Labor Management. NOW Simple.

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!

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge Dashboard
• New Schedule Demo
• Enforce Scheduled Positions and Clock In Times
• Easily Manage Labor with Innovative Staffing Reports
• TimeForge Newsletter, November Edition (Part 2)

Now available! Managing labor at your business just became even more simple.   TimeForge Mobile recently launched, providing managers and staff members the ability to review employee schedules, check timecards, send and receive online messages, and perform other labor management related items on an iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, or other smartphone.

TimeForge Mobile can be accessed by pointing your favorite web browser or RSS reader at the TimeForge website.   To ensure the confidentiality of the information that is available, the RSS reading program must be able to use both SSL (bank-level encryption and security) and authentication (username and password).   Some of our favorite RSS readers include:

• Viigo on the Blackberry
• NetNewswire and Pro RSS on the iPhone
• Others (mostly for the desktop) can be found here

Accessing TimeForge Mobile is very simple!   Just add the website or URL of:

http://www.TimeForge.com/Scheduler/rss.html

to your RSS program of choice – enter your username and password – and your schedule, timecard, availability, and messages will automatically load into your RSS program.

Managers and supervisors have additional capabilities, and multi-unit and multi-store operators can view additional information (such as which staff members are clocked in, the days labor costs, and gross sales for the day).   A full list of RSS URL’s can be found inside “My Settings” page within TimeForge.

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

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• Simple Employee Scheduling – Version 1.8.5 (Part 3)
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• Off Topic: Inventory Managment for Restaurants
• New Schedule Demo

Easy Labor Management – 5 Tips to Build Better Employee Schedules

• Employees who ride the clock are draining business profits. Monitor timesheets and schedules to effectively stop early clock ins. Better yet, use a labor management system that does both attendance and employee scheduling – and can enforce the schedule – such as TimeForge

• Fingerprint scanners are delicate pieces of technology. Use them to clock in/out. Don’t use them to enter PINs.   Restaurant and hospitality staff normally must enter a PIN / id into a Point of Sale system every few minutes, and with greasy hands, fingerprint scanners become defective quickly

• Not sure where your labor dollars are going? Check your fixed / non-variable (manager) salaries and your variable hours (hourly staff). You may be surprised at what you find as many labor dollars are tied up in non-variable staff members.

• Take time to review the schedule and compare sales and customer throughput to your staffing levels. High ratios can be very costly to your business.   A high ratio of labor to sales or customer throughput implies one of three business problems:
  1. Staff members are spending a lot of time with individual customers, and are not adequately serving customers who may be waiting (who then leave).
  2. The business is over-staffed, with more employees on site than are necessary.
  3. Profit per customer / order is too low, and needs to be raised.

  Act quickly to identify which problem is occurring, and solve it.

• Make sure only one manager per department is responsible for approving requests. Otherwise, there can be confusion about time off allotments.   If one manager approves a time off request for one staff member, and another manager approves a request for another staff member – the likelihood of upset staff, higher turnover, and staff shortages is significantly higher than if one manager is responsible for handling requests.   Good communication is key to labor management success.

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

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge Dashboard
• Labor Management Software Update Simplifies Employee Scheduling
• Enforce Scheduled Positions and Clock In Times
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)

Secrets for Hiring Success

Employee scheduling is an important function of human resources and operations at your business.   Good employee schedules will reduce turnover and increase retention, improving cash flow and profits.   Tracking time and attendance is also an important human resource task.   Other HR tasks include processing payroll, hiring, exit interviews, and employee onboarding, among many others.

Hiring is often one of the most complicated and difficult tasks for operations and human resources to perform.   This 7 Secrets for Hiring Success article from Success Performance Solutions is a great reference for hiring managers everywhere in all industries.

Twitter in Human Resources, According to Workforce.com

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging tool that is receiving a lot of press, and has grown significantly over the past 3 years.   A number of industries, including Hollywood, television, music, and others are using Twitter to help grow and keep fans “in the know”.   However, Twitter is also finding a number of uses in the Human Resources (HR) world, as reported by Workforce.com

Make sure to follow TimeForge on Twitter!

TimeForge provides powerful and easy-to-use employee scheduling and online labor management software for restaurant, retail, and other service industries. TimeForge software is used by restaurant owners and operators around the world to increase profits, reduce turnover, and improve retention.

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Managing employees in the foodservice or hospitality industry is a process that can quickly become a nightmare for both staff and managers.

