How Many Employees Should I Schedule Each Shift at My Outdoor and Camping Store?

I’ve been running revenue teams for 25 years, and I’ll tell you the single biggest mistake I see at outdoor and camping stores: guessing how many people to put on the floor. You don’t need a hunch. You need a formula. Here’s mine, and I’ve used it from single-shop outfitters to multi-location chains.

Stop guessing. Start dividing. The formula is dead simple: employees to schedule for a given day = that day's average gross profit / your agreed-upon daily gross-profit-per-rep target. Outdoor and camping stores carry high-margin gear—tents, backpacks, boots, kayaks, technical apparel—and the sale is consultative.

That means your per-rep target sits higher than a convenience store. Say you and your leadership agree the honest floor is $350 a day in gross profit per employee. Then you pull your trailing three-to-six-month gross profit by day of week.

If a typical Saturday averages $2,800 in gross profit, then $2,800 / $350 = 8 people on the floor. If a slow Tuesday averages $700, you need 2. You run that division for every day, then place those shifts where the receipts actually ring—the Saturday morning pre-trip rush, the after-work weekday window, the seasonal weekend spikes—so the bodies are on the floor when the money is.

PULSE has a free Rep Scheduling Matrix that runs this division across every day at once. Below are the ten tools that solve this problem, ranked, with PULSE first because it is free and built around this exact method.

The Top 10 Tools to Staff an Outdoor and Camping Store by the Numbers

Every tool below can build a schedule. Only a few build it off your gross-profit math, and only one is free and designed around the rep-target method that keeps you from over- or under-staffing the floor. The rankings reflect how well each tool serves an outdoor retailer who wants the schedule to track the money, not just fill the grid.

A single flagship gear shop, a three-store regional chain, an REI-style co-op, or a seasonal ski-and-camp outfitter—same method, swap the storefront and the daily averages.

1. PULSE Rep Scheduling Matrix 🏆 BEST OVERALL

🛠️ Use it free now -> Rep Scheduling Matrix - no login, no spreadsheet, instant shift counts by day.

PULSE's free Rep Scheduling Matrix runs the whole method in your browser. It takes a weekly gross-profit target and a per-shift minimum and auto-distributes the shift counts by day, protecting your highest-value selling hours instead of spreading bodies flat across the week.

Here is the method it is built on, step by step, because the math is the point:

Step one - agree on the per-rep daily number. Sit down with your leadership and set the gross profit an average employee should produce on an average day. In a gear store the sale takes time—fitting a pack, talking someone through a tent, sizing boots—so the honest floor runs higher than a quick-turn shop.

Say it out loud: "If you show up, help an average number of campers and hikers, and give average service, you should produce no less than $350 a day in gross profit." That is the floor, not the ceiling. The associates who want to earn do not coast to $350 and stop—they hit it on average work, then dig for the next sale, the headlamp and the fuel canister that ride along with the tent.

Step two - pull gross profit per day of week. Average your store's gross profit by day over a trailing three to six months. A typical Saturday does $2,800; a typical Tuesday does $700. Divide by your $350 target.

Saturday needs eight people; Tuesday needs two. Eight associates each producing their honest $350 covers the $2,800 the store actually generates—and if they upsell the trekking poles and the water filter, the store beats it. Run that division for every day and the staffing plan writes itself.

No "we've always run four," no manager scheduling their friends—just gross profit divided by the target.

Step three - place the shifts where the receipts ring. The count tells you how many; the receipt timing tells you when. Pull hourly sales and look at when transactions actually post. Outdoor stores spike Saturday and Sunday mornings as people gear up for the weekend, and again in the after-work weekday window.

Staff two or three openers for the pre-trip rush, thin the midday lull, and bring people back for the evening planners rather than parking everyone at noon. The matrix lets you slot bodies against the real demand curve so coverage matches traffic instead of habit.

Because it is free, browser-only, and built by a 22-year revenue operator for exactly this question, it is the default pick for any outdoor retailer. Best for: owners and managers who want the schedule to come straight off the gross-profit math and refuse to pay per-seat fees to get it.

