Archive for November, 2008

In many locales, labor laws for the service industry severely limit the number of hours that a non-exempt employee can work.  Hours worked can be limited by the industry, age, job description (position worked), hourly rate, holiday, length of shift, or even the day of the week.  If your business works with service unions, these rules can become even more complicated, requiring that managers spend time tracking breaks and meal periods and indicating whether or not employees wanted to take their break.  Some states and insurance companies perform regular Labor & Industries audits, imposing heavy fines or insurance premium increases for non-compliant businesses.

Careful managers schedule around these frequently changing and complicated rules, ensuring that their business is compliant with all applicable labor regulations.  However, businesses can inadvertently land themselves in hot-water when employees fail to show up, quit, or are terminated for otherwise legitimate reasons.  Inexperienced managers, overburdened by other areas of schedule creation can forget about these rules, which are not core to the “making money” aspect of their business.  Stiff fines and lawsuits are the result of failing to be in compliance.

In uncertain economic times managers must be able to schedule labor correctly in a consistent manner, keep employees happy, and reduce fines imposed by legislative authorities, such as the Department of Labor.  Businesses should seek to use cost-effective computer systems, such as TimeForge, to ensure that proper scheduling techniques are utilized.  Effective scheduling software will be able to schedule meal and break periods, accurately calculate overtime costs, and archive previous schedules for managerial review.

Labor & Industries (L&I) audits are common in some US states (California, Washington, Oregon, and New York are especially common) in restaurant, food-service, retail, construction, and hospitality-related industries.  These audits are performed by the state or by insurance companies to verify that the business has complied with all applicable regulations.  Audits focus on unpaid overtime, minors working too late or too early, break and meal periods that are not properly documented, and other violations.  Rule infractions can be punished with stiff fines and/or insurance premium increases.

Make sure that all employees are aware of the applicable rules for the city, county, and state / province.  Follow federal / national rules (where applicable), corporate rules, and insurance regulations (if applicable).  Where possible, automated scheduling systems should be utilized to enforce these rules reducing the administrative burden placed on managers - allowing management to work on other pressing issues such as training, customer service, and management tasks which cannot be automated by cost-effective technology solutions.

In addition to the many other updates on TimeForge, detailed in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 - the monthly TimeForge pricing also received an update over the weekend, providing a more level field for all of our customers.

The current pricing is published on the TimeForge website, and existing customers (and trial users) are free to use the new pricing, or stay with the old pricing.

For some customers, the new pricing will be slightly more expensive, significantly cheaper, or just about the same.  If you want to switch to the new pricing model, feel free to contact TimeForge support and let us know!

Are complicated employee scheduling practices taking up precious time at your business? Are you making the best possible labor schedule? How much turnover is created because of bad, or late, schedules? Did you know that TimeForge can reduce turnover, improve retention and increase profits at your business? Sign up today for a free trial!

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the November newsletter here.

The TimeForge Daily Log, our newest product offering has received many recent improvements, including:

• Numeric Analysis is available in the Daily Log, transforming the Daily Log into an extremely powerful trend analysis tool for your business.  Enter values for deposits, sales, or other relevant information, and compare these values for any dates, or date range.  Say goodbye to Excel! Watch the TimeForge Blog for an upcoming tutorial, detailing how to use the TimeForge Daily Log.

• Weather is automatically recorded on a daily basis for each store location, and is archived in the TimeForge Daily Log.  You can now include weather activity in your day-to-day comparisons of the Daily Log as part of the Numeric Analysis.

Other improvements to the TimeForge products are detailed in Part 1 and Part 2.

Are complicated employee scheduling practices taking up precious time at your business? Are you making the best possible labor schedule? How much turnover is created because of bad, or late, schedules? Did you know that TimeForge can reduce turnover, improve retention and increase profits at your business? Sign up today for a free trial!

Read Part 1 of the November newsletter here.

Some of the improvements to the TimeForge products are detailed below.

