By Gurkan Ozfidan, TimeForge Developer

This is second in a two-part series. Read Budgeting Tools: Part I to help this post make more sense.

In Part I, it was mentioned that TimeForge has several budgeting options. One of the options was briefly covered in part I, and in this article we will cover the remaining 3 budgeting options.

In part I, we have talked about how TimeForge can help you to watch your budget as you make your schedule. Option 1, which was covered, could show our clients, based on sales category numbers, how many shifts you could have; cost or number of hours should be in your schedule per position. Should you desire, TimeForge could show you budgeting numbers in percentages as well.

From Sales Category settings, our clients could switch the settings to use percentages option by changing from drop-down formula list. By changing the formula setting from numerical comparison to percentage comparison, our thresholds numbers will be considered as percentage values. Even though we could still use our min and max limits in this formula, it may not be useful as it was in option 1.

Remember, by using min and max limit, we were making sure to have not less than X or not more than Y number of shifts, hours or cost. Those min and max limit, in option 2, would mean not less than X and not more than Y percentage. Since we are comparing our budget in percentages, limiting with min and max percentages may not be helpful in option 2. But since we have single check box which turns on and off to be included those min and max values in our formula, we can simply turned off and exclude our min and max values from our second formula if we need to.

Based on our sales category numbers, here could be estimated number of visits or gross sales for that day, and we can set percentages per position, and again we can limit duration of our percentages by begin and end dates as in option 1, the dates also could be used for seasonal periods. Simply, by using option 2, as you make your schedule and start adding shifts for positions, TimeForge will calculate what the current percentages and will compare with the limited percentages.

If the calculated percentage is less than or equal to, it will be colored as in green, if it is greater than limited percentages it will be colored as in red to indicate that current schedule is above your budget limits.

First two options of this budgeting tool, thresholds numbers for option 1, mentioned as numerical comparison, and percentages numbers for option 2, mentioned as percentage comparison values also can be stored in department level instead of position level as well.

Remaining two options are simple and a lot easier to use than first two options, and there are minimal differences between the two remaining option 3 and 4.
Instead of storing estimated number of visits or gross sales for the day as in option 1 and 2, you could store the limited cost or hours for that day to be scheduled as in sales category. Should you desire to use budgeting option 3, you could simply not select any of the formula drop-down lists and check ‘Direct comparison’ option, for to use budgeting option 4, simply you could select ‘Show Sales Numbers’ option from Sales Category settings.

Option 3, ‘Direct comparison’, will compare your current schedule number with the sales category number, and will color in green if it is less than or equal to, will color in red if it is greater than. Option 4, ‘Show Sales Numbers ’, will simply show the sales numbers with no comparison and coloring.

We have briefly covered all 4 options of budgeting tools that TimeForge currently has. We are constantly improving budgeting tools, and highly recommend checking out our new updates.

Several lawsuits have plagued the restaurant industry. One specific lawsuit is the meal-and-rest break lawsuit involving Chili’s parent Brinker International Inc. This lawsuit was finally resolved when the California Supreme Court ruled that employers across the state need not ensure that workers actually take mandated thirty minute breaks during their shifts. However, the employers must make meal and rest breaks available within a certain time during shifts and they must also keep records of such breaks.

I have worked in a restaurant where breaks were not a major concern for management. My boss would always say, “if you have time to lean you have time to clean.” Most of the time, if I had time to lean I wanted to lean into a plate of food. It was hard for me to run around the restaurant for ten hours without a break. Needless to say, I did not work at that restaurant for very long.

The California Supreme Court’s decision will allow employees an opportunity for a meal break, but will not force them to take a break they may not want. “The court declared the law to be precisely what employees and employers have always thought: it is the employee’s choice to take a meal break, not something forced on employees by the government” (Nation’s Restaurant News).

Turnover rates can cost a business thousands of dollars a year. Most of the time employees quit because they are unhappy with their schedules. If you schedule an employee to work ten hours without a lunch break, they are most likely going to quit. On the other hand, if you schedule an employee to work for three hours and force them to take an unpaid break, they are also likely to quit.

TimeForge can help resolve all these issues and help reduce your turnover rate. TimeForge has several break options that can make your life easier. You can set break rules that will automatically generate a break. One example is, you can set a thirty minute break to generate every five hours. You can also choose between paid and unpaid, required or not required. These settings could help your restaurant avoid an expensive lawsuit! I wish that the restaurant I worked so hard at had used TimeForge breaks!

We’ll be following this post up with a discussion about our staff scheduling and labor management competitors – but for now, we really need to point something out.  We have customers signing up, every single day.  Customers from all over the United States, Canada, Europe, India, and even China.