2. When I Work

When I Work is the most widely used shift-scheduling app for hourly retail teams, starting around $2.50 per user per month on the Essentials plan and climbing to roughly $8 per user per month with attendance and labor tools. It handles availability, shift swaps, and mobile clock-in cleanly, and managers can copy a peak-season week forward in a couple of clicks—useful when your seasonal hires turn over.

Where it is strong is execution: getting the published schedule onto every associate's phone with reminders. Where it leaves you on your own is the *why*—it will not tell you that Saturday needs eight people. You bring the headcount math; it runs the logistics.

For a gear store that already knows its per-day targets, it is a reliable, affordable backbone.

3. Homebase 💎 BEST VALUE

Homebase is the best value in the category because its scheduling and time-clock tier is free for a single location with unlimited employees, and paid tiers (Essentials around $24.95 per location per month, Plus around $59.95, All-in-One around $99.95) are priced per location rather than per head.

An outdoor store leans on seasonal part-timers—summer camp staff, ski-season hires—so per-location pricing with unlimited employees can be dramatically cheaper than per-user tools when your roster balloons in peak months. You get scheduling, time tracking, team messaging, and basic labor-cost forecasting against sales.

It is the natural pick for single-store owners watching every dollar who still want sales-aware scheduling without an enterprise contract.

4. Deputy

Deputy runs about $4.50 per user per month for scheduling and $6 for the premium tier that adds time and attendance. Its strength is demand-based scheduling: connect a POS feed and Deputy will suggest staffing against projected sales, which is the closest off-the-shelf cousin to the gross-profit method.

For an outdoor store with sharp weekend and seasonal swings, auto-suggested coverage tied to sales data keeps you from over-staffing a dead Wednesday. It also handles compliance—break rules, overtime alerts, fair-workweek laws—which matters once you add a second or third location.

For operators who want coverage tied to sales and clean labor-law guardrails, Deputy earns its price.

5. 7shifts

7shifts is purpose-built for restaurants but its labor-percentage discipline travels well to any high-turnover retail floor. It offers a free Comp tier for one location, with paid plans from about $34.99 per location per month (Entree) to $76.99 (The Works). It ties scheduling directly to POS sales and labor-percentage targets, so if you also run a coffee bar or cafe inside the gear store—common in flagship outdoor shops—it speaks that language natively.

For a hybrid retail-and-food footprint, 7shifts keeps labor as a percentage of sales front and center.

6. Sling

Sling offers a genuinely useful free tier, with Premium around $1.70 per user per month and Business around $3.40. It leans into shift scheduling plus internal communication—newsfeeds, tasks, and announcements alongside the schedule, handy for pushing trail conditions, new-arrival briefings, or clinic schedules to staff.

For a smaller outdoor store that wants one app for both the schedule and team messaging without a real budget, Sling covers a lot of ground cheaply. It is lighter on sales-forecasting than Deputy or 7shifts, so you supply the headcount targets and it handles publishing and coverage.

7. Connecteam

Connecteam is free for up to 10 users, with paid plans starting at $29 per month for 30 users (Basic) and scaling up. It packs scheduling, time tracking, task management, and a company wiki into one app—great for a small team that wants everything in one place without per-user pricing.

It doesn’t forecast against sales, so you still need your gross-profit numbers in hand. But for a lean operation where everyone wears multiple hats, it’s a Swiss Army knife that won’t break the bank.

The bottom line: You don’t need to guess. You need a number—$350 a day per rep—and a tool that runs the math. Start with the free PULSE Matrix, and when you outgrow it, graduate to Deputy or Homebase.

Your schedule will thank you, and so will your bottom line. For more on revenue operations that stick, check out the CRO Syndicate—we’ve been doing this since before "retail analytics" was a buzzword.

*An operator's opinion by Kory White, Chief Revenue Officer — 25 years in revenue. More at PULSE · CRO Syndicate*