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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While building an employee schedule, a comprehensive daily graph is visible to demonstrate an interactive version of the day’s schedule. While managers are building their staff schedule they can view a weekly staffing chart to see a visual representation of employees’ schedules, by position and times, in an organized, color-coded chart to make scheduling staff members easier than ever.

Easily Schedule Staff by Looking at the Weekly Schedule

TimeForge founder Anthony Presley sought to solve some of the problems business owners often experience with employee scheduling:

“TimeForge has had daily staffing graphs and visualization for years, allowing managers and owners to quickly and easily visualize their staffing load throughout the day. Our new weekly graph extends this one step further, providing one click schedule validation and visualization. Managers can spot holes in the schedule where their business may be under or over-staffed.”

Take a look at our press release about the latest TimeForge features.

Sign up for a free trial of our labor management tool today!

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However, to make your life even more simple, TimeForge does integrate with popular Point of Sale, Property Management, and Accounting systems.  What kind of advantages does this provide?  With an integrated TimeForge system, you have:

• No More Double Entry! Add an employee, job code or position, time card, or sales information into your Point of Sale system, and the data automatically appears inside of TimeForge.

• Inventory and Sales Forecasting! Use TimeForge Sales Types and menu item forecasting to forecast sales, build work schedules, or identify upcoming inventory needs with sales data from your Point of Sale system.  Use inventory and sales forecasting to accurately predict labor and staffing requirements.

• Remotely Run Payroll! TimeForge can pull employee timecards from your POS system, and pull the data into our powerful labor management system.  You can then approve and export payroll to a variety of payroll providers, including QuickBooks, ADP, Paychex, CompuPay, SurePayroll, and many others.

• Manage Multiple Locations with Ease! In many cases, TimeForge’s labor management system can extend your POS system, pulling data from different stores into TimeForge.  Easily manage employees who work at multiple stores, check sales data remotely, and enforce reporting requirements across multiple locations.

Integration with your POS, PMS, or accounting system is easy!  TimeForge currently interfaces with these systems, and we are always adding more:

Aloha Point of Sale

TimeForge enables Aloha POS users to manage labor remotely, forecast sales and labor requirements, and much more!  Download the latest version of the TimeForge-Aloha Bridge software, and review the TimeForge manual for installation information.

Dinerware Point of Sale

TimeForge provides extensive labor management capabilities for Dinerware users, such as employee schedule enforcement, sales forecasting, inventory monitoring, and real time sales and labor tools.  Download the latest version of the TimeForge-Dinerware Bridge software, and review the TimeForge manual for installation information.

Micros Point of Sale

TimeForge provides extensive labor management capabilities for Micros RES users, such as employee schedule enforcement, sales forecasting, inventory monitoring, and real time sales and labor tools.  Download the latest version of the TimeForge-Micros Bridge software, and review the TimeForge manual for installation information.

QuickBooks Small Business Accounting Software

TimeForge provides payroll import capabilities for QuickBooks users. Collect time sheet entries with TimeForge Attendance, and then at the end of the payroll period, you can approve the time and import it directly into QuickBooks as individual employee time sheets. Download the latest version of the TimeForge-Accounting Bridge software, and review the TimeForge manual for installation information.

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Please take a look at our latest demo video … in 4 minutes and 30 seconds we can show you the power of TimeForge as we add positions, create employees, build a schedule, and send the schedule to our staff members using email and text messages.

You should be using an employee scheduling product to make your life easier! TimeForge can quickly and easily build your employee schedules, manage attendance, reduce labor costs, and streamline labor management. Sign up for a trial today!

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These new reports include the ability to review employee certifications (such as food safety or alcohol certifications, CPR, uniform sizes, or other types), compare attendance (actual work) to scheduled time, identify staff members who were not scheduled or did not work, review time off requests, and compare shift swaps by employee or position.  Enough information to run your business!

Certification Reports

• Certification Test Date Report: View each employee’s certifications based on when certifications were taken, and easily locate which certifications need to be renewed.
• Certification Expiration Date Report:  View certifications by employee and located expiring certifications, and those that need to be renewed.
• Employee Certification Report:  On a list of all active employees, view the certifications that each employee has in their account.

