Labor Management. NOW Simple.

TimeForge now includes eleven (11) new reports , which are available in the TimeForge user accounts.   Reports are necessary to run your business, and TimeForge now has more than 60 reports available for TimeForge Max customers.

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!

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge Labor Management, a quick background ….
• TimeForge Improvements
• Enforce Scheduled Positions and Clock In Times
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)

In a time of tight cost controls, workforce optimization for convenience stores is more important than ever. It’s complex, it’s time consuming, and it’s tedious. And it’s essential. Over-staff and you lose money. Under-staff and you lose customers.

Luckily, TimeForge can cut the time spent doing routine but time-consuming tasks like building a convenience store employee schedule from hours to seconds. And it gives you the tools you need to fine-tune your work force and reduce costs with attendance management controls.

Here’s an example: many convenience store managers spend hours just creating an employee schedule. You have to take a huge number of factors into consideration – your employees’ availability, skill levels, accrued PTO, time off or shift swap requests, the need for 24/7 coverage, and the busy (and not so busy) times in your store. Then you have to communicate the schedule to all your employees, redo it in the event of an unexpected illness or time-off requests (and find someone to fill in for the absent employee), and then communicate the updates to all the employees.

And that doesn’t even take into account attendance monitoring or labor forecasting – vital steps in this economy for optimizing your convenience store workforce and reducing costs.

Some of TimeForge’s Benefits for Convenience Store Operators Include…

• Build efficient employee schedules for one or more locations – in seconds.
• Record staff member availability, employee time-off requests, and other key information.
• Export payroll to many popular payroll providers – such as Quickbooks, SurePayroll, ADP, Paychex, and CompuPay – with a single click.
• Notify employees of schedules or schedule changes by text message or email – eliminating employee confusion and missed shifts while reducing turnover.
• 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.
• And much more …

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

Related articles or pages

• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• What's New in TimeForge? (Part 1)
• What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)
• TimeForge.com Training Webinar – Learn How To Schedule Properly

If you are a long-time TimeForge user, you are probably familiar with our system, and how it continues to evolve to take advantage of new technology, faster computers, and easier ways to manage employee schedules and track time and attendance.   If you haven’t burned, thrown away, or otherwise destroyed all of your Excel labor spreadsheets , now is the time!

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!

Related articles or pages

• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• TimeForge Labor Management, a quick background ….
• What's New in TimeForge? (Part 1)
• What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)

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).

Related articles or pages

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• Better Employee Schedules and Easy Labor Management – 6 More Tips

Bicycle retailers trying to stay ahead in this tumultuous economy have a tough road to navigate. Consumers are skittish, sales are down, and costs are skyrocketing. The line between surviving and thriving is thin, but savvy bicycle retailers know that the path to success lies in keeping costs low and streamlining their processes so they have time to strategize through tough times.

Luckily, TimeForge can accomplish both of those things.   How much time do you spend creating a schedule? If you said “hours” you’re not alone. If you are a bicycle retailer, you’ve had to build employee schedules that take a huge number of factors into consideration – your employees’ availability, expertise, accrued PTO, time off or shift swap requests, and the busy (and not so busy) times in your shop.

Then you have to communicate the schedule to your employees, redo the schedule in the event of an unexpected illness or time-off request (and find someone to fill in for the absent employee), and then communicate the updates to all the employees.

It’s complex, it’s time consuming and it’s tedious. But it’s very important. Over-staff and you lose money. Under-staff and you lose customers.

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 toward cutting and forecasting labor costs.

TimeForge can cut the time spent building an employee schedule and monitoring attendance from hours to minutes.

And in both prosperous and 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 store profits by 3-5%.

Add in the ability to integrate simply with Point of Sale and 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 find that the time saved first week alone pays for the investment.   Your business will profit with TimeForge!

Some of TimeForge’s Benefits for Bike Retailers Include…

• Create complicated employee schedules – in minutes, not hours.
• 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), or through Facebook.
• Stop employees from clocking in before the shift starts or after the shift ends, and stop employees from punching friends in early.
• Export payroll to many popular payroll providers , such as SurePayroll, ADP, Quickbooks, CompuPay, and Paychex with a single click.
• Monitor and forecast sales in order to accurately predict employee work schedules and labor costs.
• Increase same-store profits by 3-5%.
• And much more…

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

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge.com Training Webinar – Learn How To Schedule Properly
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If your gym is like most, you’re managing instructors, front desk staff, personal trainers, janitorial or maintenance staff, and maybe even massage, nutrition, or spa staff. Scheduling a diverse staff like this can be a real headache. And it’s not just the wide range of skill sets and certifications that are required – you have to also juggle varying availability, part-time schedules, accrued PTO, time-off and shift swap requests, and your club’s busy times during any given day.

It’s tedious, time consuming, complicated and (particularly in this challenging economic climate) extraordinarily important.

Under-schedule the club and you could lose members. Over-schedule the gym and you could lose money.

Smart staff scheduling and monitoring of attendance can cut labor costs and spell the difference between a successful and barely-surviving health club. For many gym managers it can take hours of mind-numbing detail work: tracking down staff with the appropriate expertise to accommodate shift swaps or cover for time-off requests, juggling the schedule to find the most efficient use of staff without compromising coverage, and trying to consider alternative schedules without investing too many more hours into the process. Not to mention monitoring attendance across schedules that encompass far more than a regular 9-to-5 day to prevent punch-in abuses or unnecessary overtime.

