7 Restaurant Dashboards and Reports That Help 7shifts’ Users Run Smarter Businesses

Restaurant management and running the day-in and day-out takes a ton of mental energy. It can be difficult to come up for air and look at why you’re doing what you’re doing. Schedules are made, payroll is run, and employees checked-in with—but it's tough to know if you're working as efficiently or as profitably as possible.

With 7shifts restaurant reporting features, you can analyze your restaurant labor performance and make strategic decisions that reduce costs & increase profits. The 7shifts platform gives you a snapshot of your labor and people operations. Use it to get real-time insights into your labor operations, team engagement, and overall store performance.

Here are seven ways that 7shifts users run reports to work smarter.

1. Understand how close your projections are to actuals

You can have the most detailed projections, but they'll never be quite on the nose. 7shifts can create detailed reports on variances between your actual and projected sales and labor to uncover gaps in your planning like excess OT, under-staffing, or early punch-ins to build more efficient, money-saving shift schedules. With an integrated POS, you can pull in actual sales numbers for an up-to-date look at how your restaurant business is performing.

7shifts Actuals Report for Restaurants

Take it from the team at Canyon's Fresh Grill: “When [7shifts'] projects our sales, your bar graphs, and your line graphs are almost, if not, they're 95%. They're almost spot-on…” says owner Mark Crumpton. Canyon pulls their sales data from CAKE POS to build reports, which they've used to cut labor costs up to 15%

2. Know which employees you can count on—and who isn't engaged

Who is your most reliable employee? Who is most likely to call out sick? You may think you know, but the data may surprise you. 7shifts employee engagement tool and reports show you the real numbers behind who is always on time, who drops the most shifts, and more.

7shifts Employee Engagement Report

Team members can give their feedback after every shift, which you can see in the engagement report. Quickly identify issues before they become problems and keep your team engaged—restaurants that use these features have 13% better staff retention!

3. See exactly where your payroll dollars are going

Restaurant payroll doesn't always paint the full picture. By creating a detailed report of worked hours, overtime, breaks, and wages, you can better monitor where your labor dollars are being spent. You can use these reports to compare worked hours and wages against your schedules and targets to find your biggest gaps.

7shifts worked hours, overtime, breaks and wages report

4. Track performance on the go

Never miss an important insight or metric because you weren't in the restaurant. 7shifts' mobile manager dashboard empowers you to track performance on the go and make on-the-fly decisions that reduce your labor costs and make your business better.

7shifts Mobile App for Restaurants

5. Get a birds' eye view of your entire operation

When you run more than one restaurant, you can't be in every place at once. 7shifts operations overview makes that possible. Track your entire business at once with Operations Overview. Get the visibility and labor insights you need to make the right decisions for your restaurants — no matter how many you have. If you have strict labor targets for each of your locations, Operations Overview can help ensure you hit those KPIs and other targets without having to look at each location individually.

7shifts Operations Overview Report

The team at Main Squeeze Juice Co. uses tools like this to manage across locations—saving up to 25% in labor costs in some cases. “...I can make adjustments in real time based off of my sales numbers. And it's right there in front of you [in 7shifts], what more could you ask for? It's like having the best restaurateur in the world, in your ear all day long,” says Jessie Williams, Director of IT at Main Squeeze Juice Co.

6. Break down labor budgets by department

Sometimes you need more than just a top-level overview. What if the back of house is perfectly staffed, but you have servers hanging out without customers? Department-based budgeting unlocks those insights. With a few simple clicks, you can control how your sales divide and projections are calculated for each department in your restaurant, allowing you to more accurately project labor costs and build smarter schedules.

7shifts Labor Budgets By Department

7. Keep an eye on your team's overall efficiency and productivity

Who did what, and when? The Task Report is packed with insights that can help you find your top-performing locations and employees, keep record of all the tasks your team has completed, and see what isn’t getting done. Within the Manager Log Book, the Task Summary provides an at-a-glance look at the day's tasks, which includes a progress tracker and detailed breakdown of what tasks are complete or outstanding. And it has the added bonus of adding some color to your notes recorded in the Log Book each day. The Tasks Report and Task Summary are the ultimate tools for staying on top of your team's task management, no matter where you are.

D. J. Costantino

Hi! I'm D.J., 7shifts' resident Content Writer. I come from a family of chefs and have a background in food journalism. I'm always looking for ways to help make the restaurant industry better!