Labor Management. NOW Simple.

Occasionally, there are matters that need to be addressed with your staff (managers or general employees) to keep your operation running smoothly. Businesses in the restaurant, retail, and hospitality industries frequently struggle with relatively negligible problems like minor tardiness and uniform issues. Company guidelines and requirements can be neglected by busy employees and even busier managers. To assist in addressing these labor management issues, TimeForge has made a recent update to our Daily Log product, called Important Notes.

You can upload files such as restaurant menus or notices about upcoming training events directly to the Daily Log and categorize these messages and files as “Important Notes”. Important Notes will always show up at the top of the page for managers and staff, so you’ll never have to search through the daily logs to find what you’re looking for. When the Important Notes you’ve delegated are no longer pertinent, you can simply delete those notes in order to make room for more timely news.

Important Notes also enables you to broadcast memos to managers, staff, or both, with alerts sent directly to a staff member’s e-mail, mobile phone, or Facebook. This recent (totally free) update to TimeForge also provides a way for staff to forgo the painful staff meetings (which are frequently low in attendance anyway) in favor of contacting staff and management electronically, saving you time and headaches.

Want access to the Important Notes feature? If you’re already a TimeForge customer, you automatically have access at no extra cost! If you have not yet tried TimeForge, sign up for a free trial today!

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If you aren’t using the TimeForge Daily Log feature to help manage your store, you should be!   The TimeForge Daily Log makes quick work of tedious tasks related to the day-to-day operations of your business.

Use the TimeForge Daily Log to store information you want staff or managers to be able to access anytime.

The Daily Log is actually three different log books, or store manuals, which can store handy notes in different formats.

1. The Manager Log stores information that is only relevant to management at your business. This could include information about inventory deliveries, staff problems, upcoming employee reviews, daily sales information, or anything else that your business needs to track.   All the notes and details about your business are in one easy to find, read, and search location that is only accessible by managers, and approved supervisors.

You can use the Manager Log to update management on issues like sales figures.

2. The Staff Log records information that is sent by management to all of the staff at a location.   This could include notes about upcoming events, changes to work policies, new documents, or anything else that the general staff need to know about. You can upload files (like employee handbooks, restaurant menus, or training policies) directly to the staff log for employees to review at home.

3. The Audit Log is a proprietary TimeForge logging system that records specific information about your business activities.   For example, a record is created if the schedule is altered after it’s published, payroll records are changed, or time off is approved.   Each action could have repercussions for the profitability of your business, so it’s important to track these actions.   Additionally, the weather for the day is recorded.

The Audit Log automatically records weather information, schedule changes, and any other information that might affect your profitability.

With the “Categories” feature, you can create different categories for logs and notes to be filed. For example, you can create a “Reference material” category in the Staff Log for store policy information, etc.

You can add your own categories in the Daily Log.

You can upload files to the Daily Log, so important reference material is stored directly with TimeForge for staff or managers’ easy access. TimeForge and all uploaded paperwork is accessible 24/7 online by management, making paperwork less chaotic in labor management.

TimeForge‘s Daily Log feature also makes accident reports more manageable. When an employee injured on the job, or equipment breaks down, the paperwork that must be filled out winds up stuffed in a file somewhere or buried under a stack of invoices, often never to be seen again. Thanks to TimeForge’s unique uploading capability to the Daily Log, you can also scan (or take pictures) accident reports, jot down any need-to-know information, and even “tag” an employee in the entry for automatic integration into that employee’s HR file.

TimeForge’s new Daily Log update is available for immediate use for TimeForge customers!

Sign up for a free trial and let TimeForge simplify labor management for your business today!

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As you may have noticed, the latest version of TimeForge looks a little different than you’re used to. We’ve added to the Today tab to make your labor management even easier! The TimeForge Today tab is the dashboard for your location and automatically appears when you log in to your TimeForge account. It’s like the hub of your TimeForge operations and shows you the relevant information about your labor management.

You can use the Today tab to access features that apply to your TimeForge account settings. You can clock in/out, view unread messages, see the week’s schedule, check your local weather information, and navigate to all other areas of your TimeForge account.

1. Clock in or out. Using TimeForge Attendance, you can clock in or out from the Today page. When you log in to TimeForge, the Today tab will automatically be the first thing you see, and on the right side of the page there will be a box with the option to clock in. Simply select your position from the drop down menu and click “clock in”.

Easily and quickly clock in or out from the Today tab!

Don’t have TimeForge Attendance?

2. View messages. Using TimeForge Messaging, we will automatically let you know if there are any messages you need to read. The message notification box is in the center of the page!

Quickly check for unread messages from other managers!

Don’t have TimeForge Messaging on your account?

3. See the day and week’s schedule information. Quickly check the week’s employee schedule information, including the number of employees scheduled, unconfirmed shifts, shift swaps waiting for your approval, and other pertinent information for the week. The day’s schedule is also accessible, and we’ll show you who is scheduled, who is clocked in, the difference between the two, and how this affects your bottom line!