And when the schedule is done, you move on to stage two of the schedule process: communicating the schedule to all the employees, fielding endless inquiries about next week’s schedule (or worse, scrambling to fill a missed shift due to confusion over schedules), and when faced with an unexpected time off or shift swap request-doing the entire thing over again, and communicating the changes to all the employees. It’s no wonder that for many gym managers, scheduling and employee monitoring is requires Ibuprofen.

TimeForge allows health club managers to cut employee scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to just minutes.

The ability to manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule those with stronger (or specific) skills in the high volume time slots, keep an eye on attendance, and monitor and forecast your labor costs makes Timeforge not just a time-saver but a money-saver. In fact, TimeForge can increase gym profits by 3-5%.

Add in the ability to integrate simply with 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 your energies on the urgent managerial duties facing an health club 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.

Related articles or pages

• Aquatic Centers
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• What's New in TimeForge? (Part 1)
• What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)

Managing in a footwear retail environment can require an in-depth knowledge of consumer behavior, an up-to-the minute knowledge of fashion trends, merchandising brilliance, the peace-keeping skills of Ghandi, intelligent purchasing, and a watchdog-like attention to inventory control. And tedious hours in the backroom, building complex employee schedules, juggling multiple employees, their skill sets and availability, labor laws, meal breaks, PTO… and then doing it again when someone asks for unexpected time off or a shift swap.

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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Any aquatics center manager will tell you that lifeguard, cash handling, and lesson staff scheduling is a headache. Multiple shifts, part-time employees (each with their own set of scheduling requests), in-service trainings and staff meetings, varying skill sets or certification requirements, tightly defined lesson schedule , and a higher-than-average number of employees who are minors (requiring careful adherence to labor laws) , not to mention fielding endless inquiries about next week’s schedule (or worse, scrambling to fill a missed shift due to confusion over schedules)–make aquatics centers and pools one of the most complicated industries for shift scheduling and attendance monitoring.

Deft scheduling and attendance monitoring is tedious and time consuming. And essential.

TimeForge allows aquatics center managers to cut employee scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to minutes (literally). It helps prevent inconvenient mistakes-as well as mistakes that can lead to labor-law fines or lawsuits.

And the ability to manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule those with stronger skills in the high volume time slots, keep an eye on attendance, and monitor and forecast your labor costs makes Timeforge not just a time-saver but a money-saver. In fact, TimeForge can increase aquatic center profits by 3-5%.

Add in the ability to integrate simply with 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 get out of the back office and focus your energies on the urgent managerial duties facing an aquatics center 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, Aquatics Managers can …

• Create fast and painless employee schedules-even with multiple locations, employees with varying availability, certification, and skill sets.
• Save managers hours of scheduling time in the backroom they can spend where it counts-out by the pool.
• Inform employees of schedules or schedule changes by text message or email-eliminating employee confusion and missed shifts (very popular with GenY employees!).
• 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 to help reduce labor costs.
• Export payroll to many popular payroll providers with a single click.
• Record important information from one manager’s shift to another.
• Monitor and forecast labor costs.
• Increase profits by 3-5%.
• And much more…

TimeForge is a complete labor management solution for the aquatics and pool industry, 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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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.

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge.com Training Webinar – Learn How To Schedule Properly
• Simple Employee Scheduling – Version 1.8.5 (Part 3)
• Our New Employee Scheduling System!
• Off Topic: Inventory Managment for Restaurants
• New Schedule Demo

• Communication between staff members is the key to a good schedule. Shift swaps, staffing minimums, requests for days off, changes in availability, upcoming business requirements (private parties, birthdays, etc…) will all demand more from the staff than any one person will know.   Coordination is key to ensuring a smooth workday.

• Ensure that staff members have any necessary certifications, and that the certifications are current. An employee working without the right certifications can cost your business thousands in fines by various policing authorities, and in some locales, can land the manager on-duty in jail.

• Copying a schedule from the previous week is a quick way to make a schedule for the upcoming week. But this method of employee schedule creation assumes that the previous schedule was “good“. How would you know?   Use various metrics to identify whether the schedule worked for your business – actual vs. theoretical, how many shifts changed, were employees satisfied, how many no-shows occurred, was the actual payroll within an acceptable margin of the actual sales (or customer throughput)?

• Cross training is an excellent management technique to ensure that when the unexpected happens, your business is prepared.   Employees who have been cross trained are able to perform more than one job duty.   When staff members fail to show up to work, or an emergency happens at the business, the workforce is prepared to handle the situation.

• Early clockins and late clockouts can drain the profits from your business. Every employee that clocks in early, or clocks out late is using up precious profits that could be going to fund expansion, provide raises, and pay bills. Watch out for employees who ride the clock by monitoring the employee schedules, and comparing clock in and clock out times to scheduled work times.

• Managers spend hours messing with and creating the work schedule every week. Keep staff members happy and use TimeForge to make the employee schedules.   Employees stay happy because employee’s know what is going on, and managers are content because they can build an employee schedule in seconds.

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 Attendance Improvements
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• TimeForge Workforce Scheduling is now listed in FindApps.com
• Spend Less Time Scheduling Labor – More Time Managing Your Business
• Schedules are Theoretical Time, Time and Attendance is Paid Time , Manage Both