Staff expectations and requirements will not mix well with business requirements leading to lower employee retention, higher employee turnover, and a reduction in profits for your restaurant.

Most businesses in the restaurant, foodservice and hospitality industries such as table service restaurants, bars, clubs, country clubs, and quick service / fast food restaurants have very little control over the monthly budget. After a lease is signed the building and utility costs will remain relatively fixed, licensing fees and insurance rates will not change drastically month over month, and credit card processing fees usually scale with the business growth.

Managers, however, can directly influence three of the largest budget line items:

• Advertising expenses are normally purchased in 3 – 12 month quantities, and are not likely to change on a monthly basis.
• Inventory including food and beverage expenses can change based on a number of factors, and switching suppliers is difficult and time consuming.
• Labor costs will vary on a monthly basis based on the prevailing wage, employees leaving (or being fired), staff communication, management practices, and a number of other factors that can be directly controlled by managers.

Of these three line items, managers have the most control over labor costs, which can be manipulated to improve business profits. Inversely, improper management of labor costs will reduce the business’s ability to satisfy customers and expose the business to the risk of liability lawsuits and labor violation fines – instantly slashing the restaurant’s profitability!

Improving employee labor scheduling and time / attendance management should be an ongoing effort in your business that results in happier staff members, better customer satisfaction, and higher profits for your company.

TimeForge is a leading provide of powerful and simple-to-use employee scheduling and online labor management software for the restaurant and retail industries. TimeForge software is used by restaurant owners and operators around the globe to increase profits, reduce turnover, and improve retention.

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• TimeForge Labor Management, A Quick Background
• Social Media and Labor Scheduling
• New Labor Management Reports
• Free Schedule Entry Service
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)

Still trying to figure out what social media is, and how it’s going to help your retail or restaurant business?   Not quite sure what Twitter may be, why you need a Facebook page, or what you need a blog for?   You are not alone!

Starbucks Coffee is still trying to figure out social media, and how to make it work from a business perspective.   So far, they’ve managed to rack up more than 1 million facebook fans, more than 81,000 Twitter followers, and are now ranked number 6 on the Top 100 Social Brands list for 2008.   Read more about this article at Nation’s Restaurant News ….

• You can follow TimeForge on Twitter, and read all about restaurant and retail labor scheduling.
• TimeForge has a Facebook application, so that you and your staff can receive schedules, shift swap notices, requests for time off, timecards, messages, and more with your facebook account!

How complicated is the employee schedule at your restaurant?   Are you making the best possible work schedule, or are you wasting precious labor resources?   How much of the turnover at your business is created because of bad (or late) employee schedules?

Did you know that TimeForge can reduce turnover, improve retention, and increase profits at your restaurant? Sign up today for a free trial!

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge Labor Management, A Quick Background
• Supercharged Scheduling from Nations Restaurant News
• Managing Employee Schedules is Important for Restaurants
• Gyms / Health Clubs
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)

The TimeForge product began life about 6 years ago, with the vision of a simple, easy to use, online employee scheduling product for the restaurant and retail industries.

We quickly realized that every business owner and manager has their own idea of what a “simple” employee scheduling system must do to help their business , labor scheduling requirements greatly vary by industry and location.   However, saving time and money is important to all business owners …

• Businesses in California, New York, and other areas need to schedule employee breaks (not very important in Texas, New Mexico, and other locales),
• Large organizations need to schedule multiple departments and supervisors (smaller groups only have one department),
• Labor costs need to be accurate, and account for overtime, multiple locations, positions, and job codes (many businesses fly by the seat of their pants, and don’t see the value in this information),
• Employee schedules need to be enforced, making sure employees do not arrive too early or leave too late (locations with full-time employees don’t worry about this requirement),
• And on, and on -.

Over the past several years, TimeForge has evolved to solve all of these problems , in an approachable manner for new and existing customers.

Multiple versions of the TimeForge service are now available, including:

• TimeForge Scheduling, the simple-to-use employee scheduling software, reduces labor scheduling from hours to seconds, improves employee communication (reducing frustration and turnover), and enables staff to check and receive schedules remotely.

• TimeForge Attendance, a full-featured time and attendance program, tracks when employees clock in / out, displays employee timecards, enforces the TimeForge Scheduling work schedule, and exports attendance for payroll calculations.

• TimeForge Daily Log, a powerful communications tool, records daily activities in an organized and searchable manner , removing the need for expensive physical log books.

