Labor Management. NOW Simple.

Founded in 2000, Seattle-based Dinerware provides restaurant point of sale software solutions to the hospitality industry. Dinerware can be found in upscale restaurants, cafes, nightclubs, bar and grills, fast casual restaurants, counter service establishments, quick serve restaurants, hotels, casinos, golf courses and wineries.

Dinerware has a really cool startup story. Carl English is a Harvard graduate who used to be the Microsoft Program Manager… this guy really knows his software! He started running his own restaurant, and learned first-hand what many restaurateurs experience every time they use a touchscreen system. He saw how much time it took to complete simple tasks.

Carl used his software expertise to create Dinerware, a point of sale system built around the restaurateur’s needs. The product is highly flexible, and enables the user to accomplish tasks easily and communicate with the entire staff.   Dinerware tracks all sales, provides report breakdowns by tender type, and calculates the server banks. Server reconciliation is fast so servers and cashiers can print daily reports and settle with the house in minutes.   This saves restaurants time, money

Dinerware is an amazing POS system, and TimeForge is proud to partner with such an innovative company to provide you with superior total management of labor and sales. TimeForge and Dinerware compliment one another, and integration of the two is fast and easy!

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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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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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You asked, and we now have it!   TimeForge now integrates with Quickbooks, Quickbooks Pro, and Quickbooks Enterprise to provide a complete labor management solution for your business , whether you are operating an independent business, a franchisee or franchisor, or are part of a corporate chain.

Now, using TimeForge you can:

• Create fast employee schedules with TimeForge.
• Communicate upcoming work schedules and schedule changes to staff members with TimeForge.
• Capture time punches (employee clock in and clock out) with TimeForge (or use one of our integrated partners , like Dinerware).
• Review and approve time cards for payroll with TimeForge.
• Export the approved payroll to one of our supported 3rd party vendors with TimeForge.

TimeForge supports a number of 3rd party payroll vendors, including ADP, Paychex, CompuPay, SurePayroll, Heartland Payroll, and others.   Now, with the TimeForge Bridge to Quickbooks we also support Quickbooks, Quickbooks Pro, and Quickbooks Enterprise.

For more information on using the TimeForge Quickbooks Bridge, please contact TimeForge support.

The TimeForge Bridge to Quickbooks will be appearing in the Intuit Partner Software directory soon.

(Please note, exporting payroll requires the use of TimeForge Attendance.   We do not support the export of employee schedules for the purposes of running payroll).

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Our staff has been hard at work continuing to improve TimeForge – ensuring that it is simply the best employee scheduling and labor management tool on the web.

This newsletter includes some details about new features in TimeForge, several scheduling and labor tips, and other information.   As always, if you have any suggestions for TimeForge, please let us know!

New TimeForge Partners

TimeForge is proud to be a certified Dinerware partner, providing advanced labor management and employee scheduling for restaurants, country clubs, casinos, wineries, and hotels.   Read more about the TimeForge-Dinerware integration here.

We are also very excited to welcome Factor One Technology as a TimeForge Partner.   Factor One provides Point of Sale systems to retail and restaurant businesses in Canada.

Also, TimeForge now supports exporting attendance and payroll data to the world’s premier online payroll company, SurePayroll.   Exporting payroll has never been easier!

New TimeForge Features

• Enjoy the brand new TimeForge Today page – with improved access to schedules, attendance, shift swaps, and much more!
• Perform “What If” scenarios on your labor schedule, and quickly restore previously saved schedules using Schedule Snapshots.
• Bulk insert or update employee, position, and department-level information by using an import file.
• Access TimeForge on an iPhone, Blackberry, or other RSS capable device to receive up-to-the-minute schedule and labor information.
• And much, much more.

Did you know that you can access TimeForge on Facebook?   Check schedules, see who is clocked in, receive and send messages, review time cards, and much more!

Follow TimeForge on Twitter!

Make sure to check our blog for the latest information about TimeForge.

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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Whew!   We are done with our whirlwind through the NRA 2009 tradeshow in Chicago, IL – what a great two days.

We are a technology company with a focus on operations and human resources for restaurants, retailers, and other businesses that hire part-time employees – we spent a lot of time examining the tradeshow and looking for improvements in technology for operations or human resources.

Some of the very neat technology at the show included:

• Dinerware POS is a phenomenal Point of Sale system, and one of our valued partners.   Several sales staff and other partners were on site to show off their latest version.
• Silverware POS recently debuted and released a best-of-breed restaurant POS product, Avrio, which was onsite at the show.   What a wonderful group of individuals, and a great product!
• MonkeyMedia Software displayed their rocking catering software outside of the Technology Pavilion.   They caused a bit of a comotion by handing out bananas!
• QuandraNet is similiar to OpenTable, but with a very, very smart table management software program that increases table turns in addition to handling reservations.
• Corvirtus was showing off their products that take the guesswork out of hiring. Very neat algorithms, and years of research create a great hiring tool.   Wonderful stuff.

Overall, the show attendance seemed to be down compared to last year, which seems to be the general consensus.

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

Related articles or pages

• Labor Scheduling Software Article at Nation's Restaurant News
• Support for Salaried Employees from within Dinerware
• Easily Manage Labor with Innovative Staffing Reports
• Dinerware and TimeForge Labor Management Improvements
• Congratulations TimeForge!