Quickly view your daily or weekly schedule and attendance information from the Today tab.

4. View your local weather information. Immediately when you log onto TimeForge, you can check out your local weather information for the current and next day. The Audit Log will store this information so that you can look back and see how weather affects your business!

View your local weather information on the Today tab.

5. Navigate to all other areas of your TimeForge account. Using the tabs at the top of the page (next to the Today tab), you can navigate to all other areas of your account, so you can make schedules, manage attendance, access your Daily Log, check sales figures, and access all of the other features that simplify labor management for you.

Use the tabs at the top of the page to navigate to all areas of your TimeForge account.

Haven’t tried TimeForge yet? Sign up for your no obligation free trial today and see what you’ve been missing!

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Managing and documenting human resources and human capital is a task that, due to its time-consuming and complicated nature, is often neglected in the retail, restaurant and hospitality industries. Unfortunately, ignoring the day-to-day documentation requirements of your business can have a disastrous effect.

At TimeForge, we’ve introduced a revolutionary web-based human resources (HR) software product, TimeForge HR, that will immediately simplify employee documentation while reducing staff management costs for your business.

TimeForge HR addresses several HR specific pain points, including:

• Electronic cataloguing of applications, resumes, and other onboarding documents
• Management and staff alerts when certifications require renewal
• Track history of pay raises, or catalog raise requests
• Accurately track qualifications and skills/training
• Skill tracking and ranking, and other employee classification areas
• Easily monitor employee turnover

The flexible TimeForge HR system can easily track any type of document or certification, including uniforms (and sizes), insurance documents, drivers licenses, documents required for I-9 and W-4, and much, much more! And, because TimeForge is Web-based, more features will continue to become available over time to TimeForge customers.

For example: When an employee’s food or alcohol handling certifications expire, the store could be closed by a spot check from authorities, and the employee and manager(s) at fault frequently wind up fined or even jailed – a heavy cost to the store. Using TimeForge, customers can track any number of certifications, testing dates, renewal dates, and test scores in order to keep staff members up to date on their required human resources documentation and ongoing staff training.

TimeForge HR also integrates with the TimeForge Daily Log, providing an instant communications platform for staff and management alike. The program allows employers to store, digitize and effortlessly organize everything from the pre-hire process, such as electronic copies of applications and resumes, to onboarding documents, training and orientation documents, and more.

Pre-Hire, Onboarding, Certifications, and Much More!

TimeForge HR allows employers to electronically catalog copies of everything from recommendation letters to experience surveys, making quick work of once daunting human resources tasks. Use TimeForge HR for immediate time savings and instant profits!

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Simple and easy communication between the management team and the staff members is a requirement for every business, in any industry.

It is important to keep track of daily notes, task lists, todo items, and sticky notes in every business – big or small, independent or chain. The task of managing all of these items is quickly cumbersome for all but the most disciplined staff members.

Scheduling human resource tasks, upcoming maintenance events, human resource tasks, management meetings, and other necessary items across multiple shifts (where the manager or staff member that created the event may not be the person responsible for the event) quickly becomes a management nightmare.

And, as your business grows, keeping up with the pile of paperwork and small notes can quickly become a nightmare.

Many businesses tackle the tornado of paper and notes by raiding the local office supply store – lab notebooks, 3-ring binders, and other similar products. While these paper products are very cheap, the disadvantages are obvious:

• Paper products will tear and can be destroyed with any mild abuse.
• Writing with pens or pencils can be smudged or unreadable by spilling a drink, or with wet hands
• Searching through dozens of paper notebooks for historical data is impossible..
• Staff who use ink pens will scratch out notes from other employees, making notes unreadable.
• Notebooks are easily be lost in a back office under piles of other notes.
• Handwriting that is made in a hurry can be unreadable minutes, or months, after the note is made.
• Organizing notebook or 3-ring binder notes into categories on a day-by-day basis is cumbersome at best.
• Multiple location / multi-store operators have no insight into the day-to-day operations of individual locations without faxing and scanning pages back and forth.

In most cases, the paper log book is simply insufficient for modern businesses. Many niche businesses provide organized paper notebook equivalents of the 3-ring binder or lab notebook, like Red Book Solutions and CommLog. While these product are somewhat better than the paper notebooks available at your local office supply store – all of the disadvantages of the paper process remain. In addition to the paper problem, these pre-printed log books are organized in a format that may, or may not, work for your business.

The TimeForge Daily Log is a superior solution to organize the notes and todo tasks at your business.

Use the TimeForge Daily Log for easy notes and communications

Use the Daily Log as your manager log and staff log – and for much more.   Read more about the TimeForge Daily Log!

