Budgets and Publishing
Labour is the largest controllable cost for most hospitality operators. StaffBrik's budgeting tools give you visibility into planned wage spend as you build the rota, so you can make informed decisions before shifts are published and committed.
Setting a Week's Budget
Budgets are set per location, per week, from the rota itself. When a week has no budget, the rota shows a Budget not set banner with a Set Budget button. Once a budget is set, use Adjust next to it in the rota header to change it.
Both open the Set Weekly Budget dialog, which asks for two things:
- Estimated net revenue - what you expect to take that week, ex VAT. Choose Daily Entry to give a figure for each day, or Weekly Entry to give one total that is split evenly across the week. Copy Previous Week's Budget fills in last week's figures as a starting point.
- Target wage % - the share of that revenue you want to spend on labour. It starts at your organisation default from StaffBrik Settings.
Example: A cafe expecting £8,000 of net revenue with a target of 30% has a labour budget of £2,400 for the week.
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Estimated net revenue | £8,000 |
| Target wage % | 30% |
| Weekly budget | £2,400 |
Save Budget saves the forecast, the daily split and the target together, in one go. The dialog stays open until the save has gone through, and if it fails it says so and keeps your figures, so you can try again without retyping anything. You never end up with a new forecast and the old target, or the other way round.
If you change the target in this dialog, owners and admins are asked whether to make it the new default as well. The question only appears when you changed the target this time, not every time you save a week whose target differs from the default. Members save the target for that week only, because the default is an organisation setting.
A percentage target scales naturally with trade. A quiet January week and a busy December week have different revenue, and should have different staff budgets. Using Daily Entry also gives each day its own budget, which makes the daily breakdown far more useful.
The Budget
The weekly budget is your estimated net revenue multiplied by your target wage %. It is what appears on the rota as your spending target, and what the planned cost is compared against.
Planned and Actual Labour
StaffBrik keeps two labour figures for every rota week, and it helps to know which is which.
- Planned is every shift on the rota, drafts included. It is what the budget tracker on the rota page, the dashboard and the over-budget alerts use, because you want to know you are over budget while you are still planning, not after you publish.
- Actual labour counts published shifts only. Draft shifts are a plan, not labour, so a rota with nothing published has no actual labour yet. Actual labour is what the actual wage % on the rota, and the Weekly Wage, Employee Cost and Day of Week reports, are built on.
Both figures treat leave the same way. A shift covered by a logged absence or by approved time off is taken out, and what you pay for that day is counted instead:
- Sickness - that day's Statutory Sick Pay, on the absence's qualifying days only, and only until SSP stops at the 28-week maximum. SSP is never charged on a day that is paid as holiday, so a sick day kept as holiday is charged once, as holiday.
- Holiday and other paid time off - priced day by day at the employee's base hourly rate in force on that day, which is what their holiday pay costs you. A day that falls on a scheduled shift pays that shift's own paid time (after its own break); other days follow your break policy.
Employer NI and pension are added on top of both, once, in the same way as for shifts. A shift covered by leave adds nothing to the week's NI and pension.
When you log an absence, any shift you untick as not affected counts as worked, and keeps its cost on the rota. See Logging Absences.
Open shifts that nobody has claimed have no cost until someone takes them.
Example: A rota has £2,000 of published shifts and £300 of draft shifts. One published £80 shift is covered by approved holiday. The holiday pay for that day, at the employee's base hourly rate with employer NI and pension added, comes to £76.
How Each Person's Week Is Costed
Employer NI and pension are worked out on each person's whole week, the way payroll does it:
- One threshold a week, across every site. Someone working at two of your sites in one week gets one £96 NI threshold and one £120 pension threshold for the week, not one per site. When their shifts change at one site, the other site's rota totals update too.
- Starters are charged in their first week. A new starter whose first day is mid-week is charged employer NI and pension in that first rota week.
