How to track labour cost across multiple venues

Written by Roster Flow. Published 22 July 2026.

Add up wages for the whole business, divide by total sales, and the number can look fine while one venue loses money. A busy site with a lean roster can hide a quieter one that carries a person too many every afternoon. Tracking labour cost venue by venue shows where the wage bill is going, and gives each manager a number they can do something about.

This article covers setting that up and reading it each week. For rostering across sites in the first place, see the multi-location staff rostering guide.

What counts as labour cost

Labour cost is more than hours multiplied by an hourly rate. Decide once what goes in, and use the same list for every venue, or the comparison means nothing.

Some of these are billed quarterly or yearly rather than weekly. For a weekly report, add them as a percentage of wages worked out from the last full year, and correct the figure when the bill arrives.

Tag every hour to the venue where it was worked

A venue’s labour cost is only as good as the hours behind it. Every shift on the roster needs a location, and every clock in needs to land against the same one. When someone works a morning at one site and an afternoon at another, that is two shifts, one at each venue, not one long day at their home site.

• Roster by location. Each shift carries the venue, so rostered cost can be split before the week starts.
• Clock in at the venue. Actual hours are recorded against the place they were worked.
• Approve by venue. Each manager approves their own site’s timesheets, so mistakes are caught by the person who saw the shift.
• Use the same names in payroll. If your payroll system tracks locations or cost centres, name them exactly as the roster does.

Shared staff, managers and time that belongs to no venue

Most arguments about venue figures are about shared costs. Pick a method for each kind of cost and apply it every week:

Keeping office time as its own line is often clearer than spreading it, because each venue manager can only change what happens on their own floor.

Build a weekly report for each venue

Use the same figures for every venue, from the same week, prepared on the same day each week:

• Sales for the week, measured the same way at every venue.
• Rostered hours and actual hours, from the roster and the approved timesheets.
• Labour cost, using the list above.
• Labour cost percentage, labour cost divided by sales.

labour cost % = labour cost ÷ sales × 100

The labour cost percentage calculator does the sum, and the glossary explains labour cost percentage in more detail.

A worked example: two cafes, one week

An owner runs two cafes, Beach Rd and Station St. One manager works 38 hours across both, 30 at Beach Rd and 8 at Station St. The manager’s cost for the week is $1,520, so Beach Rd carries 30/38 of it, $1,200, and Station St carries 8/38, $320. The figures are an example, not a guide to what your wages should be.

For both venues together, 33.4% looks like a single number to watch. By venue, Beach Rd is at 30.0% and Station St at 40.0%, and Station St is where the owner looks next.

Station St’s timesheets show three people on from 14:00 to 16:00 every weekday, while the afternoon trade needs two. Rostering two people in that window instead of three saves 10 hours a week, one person for 2 hours on 5 days, without touching the morning rush.

Compare rostered and actual hours by venue

The roster sets the planned cost, and the timesheets show what happened. A venue whose actual hours run well over its rostered hours has a different problem from one whose roster is simply too heavy: early starts, late finishes, or shifts added on the day. Compare the two for each venue every week, before the pay run, so differences are explained while people still remember them.

The rostered versus worked hours calculator lines them up.

What to check when one venue runs high

Work through the causes in order, from the ones outside the roster to the ones inside it:

1. Check sales firstA quiet week from weather, roadworks or a local event elsewhere pushes the percentage up without anyone rostering badly.
2. Look by day and hourFind the parts of the day where hours are high against sales, rather than cutting across the whole week.
3. Check the expensive hoursWeekend and public holiday hours cost more under awards such as the Restaurant, Hospitality and General Retail awards, so see how many of the venue’s hours fall there.
4. Check starts and finishesCompare clock ins with the roster for early starts and late finishes that nobody approved.
5. Look for one-offsTraining, a stocktake or a function can lift a single week; note it rather than cutting next week’s roster.
6. Change one thing, then watchMake one roster change at a time and compare the next few weeks against it.

Set targets per venue, from your own figures

Venues differ. A site with table service, long opening hours or a lot of weekend trade will run a different labour cost percentage from a counter-service site open short weekday hours. Rather than borrowing a figure from somewhere else, take each venue’s last 12 weeks, note its good weeks, and set a target and an alert level from those. Review the targets each quarter, and again whenever award rates change.

Flag weeks with a public holiday in the report rather than comparing them directly with an ordinary week. Public holiday hours attract penalty rates under the Restaurant, Hospitality and General Retail awards, so a venue that trades on the day will run a higher percentage that week. Compare it with the same holiday last year instead, and check which public holidays fall in each venue’s state.

The roster cost calculator helps check a venue’s next roster against its target before it is published, rather than finding out after the pay run.

A weekly routine that keeps it running

1. Close off last weekEach venue manager approves their timesheets, checks every shift sits against the right venue, and explains any shift that ran well past the roster.
2. Build the reportPull each venue’s sales and approved hours, add shared costs by the agreed method, and work out each venue’s labour cost percentage.
3. Review it with managersSpend ten minutes on each venue: what ran high, why, and the one change to try next week.
4. Check the next rosterCost each venue’s draft roster against its target, and make the agreed change before the roster goes out.

The days matter less than the order. Timesheets are approved before the report is built, and the report is read before the next roster is published, so each week’s figures shape the following week’s roster.

Keep the records behind the numbers

The hours behind a venue report are also records the law requires. Employers have to keep time and wages records for 7 years, including the pay rate, any penalty rates and loadings paid, leave taken and leave balances. Keeping hours tagged by venue in those same records means the report and the pay run come from the same figures.

Roster Flow covers the hours side of this: availability and leave from staff phones, the roster published to everybody at once, clock ins that become timesheets, and approved hours sent to Xero, MYOB or a CSV file.

A weekly checklist for labour cost by venue

• Every shift on the roster has a venue
• Clock ins are recorded at the venue where the shift is worked
• Shared staff and managers are split by hours worked at each venue
• Super, payroll tax and insurance are added the same way for every venue
• Sales, hours, labour cost and the percentage are reported per venue on the same day each week
• Rostered and actual hours are compared per venue before the pay run
• A high venue is checked by day and hour before the roster changes
• Targets come from each venue’s own recent weeks

Sources

• Fair Work Ombudsman: tax and superannuation
• Fair Work Ombudsman: workers compensation
• Fair Work Ombudsman: record-keeping
• Fair Work Commission: Restaurant Industry Award 2020 [MA000119]
• Fair Work Commission: Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 [MA000009]
• Fair Work Commission: General Retail Industry Award 2020 [MA000004]

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