Labor Management. NOW Simple.

In many states, employees receive paid or unpaid break periods and meal periods according to the law. The TimeForge Breaks Module allows management to enter rules which manage employee breaks and meal periods, letting you easily control and track breaks for on-duty or scheduled employees. After enabling the Breaks Module, you’ll be ready to customize your break and meal period options so they are tailored to best suit your company’s needs.

Scheduling Breaks:

You can add your state, federal, or company mandated “Break Rules” or “Meal Period Rules” and delegate whether the break is paid or unpaid, optional or required.

After adding the necessary breaks, TimeForge can automatically place employees on the schedule and will stagger the breaks to keep employees from all taking the breaks at the same time.  Alternatively, managers can specify each break individually.

When using TimeForge Breaks in conjunction with TimeForge Scheduling, you can:

• Specify breaks based on hours worked, position, or duration of work scheduled
• AutoScheduler™ can quickly stagger breaks for each scheduled shift
• Schedule and manage both paid and unpaid, and optional and required breaks
• Print break reports and worksheets to track employee signatures

Taking Breaks:

Employees can begin or end their breaks with the click of a button.  You can set options to allow employees to take breaks based on the scheduled break settings, specify all breaks as a certain type, or staff can select what kind of break they will be taking (paid, unpaid, optional, required).  If preferred, you can print out the break worksheet and capture employee signatures for any waived or new breaks.

By using TimeForge Breaks in conjunction with TimeForge Attendance, management can:

• Track employee breaks (paid, unpaid, optional, required) for labor reporting
• Automatically take breaks based on the schedule if staff forget to break in or out
• Simple one-click conversion of unpaid breaks to paid breaks (and vice versa) in the “Edit Attendance” module
• Real time web and mobile view of labor and tracking of which staff members are on break
• Alerting and Reporting with TimeForge automatically staggers employees breaks when you add them to the schedule, so your business is always covered by capable staff.

Because the reality (attendance) is often different from the scheduled breaks, you can also see a display of employee breaks based on the employee’s scheduled hours with our Break Report, and track breaks that employees have taken, or should take, based on the employee’s scheduled work hours with our printed Break Worksheet Report. Our detailed and comprehensive reports make it simple and organized to view employee habits and work histories.

You can opt to be alerted via text, e-mail, or TimeForge message if staff members do not take their scheduled breaks after a certain number of minutes. For example, if you set the alert to notify you after 15 minutes of a missed break and an employee was scheduled to take a break at 1:00 pm, but has not taken a break at 1:15 pm, you’ll receive a notification via e-mail or text message directly to your phone or computer.

TimeForge is a best-of-breed employee management system, and our online application of the program allows for constant software updates and improvements live to your system. With TimeForge’s innovative online management software, you are always at the top of your game. TimeForge completes tasks like managing breaks in a matter of minutes – saving your company valuable capital.

TimeForge’s do-it-all program makes the headache of managing employee breaks a thing of the past. Sign up for a free trial today!

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We are so excited about our new human resource management product, called TimeForge HR! This software streamlines the application and on-boarding processes, and keeps up with employee certification documents so you don’t have to. Perhaps most importantly, TimeForge HR prevents “The Stack” – that ominous heap of poorly organized applications and certifications that has been sitting in your office for months with only a brief frantic sifting once in a while. With TimeForge HR, all employee certifications and other important documents are compiled online into a single employee folder so you can access them any time, any place … eliminating The Stack!

When it comes to the food service and retail industries, it is imperative that management keep track of the certifications necessary for food handling and serving alcohol. Failing to properly monitor and document relevant employee certifications could lead to costly, reputation-damaging legal repercussions. For example, in many states, if the ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Commission) catches an employee with an expired certification serving alcohol, the location could be shut down, and the employee and manager at fault can be fined or even jailed – a heavy cost to the business.

After uploading important documents into TimeForge HR, management can easily track certifications, qualifications, and training performed by staff members with TimeForge’s automatic reminders. When a certification is nearing expiration, management will receive notifications informing them that necessary certifications or training are nearing expiration and need to be renewed.

TimeForge HR allows managers to create documentation requirements specific to each position (or for each staff member) and when combined with our other products (such as TimeForge Scheduling or TimeForge Attendance), TimeForge HR will prevent unqualified staff members from being scheduled or clocking in without the necessary documentation being submitted to TimeForge (and management) first.

