How to Use the Simple Labor Budget Builder – Hotel Effectiveness

The Hook Use this workflow to review your current labor plan and format your revenue data before generating an annual budget.

Prerequisites

• Applies to: Corporate Managers, General Managers, and Controllers.

• Requires permissions to edit labor plans (Contact your account admin if you lack access).

Phase 1: Prepare Your Labor Data

1. Review Current Labor Standards

Review your labor standards to identify positions needing attention. For individual hotels, look for positions with no standards, missing punched data for the last 7 days, or a missing standard pay rate. For groups, check custom export reports for missing plans or actuals over the last 16 days, $0 standard rates, or groups with no active drivers.

How to access:

Sign in to Hotel Effectiveness > Labor Plans > hover over Edit Labor Standards > select Standards Needing Attention.

2. Update Labor Standards for the Coming Year

After reviewing, take action to update your labor plan by adjusting hours, drivers, or pay rates for the upcoming year.

How to access: Sign in to Hotel Effectiveness > Labor Plan > click Edit Labor Standards (or the specific position name). Note: Editing requires permission.

3. Build a Staging Spreadsheet

Retrieve your official Annual Revenue Budget and organize the data into a spreadsheet featuring monthly totals.

• Required Data: Rooms Sold, Rooms Available, and Rooms Revenue.

• Additional Data: Include any other business drivers used to create your labor standards, such as F&B Covers.

• Pro Tip: Do not use number formatting (no commas and no dollar signs). Decimals are allowed.

Note: If you use RevSync through ProfitSword, you can skip this staging step and import directly

Pro Tip It's important that you don't use number formatting in the staging spreadsheet (i.e., no commas and no dollar signs). It's ok to have decimals. 🚫 No commas; 🚫 No $ signs; ☑ Decimals

How to Access the Simple Labor Budget Builder

Sign in to Hotel Effectiveness.
Click on Labor Plans in the left main menu.
Hover over Labor Budgets on the top menu to see the drop-down.
Select Simple Labor Budget Builder to open the tool.
Select Create New Budget.

There are four simple steps to set up a new budget in the Simple Labor Budget Builder:

Import Revenue Budgets
Review Labor Standards
Build Labor Budget
View Monthly Wages Budgets

Step #1: Import Revenue Budgets

Click on Add New Budget Version to start the setup of your new budget.

2. Fill out the required fields: Budget Version Name, Start Date and End Date, and Budget Type (Working or Final

3. Optional: If you do not have a full year of historical data, adjust the Historical Trend Date Range to begin on the day you started tracking data in the system to prevent negative impacts on historical trends

4. Click Save and Import from Excel (or select the ProfitSword option).

5. Copy the row values from your staging spreadsheet, paste them into the corresponding fields, and click Import Budgets

5. Click on Back to All Budget Versions to return to the main importer screen.

6. Click on Next Step to continue.

Step 2: Review Labor Standards

Verify that all positions you are budgeting for have an applied standard, that wages are present, and that the effective dates cover your budgeted date range. Click Edit the Labor Standards to make any necessary changes

Step 3: Build Labor Budget

Select a revenue budget version from the drop-down.
Click on Build My Budget. Allow a few minutes for the system to build your labor budgets, including the Monthly Wages Budget, Monthly Hours Budget, and Daily Details Reports.

Step 4: View Monthly Wages Budget

Review your Monthly Wages Budget directly on the page, or click the Excel icon to download a CSV file for outside analysis.

To view other labor budgets, hover over the Labor Budgets menu and select Simple Labor Budget Builder - View Monthly Hours or Simple Labor Budget Builder - Download Daily Details.

Pro Tip Simple Labor Budget Builder reports do not include non-work hours (e.g., paid time off), employee benefits, or employer taxes. You will need to add them to your payroll budget to get a closer forecast.

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