Attendance vs. Schedule Reports

• Attendance vs. Schedule:  Three new actual vs. schedule reports are available to TimeForge Max customers.  Check actual vs. schedule data by employee, or by date.  Compare individual shifts worked and scheduled, or view the labor data at a higher level by reviewing by position data for your store (or multiple stores).

Worked or Scheduled Reports

• Who Did Not Work:  Identify which employees did not come to work during a time range.
• Who Is Not Scheduled:  Identify which staff members were not scheduled during a time range.
• Not Scheduled, with Attendance:  Locate employees who clocked in, but were not originally scheduled to work.
• Was Scheduled, no Attendance:  Locate staff members who were scheduled to work, but didn’t actually clock in.

Attendance vs. Schedule by Employee Reports

• Attendance vs. Schedule by Employee: Two reports are available to review employee schedules and attendance.  One report is a detail level report, showing each and every shift, with variance between hours scheduled and hours worked.  The other report is a summary by employee, also showing time worked, work scheduled, and the variance.

Shift Swapping Reports

• Shift Swapping by Employee:  Which staff members are swapping shifts the most?  Identify which employees pick up, or give up, the most shifts.
• Shift Swapping by Position:  Which positions are swapping shifts the most?  Identify which positions have the largest ratios of giving and picking up shifts.

Sick, Vacation, and PTO Reports

• Employee Time Sheets, with Requests:  Review time off requests that occur one time, while viewing the individual time sheets for staff members.
• Paid Time Off Report:  A PTO report that displays sick time, vacation time, and other PTO requests.

We are always adding new reports to allow you to quickly and easily manage labor issues.

You should be 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 labor management.  Sign up for a trial today!

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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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On July 11th, at the Retail Solutions Provider Association (RSPA) trade show held in Las Vegas, we debuted our brand new scheduling system.  New users of TimeForge are already using the new scheduling system, and the feedback has been tremendous so far (keep it coming!).  The new system looks similar to Microsoft Excel, but includes many enhancements necessary to build a schedule.

Some of the new features include:

• The ability to see (and change) the entire schedule from a single screen.  Up to seven days can be shown at a time on the screen, and the schedule can be displayed by staff members, or by position – whichever you want to use!

• Add a shift to multiple days with a single click.  For example, if “Joe” works on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday – there is no need to create four separate shifts. Simply create one, and “check” all of the other days to add the shift to them.

• When adding or editing shifts, you can now view all of the other shifts that the employee is working, and can also see their availability.  No need to switch screens!

• Display shifts by times, hours, or expected labor costs.

• View employee totals (such as the number of hours worked by an staff member), and daily totals (such as the expected labor cost for the day) on the same screen.

• Drag and drop scheduling!  Schedule one employee, and then copy or move their shifts to another employee.

Build Employee Schedules by Employee

TimeForge still includes all of the scheduling features that continue to make us a leader in employee scheduling:

• The one and only TimeForge AutoScheduler™ learns about your scheduling patterns, and can build a complete employee schedule in just a few seconds – or use schedule templates to quickly build schedules.

• Our proprietary Daily View, providing instant verification of your schedule – do you have too many cooks, or not enough staff members? – and staffing charts (gantt / bar charts).  See where your schedule is too heavy, or insufficiently staffed.

• Build schedules by department, or for any time range!  Divide up responsibility for scheduling among several responsible managers or supervisors.

• Compare the schedule to forecasted sales, table turns, guest counts, parked cars, full-time equivalents (FTE), or any other metric – and receive alerts when the schedule is out of line.

• Schedule SnapShots allow you to perform what-if scenarios, and the ability to jump back to a previous snapshot at any time.