In almost every case, TimeForge customers consider TimeForge part of their special sauce that runs their business.  Having TimeForge is a competitive advantage.  Our customers have staff members (team members, associates, etc…) that know what’s going on, and their managers are happier schedulers.  That means our customers’ competitors (like that restaurant across the street, or the other vet clinic in town) aren’t being run as efficiently.  They’re losing precious money on their labor.  Their schedules aren’t as efficient.  They have a higher turnover.

… Their employees aren’t happy.

… Their managers aren’t happy.

… Their customers aren’t happy.

So, we have a pretty strict policy here at TimeForge to not go around blabbing our mouths about customers who have signed up.  You won’t see us self-promoting with a blog post saying “Congratulations, Restaurant X has joined our family.”  Not unless they’ve told us specifically and explicitly that they want us to promote their business.  If they want to tell the world, by all means, please do so.

Your secret is safe with us!

Operational aspects such as inventory control, portion sizing, reducing turnover, improving employee retention, and training are all import aspects of businesses that can be forgotten about during good times.

Jim Sullivan, the chief executive of Sullivision.com recently enclosed “In hard times, control costs instead of hiding your inefficiencies by just pumping up volume” at Nation’s Restaurant News.  Although his article is meant for restaurants, it is also applicable to retailers, hotels, and other similar businesses. Jim covers a number of issues, including one aspect of running a business that is often forgotten in the day to day operations:

Remember, all money is not created equal: $100 in sales is $100 less taxes and expenses; $100 in savings is $100. Here are some fiscal fundamentals to review and execute with your team in both tough times and boom times.

Now is the perfect time to revisit your business’s operational procedures. It is very important to be efficient and cost conscience. This will immediately improve profitability at your business. A variety of tools, including TimeForge, are designed to improve cost controls at your business – producing schedules in minutes instead of hours.

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. Sign up today for a free trial today!

By Gurkan Ozfidan, TimeForge Developer

You need to make your schedule for tomorrow, and you want to make your schedule so that you are not short staff or over staff, you may know or estimate how much sales or number of visits could be for tomorrow. TimeForge could store those values for you as Gross Sales or Number of Visits in sales categories.  You can store your sales category values in department level i.e. Bar, Tables, Kitchen or in location level as well. And you can set these sales categories so that can be compared to schedule hours, cost of shifts, or number of shifts.

You may have several positions for the schedule you need for tomorrow i.e Manager, Cook, Waiter. You want to schedule your staff based on their positions and have enough number of staffs or number of hours for each position. The fact that you may have estimated sales or how many visits can be for tomorrow, you may need X number of Managers, Y number of Cooks and Z number of Waiters with a certain ratio to estimated sales or number of visits for each position. TimeForge can store those ratios or threshold values for each position per sales categories to be able to calculate how many hours or number of shifts you may need or cost of shifts to keep your schedule under the limited-budget. This threshold values can be stored within different date ranges as well.Date ranges could be weekdays, weekend, or seasonal periods for months.

Now that we have estimated sales or number of visits for tomorrow and a threshold value for each position within certain date ranges, as you make your schedule for tomorrow, TimeForge could show you how many shifts, number of hours, and cost of shifts per position you have scheduled, and compares to one of the metrics you have set to. Numbers per position will be calculated based on estimated sales or visits with the position ratio. The calculated numbers are colored in green if scheduled value is less than or equal to, or red if it is greater than. Green means you can still add some shifts for that position, and red means, you may have scheduled more than you may need based on sales number and threshold value for that position.

At this point, as you make your schedule, TimeForge could show you how many hours you have scheduled, cost of shifts or number of shifts per position you have. Calculated number compares to one of the schedule metrics which could be hour, shift, or cost. It is colored green or red to help if current scheduled positions are under or over the limited-budget. TimeForge will calculate the number based on sales and position ratios. One day, you may have very high and next day very low sales or number of visits. And you may want to make sure that you have scheduled not less than X and or not more than Y number of hours/cost.

You may want to limit so that you scheduled at least X, and or at most Y number of hours/cost for the positions. TimeForge could help you to limit by setting min and max values per position, and with a single check box, min and max limits can turn on and off. Based on your setting, TimeForge will consider those min and max limits to be included during budget calculation.

TimeForge has several budgeting options, and here we have covered one of the options that TimeForge provides to our clients.

Stay tuned for Part II… coming soon!

Whether you are in the hotel, restaurant, or retail industry, employee scheduling is an important task of a manager, supervisor, or business owner. Proper employee scheduling contributes to the productivity of the employees and the success of the company. Poor scheduling practices can cause a large loss of money to your business. If poor scheduling practices keep reoccurring for long periods of time, your business might end up bankrupt.