- Rolled-up holiday is in the rota cost. For staff whose pay rate rolls holiday into the hourly cost (zero-hours and casual staff, by default), each shift includes 12.07% holiday pay, plus the NI and pension on it. Their holiday is paid as they work, so the time off they book is not charged again. See Zero-Hours and Casual Staff.
| Planned | Actual labour | |
|---|---|---|
| Shifts | £2,300 | £2,000 |
| Covered by leave | -£80 | -£80 |
| Paid time off, with NI and pension | +£76 | +£76 |
| Total | £2,296 | £1,996 |
Budget Tracking on the Rota
The budget tracker sits at the top of the week view:
| What you see | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Budget | The week's budget |
| Target | The target wage % behind it |
| Hours | Hours scheduled this week. Open shifts nobody has claimed, and ones that expired unclaimed, are not counted |
| % of budget | Planned cost as a share of the budget, shown on the bar |
| Planned | The planned cost for the week, drafts included |
| Remaining or over budget | How much is left, or how far over you are |
The bar changes colour as the plan fills the budget:
- Green - at or under budget.
- Amber - over budget, by up to a quarter.
- Red - 125% of budget or more.
Before you have recorded any takings, the planned cost is also shown as a share of your forecast, for example "(31% of forecast)". Once takings are recorded, the tracker shows your actual wage % instead (see Budget vs Actual).
Budget tracking is a planning tool, not a hard block. StaffBrik will not prevent you from scheduling shifts that push you over budget - it trusts you to make the right call. Sometimes a busy weekend justifies going over target. The point is that you make that decision consciously, not accidentally.
Budget Forecast by Day
Below the weekly summary, the Daily Breakdown shows the planned cost for each day against that day's budget. This helps you spot imbalances - for instance, if Thursday's spend is disproportionately high because you over-staffed for a quiet lunch.
A day marked with an asterisk includes SSP or time off adjustments. Hover over its bar to see the scheduled cost, what was taken out for absence or time off, and what was added back: SSP, with NI and pension and Paid time off, with NI and pension. The Day view and the All Locations day cards show the same figures as the week's day columns.
Hovering over the weekly cost on a person's row explains that it shows their leave at pay. Employer NI and pension on leave are added in the day totals.
| Day | Shifts | Planned cost |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 4 | £310 |
| Tuesday | 4 | £310 |
| Wednesday | 5 | £380 |
| Thursday | 6 | £420 |
| Friday | 7 | £490 |
| Saturday | 8 | £560 |
| Sunday | 3 | £210 |
| Total | 37 | £2,680 |
In this example, Saturday accounts for 21% of the week's spend. If that aligns with Saturday being your busiest trading day, it makes sense. If not, you may want to redistribute.
Use the daily breakdown to match staffing to expected trade. A restaurant that does 40% of its weekly revenue on Friday and Saturday should expect to spend a proportionate amount on labour those days. Flat staffing across every day is a common source of waste.
Over-Budget Alerts
When the planned cost goes over the budget, StaffBrik makes it clear:
- The budget tracker turns amber (or red at 125% and over) and shows the overspend, for example "£280 over budget".
- An Over Budget panel appears under the tracker, showing what the overspend would cost if it were repeated every week.
- The StaffBrik dashboard raises an alert such as "Planned shifts are £280.00 over budget (112% of budget planned)", and the rota list flags the week.
These all use the planned cost, drafts included, so the warning arrives while you can still change the plan.
A week with a £0 budget (a £0 forecast) reads as having no budget. It never shows an overspend, an Over budget badge in the All Locations view, or a dashboard over-budget alert. Nor does a closed site.
You are not prevented from publishing - the alert is advisory. The goal is to ensure over-budget weeks are intentional, not accidental.
Publishing Rotas
Rotas follow a two-stage workflow: draft and published.
Draft Stage
When you first build a rota (or copy a previous week), all shifts start in draft status:
- Only Owners and Managers can see draft shifts.
- Employees see nothing - their rota appears blank until you publish.
- You can freely add, edit, move, and delete shifts without triggering notifications.
- The budget tracker is fully active during draft, so you can optimise before committing.
This is your planning phase. Take as long as you need.
