scheduling

Entries Tagged as 'scheduling'

How Do I Enforce Clock Ins and Clock Outs?

TimeForge is a powerful labor management platform, and is capable of meeting all of your workforce management needs. In many businesses with hourly wage workers, staff members need to arrive at work on time. Four clock in and clock out scenarios will create problems for your business:

1. Arriving earlier than scheduled will destroy business profits, as employees will be at work before they are needed, but will need to be paid for their time.

2. Arriving later than scheduled for work will cause problems with customers, as employees may not be available to service the customer’s needs.

3. Leaving earlier than scheduled can cause similar problems as clocking in late. Customers may not be serviced properly.

4. Leaving later than scheduled will increase payroll costs for the business, decreasing profits.

TimeForge offers a number of technology enhancements that can enforce your labor schedule, ensuring that staff show up on time.

Enforcing clock in and clock out time periods can reduce your payroll expenses by 2 – 4% with the click of a button!

Navigate to the Attendance Options

Locate the Attendance Options link or sub-tab (inside of the Attendance tab).

Locate the Enforcement Options for Clocking In and Out

TimeForge includes two primary options which will enable, or disable, attendance (time card) enforcement.

1. By default, TimeForge allows employees to clock in at any time that they would like. If you are using TimeForge for scheduling, you can enforce the schedule, requiring employees to clock in on time.

2. By default, TimeForge allows employees to clock out at any time that they would like. If you are using TimeForge for scheduling, you can enforce the schedule, requiring employees to clock out on time.

TimeForge provides two configurations for clocking in or clocking out. You can require staff members to clock in or out using grace periods, or using the scheduled time. Please check your local labor regulations to see which ones are applicable (and legal) for your business.

Enforce the Schedule with Grace Periods

To require that staff members clock in and out with a grace period, based on their scheduled shift, set the options as follows:

For clocking in:

1. Switch this option from Yes, to No, requiring that employees must clock in at a predefined time.

2. Enter an appropriate grace period in minutes. This will allow employees to clock in prior to their shift starting.

Staff members who clock in too early will need a manager to approve their clock in.

For clocking out:

3. Switch this option from Yes, to No, requiring that employees must clock out at a predefined time.

4. Enter an appropriate grace period in minutes. This will allow employees to clock out after their shift ends.

Staff members who clock out too late will need a manager to approve their clock out.

Example:

Using the above options, a staff member who is scheduled from 10:00am – 4:00pm would be allowed to clock in after 9:50am, and must clock out no later than 4:20pm. Earlier than 9:50am or later than 4:20pm will require a manager override.

Enforce the Schedule by the Scheduled Time

To require that employees clock in and out based on the scheduled time, without providing a grace period, set the options as follows:

For clocking in:

1. Leave this option set to Yes, allowing employees to clock in at any time.

2. Switch this option from No, to Yes, requiring that staff members acknowledge that their clock in times will not show the actual clock in time, but will instead show the scheduled start time.

TimeForge will record the scheduled start time (not the real time), unless overridden by a manager.

For clocking out:

1. Leave this option set to Yes, allowing employees to clock out at any time.

2. Switch this option from No, to Yes, requiring that staff members acknowledge that their clock out times will not show the actual clock out time, but will instead show the scheduled end time.

TimeForge will record the scheduled end time (not the real time), unless overridden by a manager.

Example:

Using the above options, a staff member may be scheduled from 9:00am – 3:00pm. If the employee shows up at 8:30am, TimeForge will record a start time of 9:00am (not 8:30am). When leaving, if the staff member leaves after 3:00pm, TimeForge will record an end time of 3:00pm. A manager can override and change the behavior of TimeForge when the staff member clocks in or clocks out.

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TimeForge University: Attendance Overview

A powerful and easy to use workforce management solution for your business! TimeForge is a complete labor management system, and includes many features designed to streamline operations in your business. These include:

Time tracking (electronic time sheets and time cards)
Meal and break management
One-click payroll exports
Easy reminders for when staff are early, late, or approaching overtime
And much more…

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TimeForge Attendance is a powerful replacement to the traditional time clocks used at many businesses. Use TimeForge Attendance by itself, or combine with TimeForge Scheduling for a complete workforce management solution.