Each TimeForge product can be used separately, or the products can be combined together to create a powerful labor management tool.   Managing labor with any of the TimeForge products will result in an immediate Return On Investment, but combining the products together will increase your profits in both good and bad economic climates.

The latest release of TimeForge continues to improve on our simple concepts, and continues to make life easy for managers and employees alike.   Read more about our latest release here…

Are complicated employee scheduling practices taking up precious time at your restaurant?   Are you making the best possible restaurant schedule?   How much turnover is created because of bad (or late) schedules? Did you know that TimeForge can improve retention, reduce turnover, and increase profits at your restaurant? Sign up today for a free trial!

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge v2.4.5
• Our New Employee Scheduling System!
• Off Topic: Inventory Managment for Restaurants
• New Labor Management Reports
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Some of the new improvements that are quickly noticeable by TimeForge users:

• A New Daily View!   TimeForge continues to be the easiest solution for making employee schedules.   You can now add or edit employees or positions directly from the schedule , no need to leave the schedule screen to add new staff members.   This also creates a streamlined sign up process , new users can be up and running and building schedules in under a minute!

• TimeForge Max customers can now track Sick, Vacation, and PTO requests!   Tracking time off is one of our most requested feature, and is now part of the TimeForge Max software product.   TimeForge Request Types can now be used to calculate sick time, vacation time, or personal time off (or paid time off).   Check back soon for a tutorial on how to use these powerful new features!

• TimeForge Attendance now goes through an approval process before it is exported.   At the end of each payroll period, managers review and then approve attendance before exporting payroll for the pay period to help reduce payroll errors.

• Overtime calculations for Canada, or any other country!   TimeForge now supports overtime calculations in the US (including California Overtime rules), Canada (with 40 hours, 44 hours, or 48 hours, depending on the province), or any other number of hours per week.   This can be set on a per-location / unit level , to assist international businesses, and affects both the theoretical labor schedule and the attendance calculations.

• Weather at your location can be displayed in either Fahrenheit or Celsius.

• TimeForge has supported exporting payroll information to CompuPay, a premium payroll and HR service, for about a year.   We now support exporting to Heartland Payment Systems payroll product as well.

• The new TimeForge reporting toolis available for all TimeForge users.   We have been working on releasing the new reporting tool for quite some time, and this new tool is significantly faster than our old reporting system.
  • In addition to being faster (most reports run in less than half a second!), you can now export reports in a number of formats, including Adobe Acrobat (PDF), Rich Text Format (RTF), and Microsoft Excel (EXCEL).
  • Reports too big or too small?   With a single click, you can now change the font size of the reports , fitting more, or fewer, employees onto each report.
  • Most reports now have Grand Totals , including payroll reports and multi-location reports.

We would love to hear your feedback about these features and improvements to TimeForge, and what you would like to see included in future versions of TimeForge.

What else do you want to see added to TimeForge?

How long does it take to make an employee schedule at your retail store? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that labor costs are your #1 controllable expense, and could eating up more than 30% of your monthly expenses? TimeForge will streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your store.   Start profiting now!

Related articles or pages

• Use Tools to Keep Managers and Employees Happy
• TimeForge Labor Management, A Quick Background
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• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Updated Labor Scheduling … TimeForge version 1.9

Managers are More Expensive than Non-Salaried Staff

In many industries including retail, hospitality, food-service, hotels, and manufacturing, salaried management staff are usually several times more expensive than non-salaried staff at the same business. In many cases, one member of the salaried staff can be more expensive than five or six non-salaried staff members. In addition to their hourly-wage, managers are eligible for benefits such as life insurance, health insurance, expensive overtime, or additional perks like free food or discounted merchandise rates.

Schedule Managers to do Management Tasks

Businesses should ensure salaried managers perform managerial tasks while on duty, and leverage non-salaried employees for work-related duties that do not require a manager. Some tasks that managers may be charged with during a regular work day could include performing quality control, placing vendor orders, building employee schedules, training employees, processing payroll, and working with customers. Whatever management does while at work, make sure that it is something that is representative of their cost to the business.

Managers should be able to jump in and work when other non-management staff members do not show up for work or unanticipated spikes in demand require more line workers. This ability implies that the business does a good job of cross training employees, and the business is not overly reliant on any one staff member. However, if it is common practice for managers to mop the floors or clean bathrooms because other staff members do not show up, than a re-evaluation of hiring and staffing practices is recommended.