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As operations managers and HR professionals know, managing labor is much more than building staff schedules and managing time and attendance for employees.   There are many other aspects of human resources and labor management, including:

• Talent management
• Tracking staff training and continuing education credits
• Skills tracking and ranking
• Onboarding and hiring processes
• Background verification and skill assessments
• Certifications and qualification tracking
• Raise requests and workflow
• And much more …

In many of these HR areas, we recommend that our users utilize a best of breed solution to ensure the best results for our customers.   For example, Corvirtus is simply the best company around to perform skills assessments in the hospitality and restaurant industries, and we recommend our customers look at Corvirtus for any unmet assessment needs.

However, a few of the these HR areas are easily managed inside of TimeForge’s best-of-breed labor management solution.   Historical raise requests, qualifications, skill tracking and ranking, and others are already available in TimeForge, and more will become available in the near future.

Let’s review employee certifications …

Did you know that TimeForge can track certifications for staff members?   Using TimeForge, you can track any number of certifications (staffing qualifications), testing dates, renewal dates, and test scores.   Each certificate can also include a note about the staff member’s qualification.

Specifics of a Certification / Staff Qualification

TimeForge allows savvy managers to set up certifications which are required before the staff member can be scheduled.   TimeForge can then stop you and your management team from scheduling employees who are not qualified for the job position.

For example, in the state of Texas, a server (waiter) that serves alcohol needs to have taken an alcohol awareness and training course.   Serving alcohol, of any kind, without this certification can land the employee and the responsible manager in jail for the evening.   With a single click inside of TimeForge, managers can ensure that staff are only scheduled if they are qualified to be scheduled.

Add a Certificate, Restrict who can be Scheduled

As an added bonus, TimeForge will notify managers and employees 6 weeks before the certificate expires, so that managers and staff members both know that it’s time to renew the qualification.   The certification reminder also appears inside of the Daily Log.

Use certifications to make your life easy!

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Due to overwhelming demand, we released our new Today page for managers, providing an executive dashboard for labor management.   This new Today page includes all of the previous information (bar charts for who is working, labor costs for the day, which employees are clocked in, pending requests and shift swaps), as well as a number of new items to ease the burden of managing the employee schedule.

1. The first row of data shows how many employees are scheduled for the day (unique shifts), and if you click on this link you will get the bar chart that you are used to seeing, which can be printed, just like the old chart could be printed.

2. The second row of data shows any unconfirmed shifts from your staff members, providing you with some idea of how many employees have confirmed receipt of their schedule through TimeForge. Clicking on this link will allow you to further examine which shifts have been confirmed, or not confirmed.

3. The third row of data displays how many Pending Shift Swaps need to be approved for that day. Pending Shift Swaps are exactly the same as the Shift Swaps that were shown before on the Today page, and clicking on this link will take you to a screen to approve or deny the pending shift swaps. This functions exactly like it did on the old Today screen.

4. The fourth row of data displays how many Open Shifts occur on that day. An Open Shift is a shift that has been Given Up, but not yet Picked Up. Clicking on this link will take you to a page displaying more detail about the Open Shifts, as well as any Pending Shift Swaps.   Again, this functions exactly like it did on the old Today screen.

5. The fifth row of data displays today’s schedule in a bar chart format, very similar to the first row.

6. The sixth row of data will provide the day’s schedule in a Horizontal or Vertical format, allowing you to print the schedule and place it your pocket. Again, these links function exactly like they did on the old Today screen.

7. The seventh row of data will allow you to quickly see how many staff members are clocked in, and clicking on the link will send you to the “Clocked In” Employees page. This also functions exactly like it did on the old Today screen.

8. The eighth row of data displays the number of Daily Log entries for the day, and clicking on this link will take you to the Daily Log.

9. The ninth row of data displays the day’s scheduled labor costs, if any labor costs have been entered for staff members.

10. The tenth row of data displays the actual cost of employee’s who have clocked in and out for the day, and is the total of your day’s labor. This functions exactly like it did on the old Today screen.

11. The eleventh row of data displays the difference between the scheduled labor costs, and the actual attendance – if the number is in green, the actual labor costs for the day are less than what was scheduled (good job!), if they are in red, then the labor costs are higher than what was scheduled.

12. The last row of data displays the rolling labor cost for the day, and resets based on when your schedule starts. You can use this number to keep track of your labor costs for the week. This works just like the previous “Week To Date” cost did.

You can move forward and backwards in time, and have access to all of the data on this page that you had previously including:

• Shift swaps requiring approval,
• Requests that require approval,
• The bar chart describing the labor for the day,
• The labor costs for the day,
• The week to date labor costs,
• And much, much more.

In between the “Next Week” and the “Previous Week” are two links, “Approve or Deny Shift Swaps” and “Approve or Deny Pending Requests”, which will be shown if there are ANY shift swaps or pending requests to approve, regardless of which day the requests or shift swaps fall on.

TimeForge employee scheduling software is used by owners and operators of hospitality, food-service, retail, and other service-oriented businesses around the world.   TimeForge will increase profitability, reduce turnover, and improve retention at your business!

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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!

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