Sign up for a free trial of TimeForge today and let us handle your stack of paperwork, so you don’t have to!

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In many states/localities, employees receive paid and/or unpaid break periods and possibly meal periods according to the law. Our Breaks feature allows management to set up rules which govern these employee breaks and meal periods, letting managers know when to grant breaks to on-duty or scheduled employees.

Scheduling Breaks

With our revolutionary Breaks module, employers can add their state or company’s “Break Rules” or “Meal Period Rules” and delegate whether the break is paid or unpaid, optional or required. After adding the necessary breaks, TimeForge can automatically place them on the schedule, and will stagger the breaks to keep employees from all taking the breaks at the same time.  Alternatively, managers can specify each break individually.

Using TimeForge Breaks, with TimeForge Scheduling, business owners and management can:

• Specify breaks based on hours worked, position, or duration of work scheduled.
• AutoScheduler™ can quickly stagger breaks for each scheduled shift.
• Schedule and manage both paid and unpaid, and optional and required breaks.
• Print break reports and worksheets to track employee signatures.

Taking Breaks:

Employees can begin or end their break with the touch of a button inside of TimeForge.  Managers can set options to allow to employees to take breaks based on the scheduled break settings, or staff can select what kind of break they will be taking, (paid / unpaid, required / optional).  If preferred, management can print out the break worksheet and capture employee signatures for any waived or new breaks.

Using TimeForge Breaks, with TimeForge Attendance, business owners and management can:

• Track employees’ breaks (paid, unpaid, optional, required, etc.) for labor reporting.
• Automatically take breaks based on the schedule if staff forget to break in or out.
• Simple one-click conversion of unpaid breaks to paid breaks (and vice versa).
• Real time web and mobile view of labor and which staff members are on break.

Alerting/Reporting:

TimeForge can automatically stagger staff member breaks when you add them to the staffing schedule, ensuring that the front of the house is never left empty and customers without service.

Because attendance breaks (time tracking and time punches) are often different from the scheduled breaks, TimeForge allows you to also see a display of employees’ breaks based on the scheduled hours with our Break Report, and track breaks that employees have taken, or should take, based on the staff members scheduled work hours with our printable Break Worksheet Report. Our detailed and comprehensive reports make it simple and to view employees’ habits and work histories.

Managers and business owners can opt to be alerted if staff members do not take their scheduled breaks on time.  For example: If an employer set TimeForge to alert after 15 minutes of non-compliance with the break rules, and an employee is scheduled to take a break at 1 pm, TimeForge will send an alert at 1:15pm if the staff member has not yet taken the schedule break.

These reminders and alerts will ensure compliance with state and union required break rules – potentially circumventing costly fines and lawsuits.

Use the TimeForge Breaks module with our online labor management programs – Scheduling, Attendance, and Human Resources, to easily manage your staffing needs.  With TimeForge’s innovative online software, business owners and management are always at the top of their game. TimeForge makes quick work of painful tasks, like break management – saving business owners valuable time and effort.  Try TimeForge today!

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TimeForge is an easy to use workforce management solution for your business, and includes many powerful features designed to improve your business. These include:

• Go home early and stop fussing with payroll and time card mistakes with easy time tracking (electronic time sheets and time cards) and staff monitoring.
• No more worrying about break laws and meal management with easy one-click break sheets and meal management.
• Get done with payroll with a single click with our one-click payroll exports to popular provides like SurePayroll, CompuPay, QuickBooks, and more.
• Rest easy with automatic reminders when staff are late, show up early, late, or start approaching overtime.
• And much more…

Here is a brief overview of some of the features of TimeForge Attendance …

TimeForge Attendance is a powerful replacement for your traditional time clock, or the limited punch in / out included with many Point of Sale systems. Use TimeForge Attendance by itself, or combine with TimeForge Scheduling for a powerful workforce management solution.

TimeForge can also integrate with many Point of Sale systems, stopping employees from clocking in early, or leaving too late.

Use TimeForge Attendance to make your life easy! TimeForge easily manages time cards, staff attendance, and payroll exporting.

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Over the last few months, we have been improving all three of our hospitality and retail labor management products, including TimeForge Attendance.

TimeForge Attendance is a powerful time and attendance software system that for employee time cards and managing payroll.  Using TimeForge Attendance, staff members can clock in and out, managers can review employee time cards, and then management can approve time punches for third party payroll processing.