Managers are routinely asked to create efficient schedules for their business on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. Accurately scheduling the work force several weeks in advance provides employees with a defined work schedule and allows managers to estimate upcoming expenses (payroll is often the largest expense in retail, restaurant, hospitality, and similar industries). During the process of preparing an accurate schedule, managers will check employee availability, review request logs, consider federal/state/local and corporate regulations, update employee work preferences, revise employee capabilities and training, make overtime considerations, ensure minimum work hours all while maintaining budgets and other business requirements. The entire schedule process commonly occupies a manager for 10% of every week, costing the business at least several hundred dollars each week!

Changing the Employee Schedule Uses Manager Time, Which is Expensive

In addition to creating the schedule, managers often change the schedule on a daily basis. Employees may become available (and want more shifts), suddenly be unavailable (illness or termination) and not able to work, or forget when they need to be at work. Shift swapping is also common in many industries and requires a manager to spend time on each trade , employees give up shifts that were assigned to them originally, or pick up shifts that others cannot work. A shift or request log may be used for employee initiated shift trades. Managers cannot monitor theft, interact with customers, train employees, or perform quality control at the business if they are in the back-office working on a labor schedule.

To ensure that management staff time is spent appropriately, use technology tools to perform tasks that can be done by computers. Software tools such as TimeForge improve staff retention, and decrease the amount of time that scheduling labor consumes. TimeForge includes a number of additional tools that will assist managers in time management, including a daily manager log book, payroll processing, and other similar tools.

Related articles or pages

• Use Tools to Keep Managers and Employees Happy
• TimeForge Labor Management, A Quick Background
• Spend Less Time Scheduling Labor – More Time Managing Your Business
• Reduce Turnover with Shift Scheduling Software
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Although employee work schedules sometimes appear simple to create, building a “good” labor schedule is extremely difficult using traditional methods such as Microsoft Excel or pen-and-paper. Managers must build a schedule so that qualified employees are available to meet the forecasted demand for service or goods.   And a good schedule accurately reflects projected sales for the upcoming week or month, providing adequate work hours for employees.

Labor Schedules Take Time to Create

The employee schedule informs employees when to arrive at work, and in some cases, when to leave.   In other cases, employees are “cut” from the schedule based on demand (or volume) at the business. In almost every case, the labor schedule is created by management staff in the back-office or at home after hours , a point of discontent for most managers who must work longer hours and weekend hours to build schedules.

The steps to create a labor schedule reads like a long list of tasks, occupying several hours of management time every week:

1. First review the manager’s log book and estimate or forecast upcoming sales and the demand for labor.
2. Next check the employee request log and availability sheets as well as individual work preferences while remembering which employees are minors or restricted in working.
3. Look-up required employee certifications; for example, an ABC license is required to serve alcohol at a restaurant or necessary certifications to dispense medications.
4. Identify trustworthy and experienced personnel to open or close the business.
5. Try to fairly distribute shifts while meeting employee minimum hour works, but do not exceed a maximum number of hours.
6. Make sure that employees are not likely to receive overtime if someone fails to show up on the schedule.
7. Identify convenient times to provide break and meal periods for staff members who are required to receive breaks.
8. Calculate the likely cost of payroll, being mindful of budgetary constraints , if the cost is too high, start over.

Juggling all of these factors to create a good schedule for the workforce is a complicated task that can consume more than ten-percent of a manager’s time throughout the week. In many cases, especially in owner-operator businesses, this schedule is posted late in the week for the upcoming week. Posting the schedule late causes problems with employees and creates higher turnover and reduces tenure at the business, reducing overall profits!

The final version of the labor schedule, which the manager has likely spent hours creating, may be bulk-emailed out to the employees (if the manager used a tool such as Microsoft Excel and a schedule template to build the schedule), or more commonly, printed and posted on a wall in the back of the business (inside the management office, store room, or kitchen).

Theoretical Labor Schedules are Important for Staff

This posted work schedule is the “theoretical labor schedule” – it is the necessary labor needed to operate the business and meet expected customer demand. The posted work schedule will change throughout the week as employees fail to show up, swap shifts with other staff members, arrive early or late, or business requirements change and employees are cut or added to the schedule. The posted schedule should be saved and archived (as it was created by management) for later comparison to worked hours, and for issues arriving from Labor & Industries audits, availability conflicts, labor disputes, or even lawsuits.

Is your scheduling complex? Are you making the best possible schedule? How many thousands of dollars do you spend making schedules every year? Did you know that TimeForge can reduce turnover, increase retention and increase profits through employee scheduling at your business? Sign up today for a free trial!

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