Poor scheduling practices cost the company large amounts of loss through one or more of the following situations:

• When employees are not working effectively during office hours. Some employees attend work at times when they are not entirely needed, thus, the company pays for an unnecessary salary.
• When the company does not adapt its office hours to the needs of its clients, there are fewer prospects. For instance, if you own a bar and only operate it until six in the evening, you are losing the customers that would visit your bar in the late evening.
• When employees are not assigned specific duties and responsibilities in advance. Absences and conflicts in schedules may occur and cause a decrease in productivity.
• When the employees do not understand their job and schedules.

You do not need to wait until your business’s finances get affected by poor scheduling practices. Start right by employing an efficient employee scheduling software that will make this task less wearisome. Invest in employee scheduling software and see your company and workforce yield productivity.

TimeForge can save you time and money. Sign up for a free trial now!

April 9, 2012

Here’s what we’ve been working on for this version:

Request number 1207 (Canadian Providers)

The issue: We didn’t support enough Canadian cell service providers, so some Canadian customers’ employees were unable to receive text message notifications.

The fix: We now support some new SMS and text message carriers for Canada, including Fido.

Request number 1213 (California Double Overtime)

The issue: Because our reports don’t have a separate field for double overtime, it appeared to not be calculated correctly. It was calculating correctly, just not being displayed separately from the regular overtime (1.5x or “time and a half”). This generally only affects users in California.

The fix: No fix was necessary, because it was calculating correctly. However, the developers are looking into reports to determine if an alternative is going to be necessary to prevent overtime confusion.

Request number 1218 (Location Cost)

The issue: One of our users has a POS integration, and the installer in this integration does not have a value set, causing the account to not calculate the location cost.

The fix: We set a value on that user’s installer.

Request number 1222 (Daily View Pop-Up)

The issue: The Daily View pop-up was not always calculating the correct number of shifts per employee for the schedule, depending on the start day of the week.

The fix: The Daily View pop-up calculates the number of shifts correctly now, regardless of the start day of the schedule.

Request number 1225 (Forecasting Improvements)

• On the Sales Categories page, we now show the last time that the TimeForge system forecast was run, and you can request to “Reforecast”, forcing the software to re-run the forecasts for that location within the next several minutes (20 – 30 minutes).
• A new field for the sales category allows you to determine how much data is needed to do an “accurate” forecast. This is currently defaulted to 1 year.
• A new sales option allows you to forecast 24 hours per day, or to forecast only the open hours.

Request number 1227 (Printing Hours)

The issue: Some users need to print overtime and regular Attendance hours.

The fix: Now you can print overtime and regular Attendance hours when these are moused over.

Request number 1230 (SurePayroll Export)

The issue: The SurePayroll export stopped working.

The fix: The SurePayroll export works again!

April 6, 2012

What we’ve been working on for this update: A much faster Daily View, Weekly View, and Today Page.  Should load in around 2 – 4 seconds in most cases.

Request number 1152 (Attendance Copied)

The issue: When copying an employee’s scheduled shifts into their attendance (this is used for employees who don’t need to clock in, but their pay should be calculated in attendance costs), there was an issue while copying them nightly.

The fix: “Copied” Attendance entries work fine now, with no known issues!

Request number 1155 (New Upload Tool)

The issue: We needed a newer upload tool for uploading data.

The fix: Jose, Daniel, and Rodrigo built a beautiful data upload tool.

Request number 1155 (Scheduled Reports)

The issue: When scheduling reports to be automatically emailed to you, the subject line was ambiguous, so if you had several reports scheduled, you had no way of knowing which report you were opening until you opened it!

The fix: The name of the report is in the subject line of the email!

Request number 1204 (Admin Termination)

The issue: Occasionally, the account holder in TimeForge (the one who signed up for the account/ receives the “payment notification” emails) would terminate himself. If an account holder is terminated (this could only be done by the account holder), the account is no longer considered active, and all other employees would be unable to access the account – because there was no “accountable” person for the account.

The fix: If you are the account holder, you cannot terminate yourself. You must first give someone else the “account holder” responsibility, then you can terminate yourself.

Request number 1205 (IP Recording)

The issue: Some users would like to know from which IP addresses users who modify attendance are doing the modifying. Basically, if a user (who has been granted permission to modify attendance) is modifying attendance entries for an employee, management wants to know which IP address the user is modifying from – whether the “modifying” user is making changes from home or work, etc.

The fix: TimeForge now records the IP address of any changes made to attendance for auditing.

Request number 1210 (Department Payroll Approval)

The issue: Some users with departments were approving payroll with shifts that had no departments assigned to them. This can  hinder payroll processing, depending on which payroll provider and export method you use.

The fix: You cannot approve payroll if you have departments and there are shifts that aren’t assigned to a department. Additionally, there are alerts on the Today page if this is the case.

