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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• Employees who ride the clock are draining business profits. Monitor timesheets and schedules to effectively stop early clock ins. Better yet, use a labor management system that does both attendance and employee scheduling – and can enforce the schedule – such as TimeForge

• Fingerprint scanners are delicate pieces of technology. Use them to clock in/out. Don’t use them to enter PINs.  Restaurant and hospitality staff normally must enter a PIN / id into a Point of Sale system every few minutes, and with greasy hands, fingerprint scanners become defective quickly

• Not sure where your labor dollars are going? Check your fixed / non-variable (manager) salaries and your variable hours (hourly staff). You may be surprised at what you find as many labor dollars are tied up in non-variable staff members.

• Take time to review the schedule and compare sales and customer throughput to your staffing levels. High ratios can be very costly to your business.  A high ratio of labor to sales or customer throughput implies one of three business problems:
  1. Staff members are spending a lot of time with individual customers, and are not adequately serving customers who may be waiting (who then leave).
  2. The business is over-staffed, with more employees on site than are necessary.
  3. Profit per customer / order is too low, and needs to be raised.

  Act quickly to identify which problem is occurring, and solve it.

• Make sure only one manager per department is responsible for approving requests. Otherwise, there can be confusion about time off allotments.  If one manager approves a time off request for one staff member, and another manager approves a request for another staff member – the likelihood of upset staff, higher turnover, and staff shortages is significantly higher than if one manager is responsible for handling requests.  Good communication is key to labor management success.

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

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TimeForge Attendance is built from the ground up to save you time – reducing the time required to manage labor.

TimeForge is constantly improving with customer suggestions and improvements to the software.

Read about other TimeForge Attendance Benefits

Time & Attendance Software is also known as Clock-In / Clock-Out Software, and some companies refer to this type of software as Enterprise Labor Management Software. Whatever your organization calls it, TimeForge Attendance is the most powerful tool available to manage labor and control profits at your business!

Read more about the capabilities of TimeForge Attendance, or about TimeForge Attendance pricing.

Download a TimeForge Media Kit, which contains more information about TimeForge Attendance.

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Labor Schedules Take Time to Create

The employee schedule informs employees when to arrive at work, and in some cases, when to leave.  In other cases, employees are “cut” from the schedule based on demand (or volume) at the business.  In almost every case, the labor schedule is created by management staff in the back-office or at home after hours – a point of discontent for most managers who must work longer hours and weekend hours to build schedules.

The steps to create a labor schedule reads like a long list of tasks, occupying several hours of management time every week:

1. First review the manager’s log book and estimate or forecast upcoming sales and the demand for labor.
2. Next check the employee request log and availability sheets as well as individual work preferences while remembering which employees are minors or restricted in working.
3. Look-up required employee certifications; for example, an ABC license is required to serve alcohol at a restaurant or necessary certifications to dispense medications.
4. Identify trustworthy and experienced personnel to open or close the business.
5. Try to fairly distribute shifts while meeting employee minimum hour works, but do not exceed a maximum number of hours.
6. Make sure that employees are not likely to receive overtime if someone fails to show up on the schedule.
7. Identify convenient times to provide break and meal periods for staff members who are required to receive breaks.
8. Calculate the likely cost of payroll, being mindful of budgetary constraints – if the cost is too high, start over.

Juggling all of these factors to create a good schedule for the workforce is a complicated task that can consume more than ten-percent of a manager’s time throughout the week.  In many cases, especially in owner-operator businesses, this schedule is posted late in the week for the upcoming week.  Posting the schedule late causes problems with employees and creates higher turnover and reduces tenure at the business – reducing overall profits!

The final version of the labor schedule, which the manager has likely spent hours creating, may be bulk-emailed out to the employees (if the manager used a tool such as Microsoft Excel and a schedule template to build the schedule), or more commonly, printed and posted on a wall in the back of the business (inside the management office, store room, or kitchen).

Theoretical Labor Schedules are Important for Staff

This posted work schedule is the “theoretical labor schedule” – it is the necessary labor needed to operate the business and meet expected customer demand.  The posted work schedule will change throughout the week as employees fail to show up, swap shifts with other staff members, arrive early or late, or business requirements change and employees are cut or added to the schedule.  The posted schedule should be saved and archived (as it was created by management) for later comparison to worked hours, and for issues arriving from Labor & Industries audits, availability conflicts, labor disputes, or even lawsuits.

Is your scheduling complex?  Are you making the best possible schedule?  How many thousands of dollars do you spend making schedules every year?  Did you know that TimeForge can reduce turnover, increase retention and increase profits through employee scheduling at your business? Sign up today for a free trial!

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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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We are also debuting TempForge, a time and temperature tool that complies with Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) programs – making sure that temperature sensitive products are kept safe at restaurants, hotels, bars, clubs, and other hospitality related businesses. If you are interesting in seeing what this amazing product has to offer, please drop us a line at info@TimeForge.com.

Come join us at the George R Brown Convention Center, booth #1546, directly across from Ctuit – above store reporting and back-office software, and right next to the Franchise Pavilion.

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 improve profits and minimize costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, hotel, bank, school, bar, club, or retail business.

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Using the Time and Attendance Module is extremely simple, requiring that employees simply click “Clock In” and “Clock Out” to clock-in and out of the TimeForge system. Some of the functionalities of the TimeForge Time and Attendance Module include:

• Restrict employees to specific computers / IP addresses when clocking in (employees must be on site to login!)
• Require that employees be on the schedule before they can clock-in
• Compare the theoretical labor schedule to the actual employee clock-in and clock-out
• Ensure that employees clock-in right on time, no more early clocking in and clocking out
• Clock employees out when they forget to do so themselves
• Easily determine which employees are clocked-in, and how much that employee has cost your business
• Run employee timesheets to prepare for your payroll

Start using the TimeForge Time and Attendance Module today, and stop using punch cards and time clocks!

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?

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With this new feature, you and your staff can compare the theoretical labor schedule (which is built using the Schedules section of the website, and created in advance of the actual work to be done) to the actual labor cost (based on employees clocking-in and clocking-out).

Additionally, there are a number of new reports (such as the Attendance report) which can be used to help compare actual cost vs. theoretical cost.

How long does it take to make an employee schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that labor costs could be as much as 30% of your expenses? TimeForge can help streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, bar, or club.

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