitting financially and can aid you in trimming back the excess from those employee costs. Click here to give our free trial a go, and lets see how we can help you gain back control over your costs again.

Tags: employees, error, finance, goRoster, hospitality, human, management, technology
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Want to know true cost of employing a staff member? It’s more than you think.

March, 2015

If someone were to ask you what you believed to be the true cost of an employee, do you think you’d be able to answer it?

In our experience, most people can’t.

The biggest thing standing in the way of those who can’t answer this is their inability to see things long term – they’d rather calculate figures on week to week basis and see that those costs are tracking correctly and align to their targets, rather than looking at the big picture.

With the end of the financial year luring, a lot of businesses are starting to look over their accounts, seeing that everything adds up just nicely. But – have you accounted for everything you needed to along the way? Have I got your attention yet? Good. I hope so. Because by not accurately accounting for all of your employee costs along the way can leave you in a rather sticky situation come the end of the year when you haven’t been accounting for those costs you thought back then could simply wait.

Most hospitality businesses follow this typical model that determines the breakdown of their expenditure:

30% Fixed Costs
30% Cost of Goods Sold
30% Employee Costs
10% Profit

The most controllable cost of all? Employee costs. When you aren’t calculating these correctly week after week – what percentage do you think gets cut into? Yep. You got it. And what business minded person wants to lose out on their profit.

You need to ensure you’re executing your employee payments accurately by paying the correct superannuation contributions and insurance each week and including these in your weekly outgoing costs. In doing so, you’re giving yourself a lot more clarity as to where you’re sitting financially as a business.

Tags: control, cost, employee, finance, goRoster, management, rostering
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