Labor Management. NOW Simple.

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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Some of TimeForge’s November and December updates included improvements to scheduling and enhanced multi-unit capabilities, as well as new training videos (available on the TimeForge Manual).

In addition, we have improved our Point of Sale connectivity and integration, with our POS vendors, including Dinerware, Aloha POS (from Radiant Systems), and Micros.

Some of the Dinerware improvements with TimeForge include:

• Use a fingerprint scanner with your Dinerware system to stop buddy punching and keep employees from riding the clock. To use a fingerprint scanner, you’ll need to clock all staff members in to Dinerware one time. You need to do this step, because Dinerware requires that employees be logged in for a variety of reasons, including meal coursing and printing.   After this initial clock in, all additional clock in and clock outs can be done on TimeForge, using a separate time punch terminal with a fingerprint scanner attached.

Use a Fingerprint Reader with Dinerware

• Forecast sales and inventory using Menu Item Groupings inside of Dinerware. While building a labor schedule, you may want to track gross sales, individual item sales, covers, labor hours, or other metrics.   Additionally, you can now build schedules and forecast sales by grouping menu items together.   For example, you may want to schedule staff members based on the hourly sales of porterhouse steaks, crab cakes, and apple turnovers.   Using TimeForge and Dinerware, you now can.

Forecast and Record Menu Items and Menu Item Groups

• You can view Dinerware sales information on your cell phone and view real-time sales and labor information at the same time. Any Menu Item or Menu Item Group that is being forecast or collected by TimeForge can be viewed on your cell phone using the secure TimeForge RSS feed.   Receive real-time labor and sales information on any compatible smartphone or PDA.   You can read more about this in the TimeForge Manual.

• In addition, TimeForge is now compatible with Dinerware version 2.9.1 – the latest offering from Dinerware. This latest version of the Dinerware POS offers a number of improvements for Dinerware and TimeForge customers.   Talk to your Dinerware representative about upgrading today!

You should be using a labor management system with your Dinerware POS system to make your life easy!   TimeForge can quickly and easily build your employee work schedules, manage attendance while enforcing the schedule (and stopping employees from clocking in early), reduce labor costs, and streamline staff management.   Sign up for a trial today to use TimeForge with your Dinerware POS system.

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Grocery management sometimes feels like juggling cats – there is a lot to do, only a few hours to do the necessary tasks, and a simple task, such as getting staff and vendors to cooperate, is tedious by itself.   Labor management is only one aspect of your day, but it’s an important – and time consuming – one.   Over-staff and you could lose a lot of money. Under-staff and your customers will go to another grocer.

TimeForge can cut the time spent doing routine but tedious tasks like building a grocery employee schedule or monitoring attendance at your grocery from hours to minutes.   And TimeForge gives you the tools you need to painlessly do the less routine, but vitally important, tasks like fine-tuning your work force and monitoring and forecasting labor costs.

If you spend hours just creating an employee schedule, you’re not alone.   It’s not easy. You have to take a huge number of factors into consideration – your employees’ specific availability, skill levels, accrued PTO, time off and shift swap requests, and the busy (and not so busy) times in that particular store.

Once the staff schedule is complete, you have to communicate the schedule to all your employees, redo it in the event of an unexpected illness or time-off requests – and find on-call employees to fill in for absent staff members.   All affected staff members need to be reminded of the schedule changes, again.   Small mistakes can result in missed shifts, unhappy employees (and increased turnover), or even labor fines.

