First, navigate to the “Setup” tab. From the “Today” Tab, you can click on the Setup tab, or click on the Change My Settings button.

Locate the Access TimeForge on Facebook link. Click on this link.

Sign in to Facebook with your Facebook username and password.

Sign in with your TimeForge username and password (just like you would on the www.TimeForge.com website)

Facebook displays information about your account, including your schedules, time card, and messages. Managers / supervisors will see additional information, and can see whom is clocked in at the location, as well as sales information (if configured).

At the bottom of the TimeForge application, you can click on the TimeForge Employee Scheduling link to go to the TimeForge Facebook page.

Leave us a note about what you like, or want to see improved, and Become a Fan of TimeForge on Facebook.

First, navigate to the “Setup” tab. From the “Today” Tab, you can click on the Setup tab, or click on the Change My Settings button.

Locate the personal information RSS feed URL, which is located on the right hand side, and starts with:

https://www.TimeForge.com/Scheduler/rss.html

Managers may have several RSS feeds, which include information on different locations / stores within the business.

Each RSS program is slightly different in how it requires that you add a feed. In this example, we are using Sage, a popular RSS feed reader for the Firefox web browser.

Click on the Find icon. Other RSS readers may require that you enter the URL of the RSS feed. If that is the case, enter the RSS RSS URL directly into the software. This URL is most commonly:

https://www.TimeForge.com/Scheduler/rss.html

Some RSS readers (such as Viigo for the Blackberry) do support encryption, but do not support username and passwords. In some cases, these RSS readers can be coerced to support username and passwords by using a URL with the format of:

https://username:password@www.TimeForge.com/Scheduler/rss.html

For example, if your username is ‘abigail@timeforge.com‘ and your password is ‘testing123‘, the URL you would enter is:

https://abigail@timeforge.com:testing123@www.TimeForge.com/Scheduler/rss.html

Please note: This step only needs to be done one time.

Sage, like many mobile web browsers (such as Safari and Opera) will automatically find any relevant TimeForge RSS feeds. Click on the feed (“Timeforge’s Information“), and then choose Add Feed.

These feeds have a lot of information in them, and contain information such as:

- Upcoming schedules
- Shift Swaps and Open Shifts
- Time card information
- Approved, pending, and denied requests
- Messages from other staff members and management
- And other items …

Sage, or any RSS reader, will show the items relevant to your TimeForge account.

Use the TimeForge RSS feed to get upcoming schedule information directly on your cell phone, at any time, without browsing the web.

Using the TimeForge RSS feed, you can easily view and send TimeForge messages.

Employee schedule templates can be built one shift at a time, or can be copied from other templates. Additionally, a template can be created from a pre-existing schedule, and if departments are enabled, each department will have individual schedule templates.

There are no limits to the number of schedule templates that can be created at a location.

Several schedule templates can be combined together into weekly templates, and supervisors and managers can use weekly templates to build entire schedules with a single click.

Templates can be assembled in different orders to handle labor scheduling across different seasonalities, holidays, or business requirements.

Upcoming (and historical) employee schedules are displayed on the Schedule List page. Each schedule can be copied, modified, deleted, analyzed, printed or used to print break reports.

The schedule is easily viewed on the Today Page – including all scheduled and confirmed shifts, pending shift swaps, open shift swaps, pending requests, and other information.

Changing the employee security level is simple. The Employee Type field is listed at the bottom of the Employee Information page.

TimeForge Supervisor capabilities can be configured on a per-site basis. Supervisors can be configured to have limited labor management capabilities, or can be configured with the same permission levels as a TimeForge Manager.

When operating a single location, the location drop-down (picture above) will not appear, nor will the Corporation Settings link.

When operating with multiple locations inside of TimeForge, a drop-down box will appear in the top right hand corner. This drop-down box allows the manager (or supervisor) to switch locations with a single click.

Locations in need of manager attention will be displayed with an asterisk next to their name (indicating shift swaps or employee requests that are pending).

When more than 10 locations are present, the drop-down box will become a search box, allowing you to quickly search through tens, hundreds, or thousands of store locations by name, store number, address, or zip code.

