Your crew gets paid even on a day nobody buys a thing. Not the full rate, though. This week you work out exactly what a crew costs, and why the busiest day often has the cheapest labor.
Learning objectives. After this week you can (1) work out how many staff a wage budget fields; (2) compute what the crew is actually paid; and (3) compute labor cost per unit served.
Remember this: don't judge payroll by the total. Divide it by units served.
1) The wage budget: capacity's price tag
Staff you can field = Wage budget ÷ $200 (round down)
Each staffer needs $200 of wage budget a day and brings 190 units of capacity. Budget $700 and ask for 4: 700 ÷ 200 = 3.5, which rounds down, so 3 show up. The budget decides, not the request. Fund a wage budget far short of the crew you asked for and staff trouble, like no-shows, gets more likely too.
2) What you actually pay: base + variable
Wages paid = Staff × $200 × (0.45 + 0.55 × Utilization)
The 45% is the base: $90 per staffer, owed just for showing up. The other 55% grows with how busy the truck ran. Three staff at 60% utilization: 600 × (0.45 + 0.33) = 600 × 0.78 = $468. At 100% a staffer costs the full $200; on a dead day, $90. You never pay more than the wage budget you set.
Try it
Three crew at $200 a day, 31.4% utilization. You pay 45% of the budget whatever happens, and the other 55% scales with how hard they worked.
Wages = Staff × $200 × (0.45 + 0.55 × Utilization)
Fill in the boxes.
3) Labor-index days
Wages after the index = Wages × Labor index
The Extrapoli Daily prints a labor index each morning, and it multiplies your wage bill. At 110%, a $668 payroll becomes 668 × 1.10 = $734.80. Nobody on your crew got a raise; the economy moved.
4) Labor cost per unit served: the crew-size verdict
Labor cost per unit = Wages paid ÷ Units served
Three staff (570 capacity) at 80% utilization: wages 600 × (0.45 + 0.44) = $534, units 0.80 × 570 = 456, so 534 ÷ 456 ≈ $1.17 a unit. The same crew at 50%: wages $435, units 285, about $1.53 a unit. The quiet day paid less in total but more per unit, because the $90 bases were spread over fewer units. The lowest it can go, at 100%, is 200 ÷ 190 ≈ $1.05.
Try it
$373.62 of wages across 179 units served.
Labor cost per unit = Wages ÷ Units served
Fill in the boxes.
Quick self-check
Wage budget $650, you ask for 3 staff, and the day runs at 40% utilization on 570 capacity. (a) How many staff work? (b) Wages paid? (c) Labor cost per unit served? (Answers: 3; 600 × (0.45 + 0.22) = $402; 0.40 × 570 = 228 units, so 402 ÷ 228 ≈ $1.76.)
Common mistakes
- Judging payroll by the total. A bigger wage bill on a busy day can be the cheaper labor.
- Thinking a dead day is free. Every staffer who shows up costs at least $90.
- Funding fewer staff than you asked for. The wage budget, not the request, sets the crew.
This week in the arena
Pick your busiest and your quietest day. For each, take your staff and utilization from the Mechanics zone and work out wages paid with the formula. Then check it against the Wages paid line in Results. A few dollars apart is just rounding, because the report shows utilization as a whole percent. A bigger gap means something else touched payroll that day, and that is worth asking your crew about. Finally, divide the report's wages by units served for labor cost per unit. Which day had the cheaper labor?