Press Releases

August 21, 2008 – Lubbock, TX – It happens on every Friday of every work week in hospitality, restaurant, and retail businesses around the world. Employees call and want to know when they are scheduled to work during the upcoming week, but the manager hasn’t posted the schedule. Staff members are not able to plan their personal lives without the work schedule which creates conflicts and leads to employee terminations and resignations as soon as the schedule is posted. With labor scheduling software tools, management can reduce schedule conflicts, minimize turnover, and improve profitability at their business.

Managing a labor force requires scheduling part-time and full-time employees properly before they are needed for work and also tracking when employees clock-in and clock-out. Good managers reduce the difference between the theoretical work schedule and the actual hours worked while maximizing sales at the business. Improper employee scheduling leads to one of two circumstances:

1. More employees are scheduled to work than are necessary - increasing payroll costs and reducing profits. Employees may be cut from the schedule without working their scheduled hours.
2. Not enough employees are scheduled to work - decreasing sales and reducing profits. Employees must be called in to work, creating frustration and high turnover among personnel.

Neither option is desirable and the key to avoiding both situations is to monitor and refine the schedule at your business. As experienced managers know, building an accurate schedule takes several hours a week and must consider all of the following items:

• Availability sheets
• Communication and request log books
• Shift swaps and trading
• Minor rules
• Scheduled breaks
• Lunches
• Employee notifications
• Training and certifications
• And many other factors …

Using TimeForge, a web-based labor management system, managers quickly build accurate schedules while reducing turnover, enhancing communication, and improving retention. The recently updated TimeForge provides more time saving features, new pricing plans, and now includes a powerful Daily Log.

With a comprehensive labor management tool, payroll expenses are reduced and employee turnover is continually monitored. TimeForge keeps managers out of the back office and puts them back on the floor where they can directly influence the profits of the business.

About TimeForge
TimeForge, www.TimeForge.com, develops easy-to-use software products to manage employee scheduling, time and attendance, and communication logs. TimeForge’s web-based product suite is designed to meet the demands of the retail and restaurant industries, providing solutions for both independent and chain operators.

The TimeForge team has been hard at work adding to the TimeForge software product, making employee scheduling simple, and time and attendance monitoring easier.  We now offer Biometric Fingerprint scanning to all TimeForge Max users.  We have partnered with M2SYS to offer an out-of-the-box and affordable solution to all users, and are proud to be listed on the M2SYS partners page.

A joint press release about our partnership was recently issued, and can be found on the M2SYS website in full.  The interesting tidbits for TimeForge users include:

According to Anthony Presley, Founder of TimeForge, “Our customers already schedule their employees online, but many continue to use traditional time clocks to track when employees punch in and out at their business. The M2SYS biometric product allows our customers to easily track time and attendance data and compare it to existing schedules — providing important and accurate payroll information. By eliminating the need for passwords and employee identification cards, it should significantly reduce buddy punching, which will save our customers up to 5-7% of their annual payroll expenses.”

“Companies in the retail and hospitality industry are quickly recognizing the benefits of using biometrics, including the reduction of buddy punching and an overall improvement in time and attendance data accuracy,” states Michael Trader, President of M2SYS Technology. “We are excited about being chosen by TimeForge, and look forward to a long-standing relationship with them and their customers.”

For more information about pricing, or how to get a Fingerprint scanner, contact the TimeForge sales department.

Can you build a schedule in less than 10 minutes? How many thousands of dollars do you spend making schedules every year? Did you know that TimeForge can minimize costs and increase profits through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, pizzeria, hotel, club, bar, or retail business. Sign up today for a free trial!

Lubbock, TX – May 28, 2008 – Making a great work schedule week after week is often a painful managerial chore for businesses of all sizes. However, the increased store profits, lower turnover, and improved employee morale make employee scheduling software a worthwhile investment. Many operators in the restaurant, retail, and hospitality industries create labor schedules by hand using pen-and-paper methods that can consume up to seven hours a week in managerial time – an expense of more than $12,000 per year in manager time building and managing the labor schedule! Operators using spreadsheets still spend at least two hours a week scheduling labor.