With TimeForge you can …

• Build efficient employee schedules for one or more locations, in just a few minutes for each store.
• Export payroll to many popular payroll providers , such as ADP, SurePayroll, Paychex, Quickbooks, and others – with a single click.
• Notify employees of schedules or schedule changes by text message or email – eliminating employee confusion and missed shifts and reducing turnover.
• Record staff member availability, employee time-off  requests, and other key information.
• Stop early clock ins and late clock outs or buddy punching to provide immediate labor cost controls.
• Remotely check on employees that are clocked in – using the web, Facebook, or a cell phone.
• Provide remote 24/7 access for employees to view work schedules, review timecards, request time off, change work availability, swap shifts with other staff members, and receive daily schedule alerts via email or text messages.
• And much more …

• Scheduling employees with the strongest skills during your busiest times.
• Receive notifications of potential labor shortages automatically.
• Monitoring your labor costs – in real time.
• Take advantage of nearly 3 dozen different reports to keep an eye on labor costs and scheduling trends.
• Using your existing staff more efficiently in order to avoid layoffs or unnecessary hiring.
• Trying out various “what-if” scenarios to visualize staffing or schedule changes-without losing your original schedule.

Read more about TimeForge Scheduling, TimeForge Attendance, and TimeForge Daily Log.

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Quick service restaurants (fast food businesses) can be very challenging to manage. Three influencing factors directly determine the success, or failure, or a QSR restaurant , customers (sales), inventory, and labor. Of these three items, managers on a day-to-day basis have the most control over the labor , controlling costs, turnover, scheduling, and communications with staff members.

Restaurant managers must make sure that enough staff members are on site during busy hours, but managers must also be careful to cut staff when expected need begins to drop.   Scheduling the right number of employees in a quick service restaurant is a constant challenge.

And with a busy restaurant business, managers don’t have time to babysit the time clock to watch employees clock in or out at the right time.   Riding the clock (staff members who clock out late or clock in early), and buddy punching can both have disastrous effects on the bottom line for the business.

Other common labor management problems for a QSR business include:

• Schedule communications
• Changing availability
• Inexperienced / young staff members
• High turnover
• Buddy punching
• And more …

Over scheduling the restaurant will reduce profits with a bigger payroll. Under scheduling staff might cause customers to go elsewhere , reducing income.

Skillful scheduling of staff members for your QSR restaurant isn’t easy – it can be time consuming and tedious. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be.

TimeForge turns labor scheduling and attendance monitoring into a simple management task, giving you back your weekends and increasing the business profits, while keeping staff delighted and reducing turnover.

Read more about TimeForge employee scheduling and labor management for quick service restaurants.

TimeForge will reduce turnover and improve retention while freeing up manager time and increasing store profitability at your quick service restaurant!   TimeForge employee scheduling and labor management software is used by owners and operators of quick service restaurants, and other hospitality, food-service, retail, and other service-oriented businesses around the world.

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Labor management is usually the largest single cost for both conveyor and self-service car wash operators. In a recession, efficient carwash employee scheduling and attendance monitoring can spell the difference between survival and success.

Unfortunately, as any experienced carwash operator knows, employee scheduling and attendance monitoring is not as easy as it looks. You’ve got to juggle employees with varying skill sets and availabilities, manage PTO accrual and time off requests, communicate a frequently changing schedule to employees that are rarely onsite at the same time, and field dozens of schedule questions or shift swap requests. You’ve got to stop employees from riding the clock or punching others in. You may even have to keep an eye on the hours of employees who are minors to avoid labor law violations, or shuffle shifts to be sure that every shift has an English speaker or an employee with particular training on hand.

And to be really successful in the carwash and detailing industry, you also have to balance your employees and your load level scheduling-having the staff   in place to handle the vehicles quickly during busy periods, but to not be overstaffed in slow times-and to effectively manage and anticipate labor costs.

It’s complex, it’s time consuming, and frankly, it’s a little tedious.

TimeForge allows operators to cut carwash scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to minutes. You can manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule to put those with particular skills or the most experience in the high volume time slots, notify employees of upcoming schedules and schedule changes by email or text message, monitor attendance from a remote location, and forecast your labor costs.

The hours you save with TimeForge will streamline your management time, freeing you to focus on the strategic decisions of running a successful carwash/detailing operation, rather than phone calls from disgruntled employees who didn’t realize their schedule had changed. The fine-tuning you can do with employee scheduling, the reduction in missed or late shifts, the decrease in unnecessary overtime, and the ability to forecast labor needs and costs will save you money. In fact, TimeForge can increase carwash profits by 3-5%.