TimeForge can also integrate with your Point of Sale system, providing a one-click experience for managers to enforce the labor schedule, stop entering data multiple times, and provide easy communication with all staff members.

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How Do I Create Daily Labor Templates By Employee?

Schedule Templates are 24-hour periods of time that reflect a single day of a schedule. In some industries, these are called “Master Schedules“, or “Master Work Schedules“.

You can use templates to organize your staffing requirements in advance of making the actual schedule, allowing you to easily and quickly build a staff schedule. Templates can be created for any number of scenarios, and there are no limits on the number of templates in your account.

Templates allow you to rapidly build a schedule by spending some time in advance, thinking about your labor requirements.

In this lesson, we will build schedule templates for two staff members, and then use these templates to build a schedule.

Navigate to the Schedules Tab

To manage templates, navigate to the Schedules tab, and then the Templates sub-tab, where you will see a list of templates for your location and/or departments.

Edit Schedule Templates

Choose the Edit Schedule Templates link.

Add a New Schedule Template

You can add a new template by clicking on the “Add a New Schedule Template” button, and then enter a name or description, and click “Save” to continue.

Add Shifts to the Daily Template

Editing a template is similar to working with a staff schedule in the TimeForge Daily View.

Select the start time, end time, and position for each shift, and then choose the employee you would like to have work the shift. Just like the schedule Daily View, templates can be built by position or by employee, based on your business needs.

You can also build Templates using Work Periods (commonly called Day Parts), if you would like, by clicking on the Work Period icon, next to the start time.

Employee Staffing with Schedule Templates

Shifts on a template can be assigned to an employee, to the TimeForge AutoScheduler, or as a Bid or Open shift.

- AutoSchedule shifts allow the TimeForge AutoScheduler to choose the best fitting staff member, and will replace the AutoSchedule employee with the best fitting staff member when building the schedule.
- Open shifts will allow a manager to specify the assigned employee when building the schedule.
- Bid shifts can be requested by multiple employees, and the manager can choose the best staff member for the job.

There are several options that can be chosen for each shift by clicking on the Properties link, the small pencil, next to the shift. Options include whether the staff member is an Extra or is On Call, the Skill Level necessary to work the shift, and the number of staff members required for the shift.

In this case, we have built a very simple template with a single shift.

We will Save this template, and create a new template for another staff member.

Build a Schedule Template for Another Staff Member

Just like the previous template, we are creating a template with a single shift for another staff member.

Save this template, and then go build an actual schedule.

Navigate to the Schedules Page

Go to the Schedules page and build a schedule.

Create a New Schedule

Click on “Add A New Schedule“.

Choose Dates for the Schedule

Choose the date range for the Schedule, and name the schedule to continue.

Choose One or More Schedule Templates

When building your schedule, you can choose one or more schedule templates for each day.

In this case, we have chosen to schedule Anthony and Daniel on Sunday, using the templates we built previously.

When we are ready to have TimeForge build the schedule for us, simply click on Assign Employees. TimeForge will then copy the shifts inside of your templates to the schedule, and will assign staff members to work if necessary.

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TimeForge University: Schedule Templates 102

Weekly Schedule Templates are 7-day (one week) periods of time that reflect your anticipated scheduling needs for a single week. A Weekly Template is a combination of TimeForge Schedule Templates, and you can have an unlimited number of schedule templates and weekly templates in your account.

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Use Weekly Templates and Schedule Templates to easily organize your labor requirements for upcoming scheduling needs, and anticipate upcoming staffing requirements.

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How Do I use Weekly Templates?

After creating several templates, you can choose to group templates into weekly templates to mirror your labor needs for any given week.

Use Schedule Templates to quickly and easily manage your workforce, and reduce the amount of time that you must spend changing the schedule on a weekly basis.