• And much more …

Add or Edit a Shift with Insight About the Employee

If you are currently using the “old” TimeForge scheduling system, that’s ok, you can continue to use it.  However, please use and become familiar with the new scheduling system – we will be phasing out the “old” system in the future.  To try out the new system, follow these steps:

1. Go to one of your schedules (or build a new one).
2. On the “Schedule Detail” screen, click on the “Switch to the new TimeForge scheduling system” link (if you don’t have this link – congratulations! you are already using the new scheduling system).
3. Play with the new staff scheduling system.
4. If you want to switch back to the “old” system, simply click on the “Switch to the old scheduling system” link within your schedule.

Build Employee Schedules by Position

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on the new scheduling system.

How long does it take to make an employee schedule for your workforce? 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, hotel, bank, school, bar, club, or retail business.  Sign up for a trial today!

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Here’s an example: retail employee scheduling. How much time do you spend creating a schedule? If you said “hours” you’re not alone. Retail employee scheduling is challenging—multiple shifts, part-time employees (each with their own unique scheduling requests), labor laws, and fielding endless inquiries about next week’s schedule (or worse, scrambling to fill a missed shift), make children’s retail shift scheduling a real headache.

Babysitting the time clock to ensure your employees aren’t riding the clock or punching each other in isn’t much fun either, but successful managers know that attendance monitoring can go a long way towards cutting and forecasting labor costs.

Over-scheduling could drain away your profits. Under-scheduling could drain away your customers. Skillful retail employee scheduling and attendance monitoring isn’t easy. It can be tedious and time consuming. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be.

Timeforge allows children’s retail managers to cut employee scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to minutes.

And 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 budget-booster. In fact, TimeForge can increase retail profits by 3-5%.

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

With TimeForge, Children’s Product Retail Managers Can …

• Create fast and painless employee schedules.
• Inform employees of schedules, schedule change, meetings or training by text message or email—eliminating employee confusion and missed shifts.
• Review daily sales information, important things that happened during the day, 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 and forecast labor costs.
• Increase profits by 3-5%.
• And much more…

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

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Unfortunately, as any experienced carwash operator knows, employee scheduling and attendance monitoring is not as easy as it looks. You’ve got to juggle employees with varying skill sets and availabilities, manage PTO accrual and time off requests, communicate a frequently changing schedule to employees that are rarely onsite at the same time, and field dozens of schedule questions or shift swap requests. You’ve got to stop employees from riding the clock or punching others in. You may even have to keep an eye on the hours of employees who are minors to avoid labor law violations, or shuffle shifts to be sure that every shift has an English speaker or an employee with particular training on hand.

And to be really successful in the carwash and detailing industry, you also have to balance your employees and your load level scheduling—having the staff  in place to handle the vehicles quickly during busy periods, but to not be overstaffed in slow times—and to effectively manage and anticipate labor costs.

It’s complex, it’s time consuming, and frankly, it’s a little tedious.

TimeForge allows operators to cut carwash scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to minutes. You can manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule to put those with particular skills or the most experience in the high volume time slots, notify employees of upcoming schedules and schedule changes by email or text message, monitor attendance from a remote location, and forecast your labor costs.

The hours you save with TimeForge will streamline your management time, freeing you to focus on the strategic decisions of running a successful carwash/detailing operation, rather than phone calls from disgruntled employees who didn’t realize their schedule had changed. The fine-tuning you can do with employee scheduling, the reduction in missed or late shifts, the decrease in unnecessary overtime, and the ability to forecast labor needs and costs will save you money. In fact, TimeForge can increase carwash profits by 3-5%.

With TimeForge, You’ll Be Able To …

• Build employee schedules in seconds.
• Record staff member availability, employee time off  requests, and other key information
• Export payroll to many popular payroll providers with a single click.
• Inform employees of schedules or schedule changes by text message or email—eliminating employee confusion and missed shifts.
• Stop early clock ins and late clock outs or buddy punching to provide immediate labor cost controls
  Remotely check on employees that are clocked in – using the web, Facebook, or a cell phone.
• Provide remote access for employees to view work schedules, review timecards, request time off, change work availability, swap shifts with other staff members, and receive daily schedule alerts via email or text messages.
• Manage and forecast labor costs to decrease costs and increase profits
• And much more…

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

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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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