TimeForge Attendance can perform many other time management duties, including:

• Tip tracking and mileage reporting
• Record staff notes about each shift worked
• Stop buddy punching with biometric fingerprint scanners
• Interface attendance and time punches with your favorite Point of Sale system
• Track time off, sick time, and PTO time for quick processing
• Allow staff to check their time cards using the TimeForge employee portal

If you are using a standard time clock, or are having staff write their arrival, departure, and lunch breaks on a piece of paper, switching to TimeForge Attendance will save you hours of headaches each and every week!

Some of the recent improvements to TimeForge Attendance include:

• Automatically switch positions if an employee is already clocked in. Staff members are occasionally responsible for working back-to-back shifts with different departments or positions.  For example, an employee might be scheduled from 10:00am – 2:00pm as a Cashier, but from 2:00pm – 6:00pm as a Delivery Driver.  To ensure that they remember to clock out as a Cashier, and in as a Delivery Driver, at 2:00pm, TimeForge can automatically do this for your staff members.  This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Switch the Clocked-In Position for an Employee

• Clock out staff members at a specific time each day. To ensure that staff members are all clocked out by a certain time, you can set a department-level or location-level clock out time. For example, if your business closes at 11:00pm, and no one should be at work beyond 11:30pm, you can set TimeForge to automatically clock out all staff members at 11:30pm.  This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Clock Out Employees Out At A Specific Time

• Automatically clock employees in based on their posted schedule. Sometimes staff members forget to clock in, even though they are scheduled to work and arrived on time. TimeForge can automatically clock staff members in based on the posted schedule, if they have not yet clocked in.  For example, if an employee is scheduled to work at 8:30am, TimeForge can automatically clock them into the system at 8:30am.  This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Clock In Employees Based on the Schedule

• Receive an email message during the day showing which staff members are clocked in. If you’d like to know which employees are clocked in at your business during an important part of the day – before a dinner rush, just before closing, or after the first morning shift – you can!  Update your alerts and set the time you’d like to receive notification of who is clocked in.

Receive a Daily Email of Clocked-In Staff

• Automatically clock employees out based on their posted schedule. Sometimes staff members forget to clock out at the end of the day.  TimeForge can automatically clock staff members out based on the posted schedule, if they have not yet clocked out.  For example, if an employee is scheduled to leave work at 8:30pm, TimeForge can automatically clock them out of the system at 8:30pm.  This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Clock Out Employees Based on the Schedule

Use a time and attendance system to make your life easy and improve profitability! TimeForge can quickly and easily manage staff timecards, employee attendance, and export payroll for accurate processing.  Sign up for a trial today to use TimeForge Attendance.

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Many of TimeForge’s November and December updates included improvements to scheduling, enhanced multi-unit capabilities, additional Point of Sale capabilities, and new training videos.

We have also been hard at work on many improvements to TimeForge Attendance.  TimeForge Attendance is a labor management software tool that focuses on employee time cards and managing payroll expenses.  Employees can clock in and out using the system, managers can review staff timecards, and then managers can approve the employee time punches for third party payroll processing.

If you are using a standard time clock, or are having staff write their arrival, departure, and lunch breaks on a piece of paper, switching to TimeForge Attendance will save you hours of headaches each and every week!

Some of the most recent improvements to TimeForge Attendance include:

• Several new TimeForge Attendance tutorials are online and available for your review! Don’t get lost or confused about how to edit time cards, modifying clock in parameters, or setting up IP addresses for restricting employee time punches.  Review the TimeForge Attendance manual (videos are coming soon), and read about all of these profit saving topics.

• Quickly identify employee time punches and problematic time cards using the TimeForge Most Different notifications. As you process and approve / export payroll, TimeForge automatically identifies different (or strange) time punches, and ranks each shift based on how different the shift is from the other staff member time punches.  Managers and payroll supervisors can use the “Most Different” field to quickly identify potential problems before cutting checks for staff members.

• Show the last person to edit or change time card data. All time card changes are recorded and can be viewed in the TimeForge Daily Log by qualified managers.  However, you can now easily review which manager (or supervisor) most recently modified any specific time card entry.  Reduce fraud and and identify compliance issues immediately.

View the last manager to edit a time entry

• Identify hours worked on the Clocked-In Employees page. You now have the choice to manage labor by scheduled or actual labor costs, or by the scheduled or actual labor hours while you are reviewing who is clocked in, or which staff members were previously clocked in during the business day.

