Wage percentage and the week it rained
A wet Thursday in a garden-centre group is not a mystery. Sales fall. If hours stay put, wage percentage rises. That sentence is true and still useless if it is the only sentence in the period pack.
We ask two questions before weather is allowed onto the page. First: did published hours change? Second: were people sent home, and were those hours still in the labour file as paid? Many files keep the hours. The percentage then punishes a manager for a storm and for a payroll practice at the same time.
Training days belong on a separate line. A shop that looks expensive in week 12 may have put four new Saturday staff through till training. That is not the same as covering a quiet weekday with full shifts.
Late-open minutes are a labour story that weather does not explain. If the door is late because the opener’s bus failed, write that. If the door is late because the roster has nobody contracted before 9:30, write that instead. The Friday pack can hold both. The estate wage percentage cannot.
Utilitycraftline will name weather when the Met Office record and the till move together. We will not let it wash the hours.