Well-chosen software solutions can help operators control labor and increase profits, without incurring great expense. For example, TimeForge, a web-based labor scheduling product tightly controls employee labor costs and reduces turnover by providing a simple-to-use solution for scheduling employees. The TimeForge software program, available at http://www.TimeForge.com, ensures that managers spend more time “on the floor” and less time in the back office scheduling employees.

The most recent version, released on May 27, 2008 includes a number of improvements to the software and continues to build on TimeForge’s success as a quick, simple, and affordable scheduling solution for businesses of all sizes. According to Michael, the proprietor of Tiara Cafe in California, “The TimeForge scheduling system has not only increased our efficiency tremendously; decreased the errors in what is normally an error prone environment; it has also saved us ten times what it costs us each month.”

TimeForge turns employee scheduling into an automated task that can be performed in a few minutes every week – improving store profits by thousands of dollars every year for the store. Some advantages of the new TimeForge include:

• TimeForge now includes the ability to track employee tips, which can be entered when an employee clocks out, or later by management!
• Schedules and templates can be organized into departments (similar to folders) to easily differentiate between “Front of House” and “Back of House” schedules.
• New attendance reports are available for supervisors and managers.
• Managers can easily see why an employee cannot be scheduled – regardless if the employee is already scheduled at another location or in a conflicting shift, or if the employee is unavailable.
• Locations / stores / units can be organized into a Corporate Hierarchy so that managers can monitor scheduling practices for groups of locations.
• Many other improvements!

Independent and chain operators alike can benefit from the many time saving and profit improving features of labor scheduling systems such as TimeForge. Get back on the floor today!

About TimeForge
TimeForge is the premier employee scheduling software, designed to provide fast ROI benefits to the business, and to meet the growing demands of the work force. TimeForge.com is affordable software that works with both independent and chain operations in retail, hospitality, and many other industries. For more information about TimeForge, and to sign up for a free trial, visit the website at http://www.TimeForge.com

Save Thousands Through Better Scheduling of Labor – Reduce Turnover and Headaches

Lubbock, TX – April 20, 2008 – The slowing United States economy is having a negative impact on sales within the restaurant and retail industries and operators are seeking creative methods to improve profit margins at their companies. In the absence of growing sales, a common strategy is to focus on stronger inventory and labor controls to increase profits. It’s a strategy that will not only pay during tough economic times, but will continue to reap returns when the good times return. Well-chosen technology can help operators manage both cost centers without incurring great expense or time. One such example is TimeForge, a labor scheduling product that tightly controls employee labor costs by providing a simple-to-use solution for scheduling employees.

The TimeForge software program, available at http://www.TimeForge.com, ensures that managers spend more time “on the floor” and less time in the back office scheduling employees. The most recent version, released on April 20th, 2008 includes a number of improvements to the software and continues to build on TimeForge’s success as a quick, simple, and affordable scheduling solution for businesses of all sizes.

In many cases the new version of TimeForge can drastically increase operator efficiency and reduce the errors caused by ineffective scheduling techniques. Managers without labor scheduling tools, such as TimeForge, commonly spend more than $12,000 a year in management time (based on a national salary average of $62,500) building and managing the labor schedule! The latest version of TimeForge.com turns employee scheduling into an automated task that can be performed in a few minutes every week – improving store profits by thousands of dollars every year for the store.

Some advantages of the new TimeForge include:

• TimeForge can manage meal and break periods for the schedule, and now includes break worksheets!
• Costs for schedules now include overtime, including 1.5x, 2.0x, and California Overtime and exemptions!
• TimeForge can be integrated with a number of software packages, reducing operator data entry
• New multi-location reports
• Many other improvements!

Making a great schedule every week is often a painful managerial chore for businesses of all sizes. The increased store profits, lower turnover, and improved employee morale make employee scheduling software a worthwhile investment. Many hospitality and retail owners have discovered how properly managing labor saves time and money for the business with a free trail of TimeForge.