Request number 1211 (POS Positions Sync)

The issue: Some POS systems were taking longer than we’d like to synchronize. This was caused by some tiny things that could be improved, like syncing all positions instead of just syncing the positions that have changed since the last sync. (If nothing has changed, there’s no reason to look for changes, right?)

The fix: Some of the POS systems can sync only the positions that have changed – making the sync faster!

Request number 1212 (POS Employees Sync)

The issue: Just like Request 1211, some POS systems were taking longer than we’d like to synchronize. This was caused by some tiny things that could be improved, like syncing all employees instead of just syncing the employees that have changed since the last sync. (If nothing has changed, there’s no reason to look for changes, right?)

The fix: Some of the POS systems can sync only the employees that have changed – making the sync faster!

Other items that we worked on:

Some customers were finding that when they tried to save Attendance Options, the page was “locking up” because of Bid Shift email settings. This should be resolved with a much faster sending of data on our end. When we say much faster, we mean TimeForge went from about 10 hours to send out Bid Shift emails, to less than 30 minutes to send these out!

SurePayroll export should be working again!

In most businesses, the workforce is considered the biggest asset. Managing employees is important in making sure that the workforce is efficient and organized at all times. This contributes to the company’s productivity. However, labor management can sometimes be a tedious job and it entails lots of time, money, and effort from the company and from the employees.

Thanks to the brilliance of software engineers, a new tool was designed to make labor management in businesses hassle free.  A labor management software often includes time and attendance, basic spreadsheet-style schedules in Microsoft Excel, sign-in sheets for attendance tracking, scheduling and data collection devices, integrated payrolls, and biometric time clocks.

This tool is the easiest and most powerful tool that business owners use to monitor the workforce and ensure that the company’s goals are accomplished. In this article, we look at some of the benefits that businesses can take advantage of when using labor management software.

It has the ability to track a company’s productivity. By tracing the productivity of each employee, division, or department the workforce is able to perform at its potential. Importantly, labor management software trackers are easy to understand and user friendly.

It helps increase productivity and lessens unproductive hours. Aside from tracking productivity, labor management software allows you and your employees to keep track of their time. This is essentially a way to measure their productivity. Businesses get more from their employees when they use labor management software.

It allows businesses to compare performance of each department, area, or function. With labor management software, you can compare the performance of your employees as well as how their respective groups or offices contribute to the company’s overall performance. This is because this tool is able to monitor all productive and non-productive time, as well as performance levels in real time.

It helps reduce labor costs. With labor management software you can now determine whether you need to hire more employees, freeze hiring, and even lay off some members of the workforce.  Also, with proper scheduling of workload and distribution of tasks, a business can spare itself from paying unnecessary overtime.

With all these benefits and more, employing labor management software is a wise decision for any business owner.

TimeForge labor management software can save you time and money. Sign up for a free trial now!

A hotel should always be properly managed  to ensure success. In this area of work, managing your staff and balancing staff schedules may be the biggest challenge. With the use of hotel scheduling software, proper hotel scheduling is a breeze.

Hotel scheduling software makes it possible for you to create work schedules and control labor budgets in you business. In this type of industry, it is important to focus on peak hours, peak seasons, part-time workers, and different job positions when making the schedule. You should also consider time-off requests, labor rules, and personnel availabilities.

Hotel scheduling software has many capabilities such as, easy fixing of schedules, rotating employees, adjusting shifts, and re-adjusting time offs. This includes consideration of employee requirements and staff availability. It also notifies employees of schedules and schedule adjustments which reduces staff turnovers. Hotel scheduling software can easily provide information about schedules where your team members can review them. It allows for your employees to update their availability, request shifts, and trading shifts. It also allows them to receive schedule notifications and reminders through text or email.

With this software, you may also view assignments and staff schedules. Assigning of tasks, duties, and break times may also be possible. There are also options of reports for payroll and cost control. TimeForge hotel scheduling software allows you to synchronize and integrate with your PMS ( Property Management System) and POS (Point of Sale) systems. Hotel scheduling software makes it easy to view labor and sales, as well as forecast them. It may also forecast occupancy, arrivals, and departures in your hotel.

Hotel scheduling software is essential because it will save time in scheduling, increase work efficiency, reduce labor costs, and keep your labor work force balanced. Schedule overlaps, under staffing and over staffing will be eliminated.

Hotel scheduling software will help improve profit because less time will be spent doing paperwork and more time will be spent working with the staff and finding ways to improve the business. Communication lines are kept open between employees and managers because personal shift requests are taken into account and schedules are accessible to everyone.

TimeForge labor management software can save you time and money. Sign up for a free trial today!