TimeForge Scheduling - Improvements for Employees
The employee side of TimeForge Labor Scheduling has received a number of improvements over the past few months, including some major improvements this past weekend.  These include:

• Employees can now delete their own pending requests, without requiring manager approval.  This allows employees to become “available” for work without needing to involve management.

• Searching for available shifts is now easier than ever.  Employees can view qualified “open” shifts with a single click – or they can search for specific shifts by date and time.  Once a potential shift is found, a shift swap request can be made directly through TimeForge, with a single click.

• The employee interface has been improved to show shift notes, sections, and make the screens more user friendly.

TimeForge Scheduling - Improvements for Managers
The management side of TimeForge Scheduling has received many improvements over the past few months, including some important improvements this past weekend.  These include:

• The Schedule Summary screen now includes a number of useful metrics, including the number of variable hours scheduled, non-variable (management) hours scheduled, as well as the hours, labor costs, and the costs of breaks.  A number of other important numbers are recorded on this screen as well!

• Many of our users have requested the ability to forecast – forecasting for sales, customer counts, inventory orders, schedules, or staffing levels.  Many of you want to be able to compare labor costs, labor hours, or scheduled shifts directly to the projected numbers to see how the schedule stacks up.  In Excel, this is very hard to do accurately.  It’s now available in TimeForge! Managers with TimeForge Scheduling Basic, Pro, and Max can enter daily, hourly, or quarter-hour manager projections (or actual values), and TimeForge will display and enforce labor percentages in the schedule.  Check the TimeForge Blog for an upcoming tutorial on the usage of the TimeForge Forecasting System.

• Adding and editing schedules has never been easier!  TimeForge automatically adds new shifts as you type, reducing the number of clicks that it takes to create a schedule.  Also, the schedules can now be sorted by position, start time, end time, or employee.

Other information about the TimeForge update can be found in Part 1 and Part 3 of this newsletter.

Are complicated employee scheduling practices taking up precious time at your business? Are you making the best possible labor schedule? How much turnover is created because of bad, or late, schedules? Did you know that TimeForge can reduce turnover, improve retention and increase profits at your business? Sign up today for a free trial!

It has been almost six months since the last TimeForge Newsletter went out – and we apologize!  We have been so busy adding new functionality and improving TimeForge that we haven’t taken the time to inform you about all of the new TimeForge features.  As most of you know, we performed a massive update to TimeForge on Thursday and Friday, delivering enhanced functionality just in time for Halloween (or, if you keep up with football, in time for the Texas Tech vs. Texas game)!

We have officially split TimeForge into three distinct products, and each product can be combined together as needed for your business.  These three products include:

• TimeForge Scheduling, our flagship product continues to be the best labor scheduling tool available – fast, streamlined, and easy to use!

• TimeForge Attendance, a powerful time and attendance package that can enforce the labor schedule, provide detailed employee time cards, and directly export your payroll!

• TimeForge Daily Log, a valuable communications tool useful for recording notes and numbers about maintenance, employee problems, deposit logs, sales figures, and much more!

Some of the improvements to the TimeForge products are detailed in Part 2 and Part 3.

Are complicated employee scheduling practices taking up precious time at your business? Are you making the best possible labor schedule? How much does a bad labor schedule cost? Did you know that TimeForge can reduce turnover, improve retention and increase profits at your business? Sign up today for a free trial!

We are a few months late getting this bit of news to all of our users — but we were featured (for the second time) by Accuvia, in their monthly newsletter, Foodservice Tech Advisor.  In August, Accuvia featured TimeForge in their annual Back Office issue, featuring some of our recent improvements as part of their industry updates.  The newsletter mentioned important update features such as:

• Fingerprint and Biometric support
• Improved Attendance Reports
• Tracking employee tips and mileage
• Scheduling by Department

More can be read in their actual newsletter, located here.

Are difficult employee schedules practices taking up time at your business? Did you know that TimeForge can reduce turnover, improve retention and increase profits at your business? Sign up today for a free trial!