Archive for January, 2008

TimeForge emails a rolling daily schedule to every employee in your account. However, emails containing the schedules are emailed to staff members on a daily basis, which may not be fast enough for your company if you want immediate notifications.

To alleviate this problem TimeForge now includes an “Email” link next to each schedule. Clicking on this link sends a message to your staff immediately.

Please note: Staff members must have an email address entered in TimeForge to receive an email message.

Of course, you can send any message to your staff at any time by clicking on the “Messages” section in the “Schedules” tab.

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

TimeForge will automatically notify your employees of any changes made to the schedule after it is posted … you no longer need to repost the schedule for the changes to take effect! Make schedule changes quickly, and rest assured that your employees will be notified of any last minute changes to the schedule.

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

TimeForge templates allow you and your managers to create reusable schedule patterns for daily usage, and you can have an unlimited number of templates in your account. The management team at your business can create company-wide standards for staffing specific days of the week, holidays, or any other day by using TimeForge’s template capabilities.

Templates can be “used” on any day of a schedule – instantly creating shifts for employees without the need to create shifts one at a time. TimeForge Templates have always had one limitation – they are only designed to be used for only a 24-hour (one day) time period.

Introducing TimeForge Weekly Templates! Managers specify daily templates for each day of the week, creating a Weekly Template. You can have as many Weekly Templates in your account as you would like!

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

The TimeForge AutoScheduler™ uses a complex system to decide when to schedule employees in the best manner for both you and your staff. It now does a better job of trying to get all employees onto a schedule in a fair manner.

More specifically: the TimeForge AutoScheduler™ system tries to reduce large differences in hours between the work force. It does this in an effort to try and follow industry best-practices for scheduling employees, and will do what it can to ensure that both staff and management are happy with the schedule.

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

The restaurant, retail, and service industries are plagued by fluctuating labor costs, minimum wage rules, and complex overtime regulations. Although overtime and minimum wage regulations affect each state and country in different ways, several areas stand out with complicated overtime rules (such as California and New York labor laws, or many European countries).

TimeForge now understands many of these complex rules, and makes sure to schedule employees in a manner that minimizes overtime when using our AutoScheduler™ tool. When overtime is likely to occur, you and your management team will receive a warnings while making the schedule, and again before you post your schedule. Additionally, TimeForge calculates overtime for all employee shift swaps, and warns your team if the exchange will create overtime for the employee picking up the shift.

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

The TimeForge charting and graphing system received a minor upgrade, and now works reliably in many different web browsers. Several other minor bugs surrounding the graphing system have been updated and fixed.

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

There are many techniques for scheduling employees, and we realize that each organization schedules labor differently. Within TimeForge, managers are able to restrict employee schedules based on minimum and maximum weekly hours (such as: “Alex should be scheduled for more than 20 hours but less than 30 hours a week”) and minimum and maximum daily shifts (such as: “Sarah should not be scheduled for doubles”).

The TimeForge AutoScheduler™ system will do its very best to make sure your needs are met, and if you schedule employees manually, it will warn you when your employees exceed or drop-below your specified values.

However, users of TimeForge can now limit employees to a minimum and/or maximum number of shifts per week (such as: “Joe should receive between 3 and 4 shifts a week”).

Just one more way we are making labor scheduling easier!

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

Do you need to schedule labor at multiple locations or units? Does your labor force work at more than one location? TimeForge can import employees from other locations - migrating their positions, payrates, and skill levels when they are imported to the new location.

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

The TimeForge v1.9.2 scheduling system includes a number of new improvements to the scheduling and template systems, including multiple views of the schedule.

Three new views are available to help you (and your management team) build the schedule: Weekly Detail View, Weekly Summary View, and Daily View. The “Daily View” has several visualization options designed to streamline the schedule creation process.

The default “Daily View” chart is a graphical representation of the shifts for the day, sorted by position. Shifts can be edited by clicking directly on the horizontal bar for the shift you want to change.

By clicking on “Sort by Employees“, the graphical chart is rearranged and sorted by employee. Again, to edit a shift, just click on the graphical bar.

If you click on “Shift List“, the graph is replaced by a list of shifts for the day. The shifts are grouped by position (department).
How long does it take to make your labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

The team behind the TimeForge employee scheduling software has been quiet over the last month, hard at work on version 1.9.2 of TimeForge. After four weeks of work, and countless requests from our users (thank you!), we are proud to announce the latest release of the simplest employee scheduling program available for retail and hospitality businesses!

So, what’s new in TimeForge? A lot! Some of our improvements include:

• A new graphical editor system! The number one request from our users since we released TimeForge has been to add a graphical editor to the schedule. Well, now you have it! From one screen you can now add or edit positions and employees, make or use templates, view availability, and display all of the shifts.

• You can now switch between a schedule detail view, a daily view, and a weekly summary view when building your schedule. At any time, the views are only one click away! Each view gives you and your management team a different perspective of your schedule, hours that have been allocated, and the costs related to your labor schedule.

• • The Schedule Detail View displays every shift on your schedule, sorted by days and positions (or departments). You can quickly edit the shift start/end times, change employees, and view the availability of your employees. This view of your employee schedule scrolls vertically, and is the default view of your schedule.

• • The Daily View is a new perspective of your schedule. This view displays a single day on a chart, and can be sorted by position or employee. An additional sorting option, called the “Shift List” displays a simplified list of your shifts for the day. While editing or adding a shift, you can easily see when employees are available to work. You can also add or edit employees and modify positions – all from one screen! If you would like to add shifts or employees in bulk, just click on the “Edit All Shifts” button.

• • The Schedule Summary View is another perspective of the schedule, which displays an hourly summary of your employees. This view is sorted by employee names, and will quickly display who is working, on what days, and how many hours they are scheduled. Each day has a total number of hours, and each individual employee has a total as well.

How long does it take to make an employee schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that labor costs could be as much as 30% of your expenses? TimeForge can help streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, bar, or club.