Not to mention communicating the schedule (and any updates employee meetings or trainings and shift changes) to all the employees; monitoring employee attendance (not just scrambling to address the missed shift when someone says the didn’t get the schedule update, but the early clock ins or buddy time clock punching, as well); trying to stay abreast of daily sales or important in-store occurrences; and accurately forecasting future labor needs and costs.

Deft retail employee scheduling and attendance monitoring isn’t easy. But with the right tools, you can accomplish it in minutes and spend your time more productively in the front of the store – or even off-site.

Timeforge allows shoe retailers to cut employee scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to minutes (literally). In challenging economic times, the ability to manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule those with stronger skills in the high volume time slots, and monitor and forecast your labor costs makes Timeforge not just a time-saver but a money saver. In fact, TimeForge can increase retail profits by 3-5%.

Add in the ability to notify employees of upcoming schedules and schedule changes by email or text message (reducing late or absent employees), to integrate simply with POS or payroll systems, and the ability to focus your energies on the urgent, but more creative, duties facing a retail manager on any given day (rather than mind-numbing scheduling minutia), you’ll probably find that the time saved in the first week alone pays for the investment.

With TimeForge, Shoe Retailers Can …

• Create complicated, or simple, employee schedules in seconds.
• Notify employees of schedules, schedule change, meetings or training by text message or email – eliminating employee confusion and missed shifts
• Review daily sales information, approve shift swaps, review employee requests for time off, and monitor employees on the clock either on site or remotely, through the TimeForge website, via a Smartphone (such as a Blackberry or iPhone), and even through a Facebook account.
• Stop employees from clocking in before the shift starts or after the shift ends, or punching in friends.
• Export payroll to many popular payroll providers with a single click.
• Monitor labor costs in real-time, using TimeForge’s real time attendance monitoring system.
• Increase store profits by 3-5% with labor reductions and improved employee retention
• And much more…

TimeForge is a complete labor management solution for the footwear and retail businesses, providing one-click seamless access to employee scheduling, time and attendance, and payroll reports. Use the whole TimeForge product suite, or only the parts that your business requires.

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

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• Employee Labor Scheduling: Interview with TimeForge.com's Anthony Presley

All employees will receive email notifications of the Approval or Denial, and employees can always check the status of their availability requests by logging into their own account on TimeForge.com

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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• Employee Labor Scheduling: Interview with TimeForge.com's Anthony Presley
• Age Rules (Minors and Senior Citizens) – New in TimeForge
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• Trade Shows Relevant to TimeForge Users in 2008

TimeForge makes compliance with these corporate, local, state, and national regulations easy! You and your Human Resources department can easy build age-specific rules, specifying when employees can, or cannot, work.

Some of the rules that can be specified include:

• Minimum or maximum scheduled hours per week, such as “Maximum of 40 hours per week”
• Minimum or maximum scheduled shifts per week, such as “No fewer than 2 shifts per week”
• Minimum or maximum scheduled shifts per day, such as “No doubles”

Additionally, age rules include availability requests that can be specified on a calendar, just like TimeForge employee requests!

To access the Age Rules, login to TimeForge, and then choose the “Employees” tab, and then click on “Age Rules”.

Hot Tip: Age Rules can be used to define corporate-wide standards for scheduling employees. For example, you can define age rules for minors you employee, another age rule for employees aged 18 , 65, and a final age rule for senior citizens.

Hot Tip Two: Within TimeForge, you can have as many age rules as you would like. For example, the rules for scheduling minors who are 14 – 15 may be different than the rules for scheduling 16 , 17 year old minors. In this case, TimeForge will allow you to define two separate groups of age rules to schedule your employees. You can have as many groups as you would like!

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?

Related articles or pages

• Approve or Deny Employee Requests in Bulk – New in TimeForge
• Weekly Schedule Templates: New in TimeForge
• Trade Shows Relevant to TimeForge Users in 2008
• Time and Attendance – Improved in TimeForge
• Templates and Weekly Templates Sorted – Improved in TimeForge

Thanks very much to Jaime Oikle and his staff for featuring our software!