Review Worked Hours and Total Costs

• Manage attendance and timecards by departments. When you have a large number of staff members, managing your labor can be complicated.  You can now browse and edit staff time sheets based on the department that you are interested in reviewing.

Edit Attendance by Department

Look for more information about recent improvements to TimeForge Attendance very soon.  We continue to improve the software so that you can manage your workforce effectively, and go home early!

You should be using a time and attendance system to make your life easy! TimeForge can quickly and easily manage time cards, employee attendance, and export payroll for processing.  Sign up for a trial today to use TimeForge Attendance to track employee time.

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It’s been a while since we’ve written on the blog about TimeForge improvements, but we have been hard at work adding features, improving functionality, and otherwise making TimeForge a better tool for your staff and your business.

Some of these improvements include training videos, which can be found on TimeForge’s Manual – the videos cover many aspects of TimeForge, including attendance and time cards, scheduling, employee management, and much more.

In addition to the expanded manual, many other improvements are included in our latest TimeForge release.  The most recent update, which happened about a week ago, includes more than 100 new features, improvements, and changes – and every one of our customers is already running the latest and greatest version of TimeForge.

Some of these new features include:

• Faster page loading on all TimeForge pages. If you are on a DSL or Cable connection in the United States, most of the TimeForge web site should load in less than a second!  Get done, get out, and go home faster!

• The Schedule Detail View is improved, and faster. Our Schedule Detail continues to expand in functionality, and you can now schedule by station or section, or swap the scheduled employees with a single click.

Schedule Detail View

• Create a default location for each employee. Managing staff members who can work at multiple stores (or locations) can be extremely difficult.  TimeForge makes staff management easy, enabling your management team to get done quickly and get back to business.  You can set up a default (or home) location for staff members, which will ensure that the AutoScheduler schedules the employee at their default location first, where possible.

Default Staff Member Location

• Create a default department for each employee. Managing staff members who can work in more than one department can be complicated.  You can set up a default (or home) department for staff members, which will ensure that the AutoScheduler schedules the employee into their default department first, where possible.

Default Department for a Staff Member

• Automatically approve requests when employees are “available to work” or “want to work”. Instead of spending your time managing requests for employees who want to work, these requests can be automatically approved without needing manager intervention.  For example, an employee who normally cannot work on Wednesday because of their class schedule can request to work online and will not need manager approval to request to work on Wednesday (normally, she will need approval to actually pick up a shift).

Automatically Approve Work Requests

Check back soon, as we’ll be discussing some of the other TimeForge features that have been recently added!

You should be using a labor management system to make your life easier! TimeForge can quickly and easily build your staff schedules, manage attendance, reduce labor costs, and streamline employee management. Sign up for a trial today!

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We’re always improving and extending TimeForge to improve your business and to ensure that you can quickly and easily build schedules, manage time and attendance, and communicate necessary information to staff members.

So, if it’s been a while since you last reviewed TimeForge, make sure to come take a look at everything we’re doing to improve your day!

11 New Reports

TimeForge users now have access to eleven new labor management reports, including reports about shift swapping, attendance vs. schedules for employees, and much more!  Read more here.

Enforce the Schedule

TimeForge can now enforce the start time, end time, employee, and position that is scheduled to work, if you would like to enforce the scheduled labor.  Read more here.

Message Multiple Locations

TimeForge can now send messages across locations, allowing you to target managers, or staff members at different stores / units.  Send messages to individual staff members, everyone at certain locations, or identify specific positions to receive messages.  Read more here.

New TimeForge Partners!

We are proud to introduce two new TimeForge partners, who are bringing TimeForge to their clients and respective markets. Mercer Sales & Service serves customers in New York and Pennsylvania, and High Plains Cash Register serves customers in West Texas. Read more here.

Give Shifts Up

Staff members can give up a shift to any qualified employee, or the employee picking up the shift swap can specified by the staff member giving up the shift. Communication among staff members has never been easier! Read more here.

Daily View Improvements

We are always improving our scheduling system to make scheduling easy for staff members and managers. While building a work schedule in the Daily View, you can now see how many hours and shifts each staff member is scheduled to work (this has always been available in the Schedule Detail View). Instantly know what everyone on the schedule is doing! Read more here.