Publishing
When the rota is ready, click Publish in the toolbar. This:
- Changes all draft shifts to published status.
- Makes the rota visible to employees via their Brikly app login.
- Sends a notification to each employee with their upcoming shifts.
- Posts any draft open shifts to staff, and sends eligible staff the "New open shift" notification.
- If the rota is over budget, shows a confirmation dialogue (you must acknowledge the overspend to proceed).
A draft open shift that has already started, or whose claim cutoff has passed, could never be claimed, so Publish leaves it as a draft and says why, for example "1 open shift was not posted because its claim cutoff has passed. Edit it from the Open shifts row to set a later cutoff, or withdraw it." Everything else still publishes.
Once published, employees can see their shifts. Editing a published shift will send an update notification to the affected employee. While you can still make changes, frequent edits to published rotas erode staff trust - aim to get it right before you publish.
Best Practice: Weekly Publishing Rhythm
Most hospitality operators follow a consistent rhythm:
- Monday or Tuesday - copy last week's rota and adjust for the coming week.
- Wednesday - review budget, finalise adjustments, confirm with team leads.
- Thursday - publish the rota for the following week.
This gives staff at least three to four days' notice of their shifts - a reasonable expectation in hospitality, and well ahead of any contractual or legal notice requirements.
The earlier you publish, the fewer last-minute swap requests you will receive. Staff who know their shifts by Thursday can plan their personal lives around them, reducing no-shows and requests for changes.
Locking Rotas
After publishing, you can lock a rota to prevent further changes:
- A locked rota cannot be edited by Managers - only Owners can unlock it.
- Locking is typically done after the week has been worked, to preserve the schedule as a historical record.
- Locked rotas feed into reports with confidence that the data has not been retrospectively altered.
To lock a rota, open the week you want to lock and click Lock Rota in the toolbar. A confirmation dialogue will appear.
To unlock (Owner only), open the locked week and click Unlock Rota.
A closed site's rotas are always read-only, locked or not. See Closed Sites.
Locking is optional but recommended for any week that has been completed. It prevents accidental edits and ensures your labour cost reports remain accurate over time.
Multi-Location Budgets
Each location has its own independent budget:
- Set a different forecast and target percentage per site (a high-volume restaurant may run at 28% labour, while a small cafe runs at 32%).
- Budget tracking on the rota builder applies to the currently selected location.
- The All Locations view shows a combined budget summary alongside individual site breakdowns.
Example: a two-site operation
| Location | Revenue forecast | Target % | Budget envelope |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Street Cafe | £6,000 | 32% | £1,920 |
| Station Road Restaurant | £14,000 | 28% | £3,920 |
| Combined | £20,000 | 29.2% | £5,840 |
Resist the temptation to set the same percentage across all sites. A grab-and-go cafe with a small team and fast service naturally has a different cost structure from a full-service restaurant with a brigade kitchen. Set targets that reflect each venue's operational reality.
Budget vs Actual
Budget tracking on the rota shows the planned cost against a budget built from your forecast revenue. Once days have passed, record your actual takings so the rota can show your actual wage %: actual labour on the days with takings recorded, as a share of those takings.
The tracker reads, for example, "Actual wage 34% of net revenue". Until the whole week has takings recorded it says how many days the figure covers, such as "(revenue for 3 days)", because only those days' labour and takings are compared. A cafe closed one day a week that records six days has a complete week. If takings are recorded but nothing on the rota is published yet, the tracker asks you to publish the rota to see the actual wage %, because there is no actual labour to compare.
See Actual Revenue Tracking for how to enter actual revenue from the rota builder or the dashboard.
For weekly totals across a date range, use the Weekly Wage report under StaffBrik > Reports, which compares actual labour with your budgets week by week.
Together, these tools help you:
- See your real labour cost as a percentage of actual revenue, not just forecasts.
- Identify weeks where forecast accuracy was poor (so you can improve future estimates).
- Spot patterns of consistent under-staffing or over-staffing relative to actual trade.
- Build more accurate budgets over time by understanding the gap between plan and reality.