Cut Costs Initiative: Analyze Hourly Sales Trends for Scheduling

Recipe: 20 minutes + Essentials or Professional Subscription

Let us walk you through it step by step: Analyze Hourly Sales Trends

Log into Avero in another tab, then click the link to launch a step-by-step guide to analyzing your sales trends by hour for employee schedule.

Employee Scheduling - Powered by Hourly Sales Data

In this guide, we will focus on using hourly sales trends to use data to refine employee scheduling. See our complete guide to this report: Hourly Sales Report

Sales by Hour Trend Reports

Trend Reporting is a helpful way to analyze averages or see incremental changes over time.

This means that running an Hourly Sales Trend for the last 15 Mondays will show you the average sales over the last 15 Mondays for each hour of the day (or down to 15-minute increments). This is a great tool for making data-driven decisions based on recent trends and your actual performance:

This report shows an average across 7 recent Mondays, with the average covers served per 15 minute increment. In the graph, you can toggle between the individual Mondays or see the average graphed.

The table displays the performance of each Monday and an average for the group of Mondays:

What's Relevant?

Use the drop-down to switch between metrics.

If you're working on Server schedules, see how many guests come in by selecting Covers or how many tables are coming in by selecting Checks.
For Bartenders or Cooks, look at the Item Quantity to see how many items are being ordered throughout the day.

Using Sales Trends - Scheduling and More!

This report showing a trend of covers or checks is a great way to understand demand - how many guests or tables are active in the included time intervals - to determine the best in and out times for staggered shifts, for example. This can also be used to evaluate operating hours to ensure you are open when demand is high and aren't staying open later than demand justifies.

Reference Often

Look for peaks and valleys in your sales or guest volume. Consider bringing on more employees for short shifts at peak times and stagger employees' start and end times to reduce staffing during the valleys.

Pin this report to your dashboard or schedule it to email regularly so your schedules are always founded in data - the data will change as you make operational changes!