You should be using a labor management product to make your life easier!  TimeForge can quickly and easily build your employee schedule, manage time and attendance, reduce labor costs, and streamline labor management.  Sign up for a trial today!

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TimeForge now includes eleven (11) new reports – which are available in the TimeForge user accounts.  Reports are necessary to run your business, and TimeForge now has more than 60 reports available for TimeForge Max customers.

These new reports include the ability to review employee certifications (such as food safety or alcohol certifications, CPR, uniform sizes, or other types), compare attendance (actual work) to scheduled time, identify staff members who were not scheduled or did not work, review time off requests, and compare shift swaps by employee or position.  Enough information to run your business!

Certification Reports

• Certification Test Date Report: View each employee’s certifications based on when certifications were taken, and easily locate which certifications need to be renewed.
• Certification Expiration Date Report:  View certifications by employee and located expiring certifications, and those that need to be renewed.
• Employee Certification Report:  On a list of all active employees, view the certifications that each employee has in their account.

Attendance vs. Schedule Reports

• Attendance vs. Schedule:  Three new actual vs. schedule reports are available to TimeForge Max customers.  Check actual vs. schedule data by employee, or by date.  Compare individual shifts worked and scheduled, or view the labor data at a higher level by reviewing by position data for your store (or multiple stores).

Worked or Scheduled Reports

• Who Did Not Work:  Identify which employees did not come to work during a time range.
• Who Is Not Scheduled:  Identify which staff members were not scheduled during a time range.
• Not Scheduled, with Attendance:  Locate employees who clocked in, but were not originally scheduled to work.
• Was Scheduled, no Attendance:  Locate staff members who were scheduled to work, but didn’t actually clock in.

Attendance vs. Schedule by Employee Reports

• Attendance vs. Schedule by Employee: Two reports are available to review employee schedules and attendance.  One report is a detail level report, showing each and every shift, with variance between hours scheduled and hours worked.  The other report is a summary by employee, also showing time worked, work scheduled, and the variance.

Shift Swapping Reports

• Shift Swapping by Employee:  Which staff members are swapping shifts the most?  Identify which employees pick up, or give up, the most shifts.
• Shift Swapping by Position:  Which positions are swapping shifts the most?  Identify which positions have the largest ratios of giving and picking up shifts.

Sick, Vacation, and PTO Reports

• Employee Time Sheets, with Requests:  Review time off requests that occur one time, while viewing the individual time sheets for staff members.
• Paid Time Off Report:  A PTO report that displays sick time, vacation time, and other PTO requests.

We are always adding new reports to allow you to quickly and easily manage labor issues.

You should be using a labor management product to make your life easier!  TimeForge can quickly and easily build your employee schedule, manage time and attendance, reduce labor costs, and streamline labor management.  Sign up for a trial today!

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TimeForge can directly control labor costs – and improve the bottom line – at your restaurant, retail store, hotel, or other business by stopping employees from riding the clock.  TimeForge can disable early clock in’s by staff members, and can also stop late clock out’s.

To enforce the employee schedule, you must be using both TimeForge Attendance and TimeForge Scheduling together.  Inside of the TimeForge Attendance Options, you will find two options:

1. Do you want to allow employees to clock in at any time, with any allowed position, regardless of their schedule?
2. Do you want to allow employees to clock out at any time, regardless of their schedule?

The first option controls staff member clock-in’s, and if set to “Yes”, employees can clock in at any time.  The second option control staff member clock-out’s, and if set to “Yes”, employees can clock in at any time.  To stop employee’s from riding the clock, change both of these settings to “No”, and then set an appropriate grace period.

Employees who are clocking in must clock in during their grace period, and if they are too early for their shift, a manager needs to let them in.  The same is true of clocking out!

TimeForge also requires that employees clock-in using the scheduled position, in addition to the time clock enforcement.

You can enforce the labor schedule using the standard time clock within TimeForge, or any other supported timeclock functionality, such as the TimeForge Online Time Clock, Dinerware Point of Sale, TimeClock Mode within TimeForge Attendance, and others.  In fact, you can also use our biometric fingerprint scanner with schedule enforcement!

Use this TimeForge enhancement to control labor costs by removing the ability for employees to ride the clock!

Are you using a labor management product to make your life easier?  TimeForge can quickly and easily build your employee schedule, manage time and attendance, reduce labor costs, and streamline employee management.  Sign up for a trial today!

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