Retail operations
Staffing hours from traffic.
Enter daily visitors, conversion and how long each customer takes. See labour hours per day and week, average staff on the floor and labour cost as a share of sales.
Hours needed = (transactions x minutes each + helped non-buyers x minutes each) / 60 / utilization. 600 visitors a day at 25% conversion works out to 23.93 labour hours a day, about 2.4 people on the floor.
Your numbers
Result
Worked example
A store open 7 days a week gets 600 visitors a day, 25% buy and the average transaction is $38, so there are 150 transactions at 4 minutes each. Of the 450 who do not buy, 30% ask for help at 3 minutes each. Total serving workload is 16.75 hours a day. Staff cannot be serving every minute they are paid, so at a 70% target the store needs 23.93 hours a day. The 2-person floor minimum over 10 open hours is 20 hours, which is lower, so the traffic number sets the schedule: 23.93 hours a day, 167.50 a week. At $22 an hour that is $3,685 a week against $39,900 of sales, or 9.24%.
How it works
Workload minutes = visitors x conversion x minutes per transaction + visitors x (1 - conversion) x share helped x minutes per helped non-buyer. Divide by 60 for hours, then by your target utilization, because nobody serves customers every paid minute.
Hours per day = the larger of the traffic-based hours and (minimum floor staff x open hours). The floor minimum covers safety, breaks and keeping the door covered when it is quiet. Tasks that are not customer service, such as deliveries and restocking, are not in the workload, so add them to the utilization allowance by lowering it.
The tool uses a daily average, but traffic is not flat. Use it to size the total, then spread hours toward your busiest times with your own hourly traffic counts. Labour cost is hours x the hourly cost you enter; include payroll costs if you want the true figure.
Sources and basis (checked 2026-10-08): Arithmetic on your inputs only. Staffing hours are a workload model built from the service times and utilization you enter. No standard staffing ratio is used or implied.
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FAQ
How many employees does a retail store need?
It depends on traffic, how long each sale takes and how much help customers want. The calculator turns those into hours per day and per week and the average number of people on the floor; divide the weekly hours by the hours one employee works to get a headcount.
What utilization should I enter?
Utilization is the share of paid time spent serving customers. Lower values leave room for stocking, cleaning and quiet periods. Test a few values to see how sensitive the schedule is.
Why does the minimum floor staff matter?
A store with one person cannot take a break or stay safe if something happens. When traffic is low the minimum sets your hours instead of the workload.