Hospitality Business Magazine

goRoster cuts labour costs

New Zealand-born online roster solution, goRoster, accurately plans, designs and costs staff rosters, and communicates them quickly.

rsz_pedalpusher_15286Staff costs are calculated automatically as the roster is being built, including overtime and other pay rate variations to ensure costs are accurate.

Rosters can then be communicated electronically to staff providing the opportunity for them to respond immediately to confirm or query shifts.

All information is stored in the cloud, meaning rosters can be developed and amended from anywhere in the world – all that is required is an internet connection.

The result of a collaboration between a bar owner and a local software development company, goRoster’s reputation has been growing steadily – along with its client base, of which 17 per cent now come from overseas.

Managing director Chris Tacon is excited about where the company is headed.

“Our customer numbers have doubled over the past year. I think this is partly because we have learned to focus our marketing. By working closely with our customers and listening to their feedback, we now know how to communicate the real value goRoster offers.

“We’ve invested in researching our market and finding out what they need – and what they don’t need – and we’ve used this to shape our product.”

With its single focus on rostering, goRoster is able to channel its resources into integration as well as carefully considered enhancements – for example working with major payroll systems to share data and enable comprehensive financial reporting based on projected and actual turnover.

“If a customer asks if we can integrate with another specialist software, we’ll do our best to make it happen. Likewise, if someone wants to know what systems our software integrates with we can provide a list,” says Tacon.

Megan Kirk from independent coffee roaster Mojo Coffee recently made the switch to goRoster.

“In an attempt to manage our wage costs better, we decided we needed to change the way we do our rosters.” In April 2013, the company’s management made the switch from hard copy MS Excel spreadsheets to goRoster.

“As a result, we are running a much more efficient operation,” Kirk says. “We now have the ability to analyse our labour costs against sales on a daily basis and it is showing a clear benefit in cost savings.”