First, navigate to the “Schedules” tab, and then the “Other Employee Schedules” sub-tab.

From the “Today” Tab, you can click on the Schedules tab, or click on the Other Employee Schedules button.

TimeForge will allow you to view the schedules of other employees / staff members.

To view the schedule, enter a date range into the boxes, and click on Go.

The planned work schedule for the selected time period can be seen on the Other Employee’s Schedules page. Employees are listed, along with the dates and their scheduled work shifts.

Employee schedules can be analyzed and compared to Manager Projections, Actual Values, or System Generated Forecasts.

One way to access the Sales Analytics tool is by using the list of schedules, and clicking on Analyze. The Sales Analytics tool can also be accessed through the Sales tab directly.

Follow the instructions on the Sales Analytics page, choose the desired Sales Type, and any other applicable options from the left-hand column.

The software will build a visual chart, allowing you to graphically compare Manager Projections, System Generated Forecasts, and the Actual numbers against employee work schedules.

The above graph is a sample employee schedule from 10:00am – 5:00pm, and the Sales Analytics tool is displaying the cost of labor (in purple), as well as the Manager Projection (in blue) for the same time period. Schedules can be combined, or graphed separately, based on your requirements.

Tip: The labor costs purple line stay flat, while the blue Sales Type line (Gross Sales in this case) goes up and down. This may indicate that some staff should be sent home when the blue line goes down sharply, and staff members should be brought in when the line goes up sharply.

The same graph as above is displayed, but this graph compares the Sales Type with the Scheduled Shifts during the time period, instead of Labor Costs.

Tip: Scheduled Shifts are indicative of the number of unique shifts scheduled during the time period. Just like the Labor Costs, sharply increasing or decreasing lines may indicate a need to change the schedule.

Similar to the Schedule Shifts comparison above, this graph compares the Sales Type to the Labor Hours during the time period.

The Sales Module can be easily accessed by clicking on the “Sales” tab.

Sales Types allow you to enter specific number sets to forecast and analyze as necessary. Sales Types can include:

- Gross Sales
- Net Sales
- Customer counts, plates, or covers
- Inventory Items, such as khaki pants sold, steaks to prepare, lobster sales, or booked hotel rooms
- Any other number that makes sense for your business …

You can create and maintain as many Sales Types as you would like – there are no limits.

To create your first Sales Type, Choose the “Sales Types” sub-tab from the “Sales” tab.

While creating a Sales Type, enter a Description for the Sales Type. This should be an easily identified name such as Gross Sales, Inbound Calls, Customer Count, Covers, or Takeouts and Deliveries. Choose an appropriate Type for your Sales Type:

- Currency for numeric values, such as Gross Sales, Net Sales, or Tips.
- Inventory for values pertaining to inventory or stocking, such as specific stock levels or item level inventories.
- Other for other types of values.

The Sales Module can compare number values against Labor Hours, Labor Costs, or Scheduled Shifts, as needed for your business:

- Labor Costs are the total costs of the scheduled labor, and in the case of (2) employees for a (2) hour shift at $10 each, would be $40 in labor costs.
- Labor Hours are the total number of hours scheduled, and in the case of (2) employees for a (2) hour shift would be 4 labor hours.
- Scheduled Shifts are the number of unique shifts scheduled during the time frame, and in the case of (2) employees for a (2) hour shift would be 2 scheduled shifts.

Choose the “Comparison To” that is most appropriate to your business needs. You can change this later.

The Projection Level controls the granularity of the sales numbers. For some businesses, sales numbers will be input and calculated at the department level. However, most businesses will calculate sales numbers per location (the default). Projection Level’s cannot be changed once the Sales Type has been used.

The Desired Ratio is the ratio of the labor comparison to the projections, forecasts, and actual numbers.

Example: If the “Comparison To” is set to “Labor Cost”, and the Desired Ratio is set to “20%”, the Sales Module will notify you when the ratios go above 20%. Assuming the labor cost goes above 20% of the Sales Type, the software will warn you that the ratio is too high. The Sales Module can, optionally, enforce the labor ratios, so that costly schedules are not posted for staff members.