Some of the topics that we covered included:

• Labor scheduling has been done on paper for years … why should a restaurant look at moving to web based employee scheduling?
• Do employees like to use labor scheduling systems like TimeForge?
• What are employee notifications, and do employee alerts help keep staff happy, and reduce turnover?
• Does a web based employee scheduling software positively effect employee turnover?
• In 15 seconds (or less), tell restaurant operators and managers why they should use TimeForge for their scheduling needs.
• How long does it take to learn a powerful labor scheduling system like TimeForge, and how much time do owners/managers spend with your system on a weekly basis to manage the schedules?

Feel free to let us know if you think we forgot something important!

You can read the complete article on RunningRestaurants.com

How long does it take to make your employee schedules? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee labor management at your business, bar, club, grocery, convenience store, or restaurant.

Related articles or pages

• Off Topic: Inventory Managment for Restaurants
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• TimeForge v2.4.5
• Simple Employee Scheduling – Version 1.8.5 (Part 3)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)

TimeForge labor scheduling software has been upgraded to the latest version, version 1.8, at no charge to our customers, and this release includes a number of new features to make scheduling even more simple. Some of the latest features include:

1. Schedule by Department / Position or by Time. Wok shifts can be grouped together by position, or ordered by time, or both! When using the position / department groups, each group will display the total cost for the group, the number of shifts, and the total number of hours being scheduled. Schedule how you want to!
2. Employees can view the schedules of other employees. To enable this feature, login to TimeForge, click on “Setup“, and then choose “Settings for this Location“. In the “TimeForge Configuration” section, you will see a question which reads: “Do you want to allow your employees to view other employee’s schedules and contact information?” Make sure this option is set to “Yes“, and then save your settings. Any employee who logs into TimeForge.com can click on their “Schedules” tab, and then click on “Other Employee’s Schedules“. Employees can view the times, phone numbers, and assigned employees for all of the published labor schedules at your business.
3. Requests and Availability can be filtered by position or employee. For example, you can view the requests for only “Joe“, or you can look at all of the requests from your “Server” staff. To use this feature, click on the “Employees” tab, and then choose “Edit employee requests / availability“. Once on that screen, you can change the “Requests for:” drop-down to display specific requests, and then click on “Show” to actually see that information.

In addition to these new features, several bug fixes and speed improvements have been added to make TimeForge the premiere online employee scheduling package.

How long does it take to make your labor schedules? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, bar, club, or business.

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• Reduce Turnover with Shift Scheduling Software
• Why Schedule Labor Properly? – Part Two
• Increase Profits with Improved Cost Controls
• Western Food Expo is a wrap!
• TimeForge v2.4.5

Along with the basic ability to quickly and easily create schedules that work for your business (including multi-week or monthly schedules), TimeForge.com includes AutoScheduler™, an automatic scheduling tool developed with leading industry experts. The AutoScheduler™ program simplifies the creation of schedules by accurately balancing employee requests, payroll costs, and staffing requirements. With the click of a mouse, the AutoScheduler™ can create an entire 7-day schedule for your business in under 30 seconds! Blazing fast scheduling combined with industry-leading reports puts you and your managers back where you belong …. on the floor with your customers.

TimeForge.com will automatically alert employees of newly posted schedules and schedule changes on a continual basis. Employees can be notified through the TimeForge.com website, email, or even daily text message alerts. Multiple notifications provide a solid scheduling system that eliminates any confusion about staff responsibilities. TimeForge.com also reduces the amount of time that managers spend on the phone with employees. Employees can log in to their individual TimeForge.com accounts and enter a work request (time off, school schedules, work preferences, etc…); the manager can then approve or deny employee requests at their convenience.

TimeForge.com can save your business time and money, and can reduce confusion and tension between the management and staff.

Sign up for your free trial at www.TimeForge.com today!

About TimeForge.com
TimeForge.com is an employee scheduling application designed for the hospitality and restaurant industries. Currently used by more than 100 restaurants, bars, and clubs from all over the United States, TimeForge.com is designed from the ground-up to simplify the complicated process of employee scheduling, with a single task in mind: to put management back where they belong , on the floor with customers.

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• Reduce Turnover with Shift Scheduling Software
• TimeForge v2.4.5
• TimeForge Software Update
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• Spend Less Time Scheduling Labor – More Time Managing Your Business