Labour Cost Management
Every staff member costed correctly, direct or indirect
Manage your full payroll, including base pay, allowances and statutory costs, and send each person's cost to the right place. Direct staff are costed per recipe. Indirect staff flow into overhead. One system handles both.
- No card needed
- GOSI and allowances included
- Import staff from Excel
Khalid: SAR 2,400 ÷ 208 hours = SAR 11.54 an hour. 10 minutes on a salad = SAR 1.92 in that recipe.
Example payroll. Indirect cost spread over 20,000 portions a month.
Why this matters
Staff time is a big cost, and the one most often left out
Ingredient costs show up on every supplier invoice. Staff costs are just as real, but they're usually managed apart from costing. A business knows its monthly payroll, but rarely how much of it each menu item carries. So margins look better than they are.
What most businesses know
Payroll sits in the accounts, not in the recipe.
What MenuCost puts in the recipe
Counted in every serving, automatically.
Leave labour out and every serving is understated by exactly that much. Labour cost management puts the real cost of staff time into every recipe.
Example payroll from MenuCost's demo restaurant.
Three things Labour Cost Management does for you
Classifies every person as Direct or Indirect
Direct staff, like chefs, baristas, bakers and prep cooks, are costed per recipe from prep time in minutes. Indirect staff, like managers, admin, cashiers and cleaners, flow into overhead as a cost per item.
Captures the full cost of employment
Housing, transport, food and communications allowances, annual bonus (divided by 12), end of service provision, social insurance (GOSI) and health insurance, all added to base salary for a true monthly cost.
Shows a staff overhead summary
Direct and indirect totals, a breakdown by department with share of payroll, and the indirect staff cost per item that appears in every recipe. Change a salary and it updates.
What changes when labour is always in the cost
Kitchen time in every recipe
Direct staff cost lands in each recipe that uses their time.
Support staff spread fairly
Managers and admin are shared across everything you make.
The full cost, not base pay
Allowances, end of service and insurance are all included.
One change flows everywhere
Update a salary and every affected recipe and overhead figure follows.
What's the difference between Direct and Indirect staff?
Direct staff produce items: chefs, baristas, bakers, prep cooks. In a recipe you pick a direct staff member and enter their minutes, and MenuCost works out the labour cost from their hourly rate. Indirect staff support the business: managers, admin, cashiers, cleaners. Their cost is spread across all items as overhead.
Why is total monthly cost higher than base salary?
Employing someone in the GCC costs more than base pay. Housing, transport, food and communications allowances, end of service provision (a statutory gratuity accrual), social insurance and health insurance all add to it. MenuCost uses the total, because that's what the employee really costs.
What do monthly working hours (208) mean?
The hours a person works in a month. 208 is the default, about 8 hours over 26 working days. It turns a monthly salary into an hourly rate: SAR 2,400 ÷ 208 = SAR 11.54 an hour. That rate prices direct staff time in recipes.
Can I import staff from a spreadsheet?
Yes. Download the staff template, fill in your team and upload it. The preview shows which rows are ready and which need fixing before the import runs.
Is labour shown separately in each recipe?
Yes. Labour is its own line in every recipe's breakdown, next to ingredients, packaging and overhead, so you can see what staff time costs per unit and its share of the total. See True Cost per Serving.
Cost your recipes with staff time included
Every person's cost, in the right place, automatically.
- No card needed
- Set up in minutes
- Unlimited recipes