Dear Florist,
First rule of business.
"if you can measure it, you can manage it"
In our industry of creative folk, we are not world renowned for tackling serious maths problems, we have a few geniuses thank goodness, but it's fair to say we won't be seeing too many florists tackling Einstein on mastermind.
This little trick is therefore a God send. We know we need to measure and this is so simple, it's brilliant.
Every shop knows how many staffing hours it needs to operate weekly, if you have two staff open from 9-5 six days that's simple… 2 ( staff ) x 8 hours=16 hours x 6 ( days )=96 staff hours per week. ( Now find your own staffing hours figure. )
We also know how much money we take weekly. Most shops do a weekly take, if not, it's very easy to do. For this example let's assume you took £3,000 this week.
Therefore, £3000 divided by 96 staff hours=£31.25 per hour taken on average.
You can store that figure away, related to whatever week number of the year it is for future reference.
Now when it comes to peak periods the same applies, if you have 300 staff hours and £9000 in weekly take, that equals only £30 per hour taken. Clearly something wrong here.
Could it be you are doing work which isn't paying?
When it comes to relay companies that pay out different commission rates, using this very easy measuring tool, just goes to show you the big overall return for effort applied.
Comment from Simon
Its not an overall profit & loss or anything like reporting you get from your book keeper / accountant. But its a good headline figure for any florist to see the employment cost per hour for running your business. It provides a way to check and see is more business more profitable?
Simon Stirling and the Direct2Florist Team