Labor Management. NOW Simple.

Our staff has been hard at work continuing to improve TimeForge – ensuring that it is simply the best employee scheduling and labor management tool on the web.

This newsletter includes some details about new features in TimeForge, several scheduling and labor tips, and other information.  As always, if you have any suggestions for TimeForge, please let us know!

New TimeForge Partners

TimeForge is proud to be a certified Dinerware partner, providing advanced labor management and employee scheduling for restaurants, country clubs, casinos, wineries, and hotels.  Read more about the TimeForge-Dinerware integration here.

We are also very excited to welcome Factor One Technology as a TimeForge Partner.  Factor One provides Point of Sale systems to retail and restaurant businesses in Canada.

Also, TimeForge now supports exporting attendance and payroll data to the world’s premier online payroll company, SurePayroll.  Exporting payroll has never been easier!

New TimeForge Features

• Enjoy the brand new TimeForge Today page – with improved access to schedules, attendance, shift swaps, and much more!
• Perform “What If” scenarios on your labor schedule, and quickly restore previously saved schedules using Schedule Snapshots.
• Bulk insert or update employee, position, and department-level information by using an import file.
• Access TimeForge on an iPhone, Blackberry, or other RSS capable device to receive up-to-the-minute schedule and labor information.
• And much, much more.

Did you know that you can access TimeForge on Facebook?  Check schedules, see who is clocked in, receive and send messages, review time cards, and much more!

Follow TimeForge on Twitter!

Make sure to check our blog for the latest information about TimeForge.

TimeForge employee scheduling software is used by owners and operators of hospitality, food-service, retail, and other service-oriented businesses around the world.  TimeForge will increase profitability, reduce turnover, and improve retention at your business!

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Due to overwhelming demand, we released our new Today page for managers, providing an executive dashboard for labor management.  This new Today page includes all of the previous information (bar charts for who is working, labor costs for the day, which employees are clocked in, pending requests and shift swaps), as well as a number of new items to ease the burden of managing the employee schedule.

1. The first row of data shows how many employees are scheduled for the day (unique shifts), and if you click on this link you will get the bar chart that you are used to seeing, which can be printed, just like the old chart could be printed.

2. The second row of data shows any unconfirmed shifts from your staff members, providing you with some idea of how many employees have confirmed receipt of their schedule through TimeForge. Clicking on this link will allow you to further examine which shifts have been confirmed, or not confirmed.

3. The third row of data displays how many Pending Shift Swaps need to be approved for that day. Pending Shift Swaps are exactly the same as the Shift Swaps that were shown before on the Today page, and clicking on this link will take you to a screen to approve or deny the pending shift swaps. This functions exactly like it did on the old Today screen.

4. The fourth row of data displays how many Open Shifts occur on that day. An Open Shift is a shift that has been Given Up, but not yet Picked Up. Clicking on this link will take you to a page displaying more detail about the Open Shifts, as well as any Pending Shift Swaps.  Again, this functions exactly like it did on the old Today screen.

5. The fifth row of data displays today’s schedule in a bar chart format, very similar to the first row.

6. The sixth row of data will provide the day’s schedule in a Horizontal or Vertical format, allowing you to print the schedule and place it your pocket. Again, these links function exactly like they did on the old Today screen.

7. The seventh row of data will allow you to quickly see how many staff members are clocked in, and clicking on the link will send you to the “Clocked In” Employees page. This also functions exactly like it did on the old Today screen.

8. The eighth row of data displays the number of Daily Log entries for the day, and clicking on this link will take you to the Daily Log.

9. The ninth row of data displays the day’s scheduled labor costs, if any labor costs have been entered for staff members.

10. The tenth row of data displays the actual cost of employee’s who have clocked in and out for the day, and is the total of your day’s labor. This functions exactly like it did on the old Today screen.

11. The eleventh row of data displays the difference between the scheduled labor costs, and the actual attendance – if the number is in green, the actual labor costs for the day are less than what was scheduled (good job!), if they are in red, then the labor costs are higher than what was scheduled.

12. The last row of data displays the rolling labor cost for the day, and resets based on when your schedule starts. You can use this number to keep track of your labor costs for the week. This works just like the previous “Week To Date” cost did.

You can move forward and backwards in time, and have access to all of the data on this page that you had previously including:

• Shift swaps requiring approval,
• Requests that require approval,
• The bar chart describing the labor for the day,
• The labor costs for the day,
• The week to date labor costs,
• And much, much more.

In between the “Next Week” and the “Previous Week” are two links, “Approve or Deny Shift Swaps” and “Approve or Deny Pending Requests”, which will be shown if there are ANY shift swaps or pending requests to approve, regardless of which day the requests or shift swaps fall on.

TimeForge employee scheduling software is used by owners and operators of hospitality, food-service, retail, and other service-oriented businesses around the world.  TimeForge will increase profitability, reduce turnover, and improve retention at your business!

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Now available! Managing labor at your business just became even more simple.  TimeForge Mobile recently launched, providing managers and staff members the ability to review employee schedules, check timecards, send and receive online messages, and perform other labor management related items on an iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, or other smartphone.

TimeForge Mobile can be accessed by pointing your favorite web browser or RSS reader at the TimeForge website.  To ensure the confidentiality of the information that is available, the RSS reading program must be able to use both SSL (bank-level encryption and security) and authentication (username and password).  Some of our favorite RSS readers include:

• Viigo on the Blackberry
• NetNewswire and Pro RSS on the iPhone
• Others (mostly for the desktop) can be found here

Accessing TimeForge Mobile is very simple!  Just add the website or URL of:

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

to your RSS program of choice – enter your username and password – and your schedule, timecard, availability, and messages will automatically load into your RSS program.

Managers and supervisors have additional capabilities, and multi-unit and multi-store operators can view additional information (such as which staff members are clocked in, the days labor costs, and gross sales for the day).  A full list of RSS URL’s can be found inside “My Settings” page within TimeForge.

TimeForge staff scheduling and labor management software is used by managers, owners, and operators of restaurants, retail stores, bars, clubs, and other service-oriented businesses to increase profitability, reduce turnover, and improve retention.

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One of the most frustrating aspects of labor management systems is the process of inputting all of the data needed to use a employee scheduling, time and attendance, or complete labor management system.

Almost all of the labor management systems on the market today (including TimeForge) require that users input and set up:

• Employee names
• Positions and job codes
• Base pay rates
• Basic labor rules (how many hours per week an employee can work, etc…)
• Email addresses
• Department names
• Phone numbers
• Usernames and passwords
• Specific pay rates for employees
• Hire dates
• Birth dates
• Payroll ID’s
• … And other data points that are relevant to labor systems.

Most frustrating is that most users already have much of this information living inside of other documents, such as the payroll system, point of sale system, or various Excel documents.  Re-inputting all of this data can be a huge waste of time.

TimeForge recently introduced an Employee, Position, and Department Import Tool, allowing users to import most of the above information directly from a CSV file or an Excel file.  The tool is very simple to use – simply collect the information together into a CSV file, and then upload the file to TimeForge.

You will have the ability to view the data before it is import, and TimeForge will automatically handle any necessary updates to your existing data.  The Import Tool can be found in the Setup menu.

TimeForge labor management software provides employee scheduling and attendance management for operators, managers, and owners of bars, clubs, retail stores, restaurants, and other businesses to improve profits, reduce turnover, and increase retention.

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