About TimeForge.com
TimeForge.com is the premier employee scheduling software, designed to provide fast ROI benefits to the business, and to meet the growing demands of the work force. TimeForge.com is affordable software that works with both independent and chain operations in retail, hospitality, and many other industries. For more information about TimeForge.com, and to sign up for a Free Trial, visit the website at http://www.TimeForge.com

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

As previously mentioned, the team behind the TimeForge employee scheduling software has been working hard on version 1.9.2 of TimeForge - released today, Jan 1, 2008. Happy New Year!

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

• Messages about your schedule are available on all of the schedule views (including the daily, weekly detail, and weekly summary views). You can see which “rules” have been broken by your management team while building the schedule, whether the shifts were created by the AutoScheduler or by management.

• Day Parts are now displayed in the schedule (on the day view), and can be used to segment your day into different parts (for instance morning, afternoon, and evening shifts).

• Day Parts are also visible when looking at employee availability. You can quickly see what shifts employees are available to work.

• When editing an availability request, you can click on the day of the week to make an all-day request.

• A new report: On the report page, there is a new 7-day schedule, called “Condensed 7-day schedule, sorted by position.” This new report is a variation of the Condensed 7-day schedule, where all of the employees are grouped by the position / department.

• Templates have been updated to look like the Daily Schedule View, including graphing and different views of the day (sort by position or employee).

• Additional numerous small improvements were made to the software ….

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?

It’s been one day since the release of TimeForge Version 1.9, which introduced a number of new features such as easy-to-use calendar availability, improved multi-location (multiple unit) scheduling, and many other improvements. And we’re excited to announce that more than 800 businesses have signed up for the most simple and powerful labor scheduling tool on the market: www.TimeForge.com

Although we are obviously excited by the number of TimeForge users, we are more excited about the time savings and cost savings that have been provided to our users. For example:

• On average, managers spend more than 2.64 hours making the schedule, every week with a spreadsheet program such as Excel, by hand, or with an inefficient scheduling system (like most Point of Sale systems).

• On average, managers spend 15 minutes making the schedule, every week using TimeForge.

• On average, managers in retail and hospitality businesses receive an annual salary and benefits package equivalent to more than $62,500. That’s more than $31 per hour.

• TimeForge is directly saving our users more than $59,272 every month! That’s more than $710,000 a year.

Of course, there are dozens of other benefits like reporting, employee notification, reduced employee turnover, less time fragmentation (employees calling your business), etc… which are more difficult to calculate in a direct dollar-to-dollar return on investment (ROI).

We are pleased to announce TimeForge version 1.9 – the easy-to-use employee scheduling program for food-service (restaurant, bar, club), hospitality (hotel, motel), and retail companies.

Thank you to our users who provide priceless feedback about the software can make their lives easier!

This version provides significant enhancements to all TimeForge users, and includes several dozen new and improved features. Some of our time-saving improvements include:

• Many areas of the scheduling system, including the creating schedules from templates, publishing a new schedule, and deleting schedules are significantly faster.

• A new field is available for employees, which allows managers to enter an identifier for tracking the employee (such as an internal employee number).

• Internationalization! TimeForge now works in Canada, the United Kingdom (England), Australia, Ireland, France, Spain, Scottland, and many other countries. The best labor scheduling system from the US is now available to anyone, anywhere. In fact, if you are a multi-location (or multiple unit) operator, with stores in different countries or locales, TimeForge will appropriately manage notifications for the whole team.

• Do you schedule more than one location from within your TimeForge account? The improved scheduling system in version 1.9 will automatically disable employees that are already scheduled to work at other locations. TimeForge already disables employees that are scheduled to work on other conflicting schedules.

• Day parts have been renamed “Work Periods”, which is … simple. More improvements with “Work Periods” and “Day Parts” are coming in Version 2.

