TimeForge Features

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!

New and existing TimeForge users received a major upgrade on Thursday night, as the TimeForge system was updated to provide more flexible scheduling, new time and attendance functionality, and brand new Communication Log features! Some of the new features include:

• Availability Requests have been upgraded and are now easier to use. Outstanding employee availability requests are presented as part of the schedule making process and employees are constantly informed of any changes to their availability.

• Never accidentally schedule staff before or after closing the store! Open and closing times can be configured while making the schedule, and warnings are displayed when staff are scheduled before the store is open or after the store is closed.

• Employees are automatically notified by text message when management approves a shift swap.

• Export punch-in and punch-out times to payroll for easy processing. TimeForge has partnered with CompuPay, a leading provider of payroll for small-to-medium retailers and restaurants. Hours can be exported to CompuPay with a single click!

• Easily identify which employees need to work in specific stations or sections, and schedule these positions with a single click. No more typing “Section 1” or “Pizza” or “Lane 3” when making schedules!

• In accordance with state and federal laws, each position (or job code) can have multiple pay rates, depending on the time of day. Always make sure that employees are paid appropriately!

• Employees can now search for a shift to pick up, or can pick up any shift that has been given up shift by another employee – if approved by management.

• Support for delivery drivers is now included! Drivers can enter tips and mileage for their shifts directly into the TimeForge Time and Attendance module.

• Support for break and meal periods has been enhanced, and managers can now create specific break and meal periods for each shift when building the labor schedule.

• Decisions about your business that include the weather can now be made directly from TimeForge. TimeForge includes weather forecasts on the “To Do Today” page.

• New reports! New TimeForge reports include summary reports for time and attendance, as well as several new scheduling reports.

• Are employees asking for the ability to print the schedule, or a copy of the request log? A setting inside of TimeForge will allow employees to print their own copy of the schedule, breaks, or requests.

• Does your shift need more information than TimeForge normally provides? You can now enter shift notes directly on to the schedule while building shifts!

• Significant improvements to TimeForge Attendance were made – time and attendance entries can be sorted a number of different ways, and a note can be entered for each attendance entry.

As always, feedback on the new TimeForge functionality is always appreciated!

Never again worry about scheduling minors to work! The TimeForge labor scheduling software includes an Age Rule module that tracks age appropriate rules for all employees, including minimum and maximum hours per week or day, and times that employees are allowed to work (such as weekends during the school year, and weekdays during summer or holiday breaks). TimeForge automatically calculate when these employees can or cannot work - and your management staff can set them one time, and not worry about it ever again!

How long does it take to make a labor schedule for your workforce? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, hotel, bank, school, bar, club, or retail business.

In many areas (such as California, New York, Florida, parts of Canada, and most of Europe), managers must carefully monitor employee meal and break periods to ensure that employees take the appropriate breaks during their scheduled shifts. In some areas, managers must remember to get employee signatures, proving that breaks were actually given. Failing to follow these regulations will land a business into serious legal trouble. TimeForge provides an advanced and powerful Break Rule module which provides meal and break period guidelines for management – based on the scheduled shifts for the employees – and several reports that can be printed to provide necessary documentation. Let TimeForge do the hard work with meal and break period tracking!

How long does it take to make a labor schedule for your workforce? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, hotel, bank, school, bar, club, or retail business.

TimeForge developers recently improved the way that employee pay rates are entered.

Previously, to enter a pay rate for an employee, you needed to check a box (telling the software that the employee could work as that employee), then choose whether or not the employee used the base pay rate, and then enter the correct pay rate for that employee at that job code / position. Our recently updated TimeForge 1.9.6 removes the need to use the drop-down box, and provides a handy reference for the position’s base pay-rate.

Please let us know what you think about this improved data entry!

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

TimeForge daily and weekly schedule templates are now easy to find!

Previous versions of TimeForge sorted the list of daily and weekly schedule templates in the order that they were created. For example, the first template that is created would be listed first in the list of templates. But now, templates are now easier to locate, because they are now sorted alphabetically.

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?

TimeForge is proud to release our new “time selector” to all TimeForge users.

The new time selector speeds up data entry for start / end times, and reduces the number of mistakes made by users. To use the time selector, pick a start time anywhere you would enter time. The end time will automatically adjust to 30 minute increments starting after your start time, and it will show you the duration of the shift.

For example, if you enter 11:00am to begin a morning shift, the time selector will automatically display 11:30am (30 minutes) as the end time. You can scroll to enter a different time - for example, 2:30pm (3 hours), or you can enter a different time, such as 3:18pm. You will instantly know how long the shift is, or how many hours an employee has taken off from work!

Yet another reason TimeForge makes labor scheduling simple!

How long does it take to make your employee labor schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your retail business, restaurant, bar, club, or hotel?