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How to set up payroll and salary
How to set up payroll and salary

Track employee working hours, worked days, and sales to build a transparent salary system based on performance or time spent at work.

Max avatar
Written by Max
Updated over 3 months ago

What types of salary are available in Poster?

You can use staff time tracking to set a fixed rate per hour, shift, or month. Employees can get a percentage of personal or shift sales. Reward selling particular categories or keep all rates equal. Poster provides multiple salary models for each position. You can combine any of them or stick to one:

  • Fixed rate:

    • Per hour

    • Per shift

    • Per month

  • Percentage of sales:

    • Personal, from employee sales only

    • Per shift, from cash shift's total sales

💡 Percentage of sales also includes menu categories. For example, you can reward selling desserts by granting an increased rate for such sales.

Setting up a staff time tracking

To start a staff time tracking:

  1. Go to Settings → General in the management console.

  2. Enable Staff time tracking in Management settings.

  3. Press Save.

☝️ You can set payrolls without staff time tracking. In this case, a fixed rate per hour will be unavailable. Instead, the salary will be calculated per month or per shift.

Setting a payroll calculation

To set up a payroll calculation:

  1. Go to Access → Positions in the management console.

  2. Click Edit next to an existing position or create a new one.

  3. Enter a Fixed rate per hour, per shift, per month, or combine them at once.

  4. Click Save.

💡 Set a percentage of sales to allow employees to benefit from the sales they do:

Select categories which will benefit employees the most to promote sales. Or keep all categories at the same rate.

Personal % from employee sales only.

— Per shift % from cash shift's total sales.

Assign Positions to the employees.

  1. Go to Access → Employees

  2. Click Edit next to an existing employee or create a new one.

  3. Set the employee's position.

  4. Save changes.

Viewing the Payroll

View the employees' total salary, sales, worked hours, or shifts:

  1. Go to Finances → Payroll in the management console.

  2. Set a payroll period at the top right.

  3. Select an employee or a position to see their total salary, worked hours, fixed rates, or sales percentages.

  4. The Total amount pending per period is displayed at the bottom of the page.

☝️ To enable extra info about the payroll, like employee's amount of sales, time worked, and rewards per shift click ⿲ Columns

☝️ Finances → Payroll will be available in your management console after you set the payroll calculation in Access → Positions.

Fixed rate per month calculation example

Monthly payroll calculation method is: monthly fixed-rate / days in month × days worked.

For example, your employee worked at a fixed rate of $1000 from February 15 until Match 4. Poster calculates it like this:

($1000 / 28 × 14) + ($1000 / 31 × 4) = $500 + $129,03 = $629,03.

☝️ If you edited monthly salary rate for a position, the historical data will remain unchanged. Poster will recalculate the salary only after changing the calculation settings, i. e. for the current and future periods.

Personal sales calculation example

The percentage of personal sales is calculated from the total sales of the selected categories for the employee who opened the receipt.


For example, a waiter earns 5% of the Salads category sales:

  • William opened a receipt, and added a Caesar salad for $10 and juice for $2;

  • James added one more salad for $10 to this order and closed the receipt.

William earned $1 = $10 × 2 pcs × 5% because the juice is not included in the Salads category and there are only 2 Caesar salads in the receipt. James earned $0 although he added one salad to the order, but William opened the receipt, so he will be the only one to benefit from this sale.


Percentage of sales per shift calculation example

An example of calculating the percentage of sales per shift for the waiters who earn 5% of the Salads category:

• 10:00 — James started his work shift;
• 12:00 — he sold 5 salads at $10 each and 5 juices at $2 each;
• 18:00 — he closed the shift and went home.

• 15:00 — William opened his shift;
• 16:00 — he sold 2 salads at $10 each;
• 19:00 — he sold 1 salad for $10;
• 21:00 — he finished his work day.

James earned $3.5 = ($10 × 5 units + 2 units × $10) × 5%, because he received both percentages of his and William’s sales when selling 2 extra salads by William happened on James's shift time.

William earned $1.5 = (2 × $10 + 1 × $10) × 5%. William didn’t receive any of James’ benefits, because James didn’t make any sales during William’s shift.

☝️ Shifts closed without any sales will not be counted towards the employee's salary


An example of a percentage of sales per shift, with employees of different positions present simultaneously. Bartender — 10% for alcohol, and for the hookah man — 5% for hookahs.

For example, they worked simultaneously and the total cash in the register was $10,000 = $4,000 hookahs and $6,000 alcohol. The hookah man earned $200 = $4,000 x 5%, and the bartender earned $600 = $6,000 x 10%.

☝️ If there is 1 hookah man and 2 bartenders on a shift, the hookah man will receive $200, and both bartenders will receive the same salary — $600 each. Even if one of them sold 3 cocktails, and the other sold 110 cocktails. Because their salary is not calculated on the basis of the number of products and dishes sold, but only on the basis of sales by category: hookahs — $4,000, alcohol — $6,000.

Feel free to contact our customer support if you have any questions or concerns. We're available in chat @joinposter.com and email contact@joinposter.com


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