• A number of minor bug fixes, improvements to Internet Explorer 6, and other changes.

Of course, we look forward to your ongoing comments about changes to the TimeForge scheduling system.

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

We are pleased to announce TimeForge version 1.9 – the easy-to-use employee scheduling program for food-service (restaurant, bar, club), hospitality (hotel, motel), and retail companies.

Thank you to our users who provide priceless feedback about the software can make their lives easier!

This version provides significant enhancements to all TimeForge users, and includes several dozen new and improved features. Some of our time-saving improvements include:

• Availability and requests both received drastic improvements for both managers and employees. You can now view weekly availability on a continual basis on a calendar. Availability is color-coded based on when employees “want to work”, are “available to work”, “do not want to work”, and are “unavailable to work”. Requests awaiting manager approval are also displayed for employees. This is what the improved requests look like:

• In addition to the calendar view of requests, TimeForge users can quickly make new requests, or change availability by using “drag and drop” techniques. Each day of the week is split into hourly segments, and you can now click and drag to create schedules in a single click. Of course, our flexible scheduling system still allows users to build both simple and complex requests!

Of course, we look forward to your ongoing comments about changes to the TimeForge scheduling system.

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

Our team is proud to announce the latest version of simple employee scheduling … TimeForge version 1.8.6! This version includes a number of minor bug-fixes, as well as some major new features – all designed to save you time!

Some of the new features include:

• Split Shifts. TimeForge’s AutoScheduler will try to not assign employees to split shifts. Employees who close your business will not be scheduled to open the next morning, if at all possible. This makes employees and managers happy!

• Reports. The main report which runs when you click on “Print” from the schedule page now prints only scheduled employees (not all employees). This makes the printout more concise, and easier to read! There’s also a new report, which can be found on the Reports page, and is called “Costs by Position”. This report gives managers a quick, graphical summary of where labor dollars are being spent on the schedule.

• Day Parts and Availability. You asked for it, and you got it! One of the most requested features from TimeForge users is to be able to use the request and availability editors with your own “time of day”. For example, your “Morning” shift may run from 6am – 11am, and your “Afternoon” shift may go from 11am – 4pm, and now you can setup requests and availability using “Morning” or “Afternoon” times.Login to TimeForge, and click on “Schedules”, and then choose “Day Parts”. Enter your shifts (such as open, morning, afternoon, evening, or close), and select a start time, end time, and a description. Day part periods cannot overlap. Once you have entered all of your time periods, you can save the Day Parts.

  Once Day Parts are in TimeForge, you can create and edit requests and availability using them. You, and your employees, will have the option of entering a time range, or you can pick a Day Part instead.

Look out for Version 1.9 and Version 2.0! Employee Scheduling will be faster and easier! Spend time doing what you want to do…

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

Our team is proud to announce the latest version of simple employee scheduling … TimeForge version 1.8.6! This version includes a number of minor bug-fixes, as well as some major new features – all designed to save you time!

Some of the new features include:

• Employee Messaging. Managers and supervisors can send messages to employees using TimeForge! To send a message, click on the “Schedules” tab, and then click on “Messages”. You can choose to send messages to everyone who works a certain position (e.g. all Cooks), select employees (e.g., Sarah and Joe), everyone who is scheduled to work (e.g. Everyone on next weeks schedule), or everyone who is not scheduled to work. Messages are sent via email to each employee, and employees can retrieve the messages at any time by logging into TimeForge.com You can also send schedules directly from the positions, employees, and schedules pages!

• Security. If you were not already aware, TimeForge is now secure. When you connect to TimeForge, you will notice that your location bar / url turns to “https”, which means that your connection is secure! TimeForge is using 128-bit SSL technology, the same kind your bank uses!

• Templates. Templates received a major upgrade on Monday night and can now be used on an existing schedule. You will see a link to “Use” and “Make” templates on the schedule page (if you have templates). Also, positions are grouped together when editing a template to make editing more simple.

Version 1.9 and 2.0 are coming soon!

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