With TimeForge, You’ll Be Able To …

• Build employee schedules in seconds.
• Record staff member availability, employee time off   requests, and other key information
• Export payroll to many popular payroll providers with a single click.
• Inform employees of schedules or schedule changes by text message or email-eliminating employee confusion and missed shifts.
• Stop early clock ins and late clock outs or buddy punching to provide immediate labor cost controls
  Remotely check on employees that are clocked in – using the web, Facebook, or a cell phone.
• Provide remote access for employees to view work schedules, review timecards, request time off, change work availability, swap shifts with other staff members, and receive daily schedule alerts via email or text messages.
• Manage and forecast labor costs to decrease costs and increase profits
• And much more…

Read more about TimeForge Scheduling, TimeForge Attendance, and TimeForge Daily Log.

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Sign up today for a Free Trial of the TimeForge products!   We offer 10-day trials of TimeForge Scheduling, TimeForge Attendance, and TimeForge Daily Log.   Combine the TimeForge products together to create a powerful productivity tool that is just right for you, your staff members, and your business!

Scheduling

Making a great employee schedule every week is an important task for your business. Employee work schedules should do more than notify staff when to work , an employee schedule should add profit to the business without being a painful chore.

• Make Schedules Fast – in Under 30 Seconds!
• Streamline Work Requests and Availability
• Automatic Staff Email and Text Notifications
• Detailed Reporting of Labor Costs (more than 40 reports!)
• Easily Manage Overtime and Double Shifts
• Track sick, vacation, and PTO
• Monitor employee certifications and employee reviews

Sign Up Now or Read About TimeForge Scheduling

Attendance

Employee attendance and timecards are extremely difficult to monitor effectively , buddy punching, early clock ins, employees riding the clock, and forgetful employees are only a few of the issues that managers must confront on a daily basis.

• Monitor labor costs (and who is clocked in), in realtime
• Limit clock ins to specific computers or IP addresses
• Enforce employee schedules, stop early clock-ins
• Biometric fingerprint scanner eliminates buddy punching
• One-click payroll reports – eliminate timecard errors

Sign Up Now or Read About TimeForge Attendance

Daily Log

Businesses lose market share to other successful businesses that are actively communicating with staff members in an effective way. Communication among staff members is a key component to running a profitable business.

• Digital log books can replace multiple paper logs
• Record notes and numbers, and set up todo lists
• Manage equipment maintenance, employee reviews, weekly orders
• Analyze day-to-day or week-to-week performance indicators

Sign Up Now or Read About TimeForge Daily Log

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The TimeForge team has been hard at work adding to the TimeForge software product, making employee scheduling simple, and time and attendance monitoring easier.   We now offer Biometric Fingerprint scanning to all TimeForge Max users.   We have partnered with M2SYS to offer an out-of-the-box and affordable solution to all users, and are proud to be listed on the M2SYS partners page.

A joint press release about our partnership was recently issued, and can be found on the M2SYS website in full.   The interesting tidbits for TimeForge users include:

According to Anthony Presley, Founder of TimeForge, “Our customers already schedule their employees online, but many continue to use traditional time clocks to track when employees punch in and out at their business. The M2SYS biometric product allows our customers to easily track time and attendance data and compare it to existing schedules — providing important and accurate payroll information. By eliminating the need for passwords and employee identification cards, it should significantly reduce buddy punching, which will save our customers up to 5-7% of their annual payroll expenses.”

“Companies in the retail and hospitality industry are quickly recognizing the benefits of using biometrics, including the reduction of buddy punching and an overall improvement in time and attendance data accuracy,” states Michael Trader, President of M2SYS Technology. “We are excited about being chosen by TimeForge, and look forward to a long-standing relationship with them and their customers.”

For more information about pricing, or how to get a Fingerprint scanner, contact the TimeForge sales department.

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 at your restaurant, pizzeria, hotel, club, bar, or retail business. Sign up today for a free trial!

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