Labor Management. NOW Simple.

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!

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge Improvements
• TimeForge Breaks Make Your Life Simple
• Managing Breaks and Meal Periods Is Simple
• Labor Management for Golf Courses
• Labor Management for Churches and Religious Institutions

Are you tired of sitting in front of the time clock to see when your staff members show up to clock in, or clock out for their shift? Monitoring time clocks is a time consuming way to manage employees and while it can often be an effective way to reduce payroll expenses, it also increases frustration and costs among managers and supervisors.

TimeForge already supports a number of ways to manage staff members without sitting in front of the time clock including:

• Online employee work scheduling accessible over the Internet,
• Web-based attendance that can be viewed remotely,
• Enforcing the schedule with a grace period for clocking in or out,
• Identifying “most different” time punches, and
• Allowing other staff members to act as a witness when employees show up before they are scheduled to work

We now go one step further! Fully manage your business remotely!

TimeForge can notify managers or supervisors when employees show up early or late, and when clocking in or clocking out. There are four new “Alerts” inside of each supervisor and manager account, controlling when alerts are sent to management personnel.

For example, you can receive email and TimeForge notifications when staff members show up more than 10 minutes early for their scheduled shift.

To configure these Alerts, log into TimeForge, go to your Settings page, and configure the applicable Alerts.

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!

Related articles or pages

• Part Two: Recruiting and Retaining Gen Y Employees
• Is Employee Scheduling Complicated? Not Anymore!
• Enforce Scheduled Positions and Clock In Times
• Employee Scheduling Complicated? Not Anymore!
• Turn the AutoScheduler Off or On

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!

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge Dashboard
• Time and Attendance Made Easy
• Part Two: Recruiting and Retaining Gen Y Employees
• New Labor Management Reports
• Efficient Labor Management with the New TimeForge Today Page!

The 2008 year has come to a roaring close and the staff at TimeForge would like to thank you for helping us provide powerful software that lets you compete in business, and be happy in life.

As many of you have probably discovered, TimeForge received massive updates on Wednesday and Friday.   These updates fix a number of software bugs that were reported, and it also includes more than two dozen brand new features available for TimeForge users.

Some of these new features include:

New Reporting Tools! We’ve have released a new reporting solution to provide you with greater control over sorting order, font sizes, and better reports.   All of the TimeForge reports have been re-written to give us enormous flexibility in the coming months.   Be prepared for new reports, and new ways to look at them (exporting to Excel will be available soon).

Automatic Sales and Inventory Forecasts! In addition to being able to track Manager Projections and Actual Values, TimeForge Sales will automatically predict and forecast sales and inventory values , accounting for factors such as seasonality, current staff levels, and others.

Corporate Level Employees! For our customers that manage multiple locations, you can now view employees at the corporate level , all locations in a single list.   Employee management has never been more simple!

Need to Track Certificates, Uniforms, or Employee Reviews? You can now track all of this using the TimeForge Certifications!   TimeForge Certifications can include tracking of test dates, the score received on the test, and when the test expires.   Certifications can impact the schedule, providing warnings when employees with expired certifications (or missing certifications) are scheduled to work.

Smarter AutoScheduling! The AutoScheduler has been improved to look at previous scheduling assignments, and learn how to better assign staff members.   The AutoScheduler can often build the same schedule that the manager would!   Less typing means that schedules are made faster so you can go home early.

Employee-Centric Schedules and Attendance! Need to find out when Sally or Tom works next?   Don’t want to have to go click on the schedule or search the attendance records?   No problem!   Go to your employee list, find the employee and click on “Edit”, and you will see two new tabs, “Schedules” and “Attendance”.   Find out when Sally or Tom is scheduled, or actually worked, in the upcoming weeks, or any previous time period.   Instantly change the schedule directly from here.   We even show schedules from multiple locations!

Break Improvements , Remove Breaks from Calculations. Some businesses track schedules by looking at the whole time that the employee is at work.   Other organizations prefer to ignore unpaid breaks (such as lunch breaks) in the time and cost calculations.   Both paid and unpaid breaks can now be removed from the schedule calculations by changing a few TimeForge settings.

Payroll Period Tracking , If you use TimeForge Attendance, you can now identify your payroll periods and run reports using these periods, rather than entering your own time ranges.   Payroll periods can be set up for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly payroll.

Of course, there were numerous other minor improvements made to TimeForge, including a streamlined sign up process, easier template management, and much more!

Related articles or pages

• What’s New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)
• Use Tools to Keep Managers and Employees Happy
• Part Two: Recruiting and Retaining Gen Y Employees
• Employee Scheduling Done Right – The Newest Version of TimeForge
• TimeForge Updates for December