What it does. Staff Roles is your labor catalog: the server, bartender, chef, setup crew and event captain jobs you charge for. Each role holds the rate you charge, the cost you pay and its tax settings, so labor is priced the same way on every event.
When you’d use it. Setting up the handful of jobs you actually staff, so a Saturday wedding with five servers and a bartender is quoted like the last one. Or when your bartender rate goes up and you want new events to pick up the new number.
How to open it
Click Catalog in the top menu, then Staff.
What belongs in Staff Roles
Types of labor, not the people who work them. Server, bartender, chef, setup crew, dishwasher, event captain: one row per job you schedule and charge for. It prices labor, so it does not run payroll, hold a staff schedule, or know which of your servers is working Saturday.
Food and drink go in Menu Items, equipment goes in Rental Items, and all three price into the same event.
The list
Each row shows the role, its description, its Pricing Method and the Default Price, with the price reading “$35.00 per hour” or “$300.00 flat rate”. Search matches names and descriptions. The pencil opens a role for editing, and the archive icon takes one off the active list.
New Staff Role adds one. The steps are in create a staff role.
Hourly or flat rate
Each role picks one, and that choice decides how its line on an event is worked out.
- Hourly is for labor that depends on time: servers, bartenders, chefs, dishwashers, setup crew. The line is the staff count times the hours times the rate.
- Flat rate is one fee per person on the job, however long it runs, like an event captain or an on-site lead. The line is the staff count times the price, and the Hours column reads as a dash.
Price and cost
Click a role’s name to open it. Pricing is three tiles: Pricing Method, Price, which is what you charge the client, and Cost, which is what you expect to pay the staff member, contractor or labor provider. Both money tiles read per hour or flat rate to match the pricing method.
Cost is what puts labor on the profit analysis report. A role with no cost recorded is not treated as pure profit there: the report flags that revenue as uncosted instead.
Tax and billing
Underneath the pricing, Tax & Billing shows what the role carries onto a new event line.
| Setting | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Tax Category | Staff roles use Staffing & Labor, the one staff category every account starts with, so the field is read-only text rather than a picker. Whether any tax is charged on it is set in your tax settings, and in a lot of places labor is not taxed at all. |
| Tax Exempt | Yes leaves this role out of tax calculations even when its category is taxed. |
| Gratuity Eligible | Yes means a new event line from this role has gratuity applied. |
| Service Charge Eligible | Yes means a new event line from this role has the service charge applied. |
Edit opens the form, where the last three are check boxes under Settings, named Gratuity Eligible by Default, Service Charge Eligible by Default and Tax Exempt by Default. “By default” is the point: they are what a new event line starts with, and a line already on an event can be changed from the event.
How a role lands on an event
Open an event, go to the Staff tab and click Add Staff Role. Pick the catalog role, then set Number of Staff, the Hours each person will work, for hourly roles, and the Rate for this one job. The name, the description and the cost come across from the catalog and are not on the form, so changing the rate here does not touch the catalog role or the next event.
The tab lists Role, Staff Count, Hours, Rate and Total, with a subtotal underneath. The step by step is in add rentals and staff to an event.
Where staff show up after that
- Event Totals on the event gets a Staff Roles line beside Menu Items and Rental Items, so labor is part of the event price.
- The banquet event order has a Staff Requirements table with the role, the quantity and the hours, so your lead knows who is needed and for how long. It carries no start times and no per-role notes, so call times belong in the event timeline, which prints higher up the same document. See build a banquet event order.
Good to know.
- Two active roles cannot share a name, so a second “Bartender” needs something in the name to tell the two apart.
- Archiving takes a role off the list and out of the picker on new events. Events that already carry it keep their lines and their rates.
- Changing a price here changes what new events start with. Events you already built keep the numbers they were given.