Labor Management. NOW Simple.

The TimeForge Setup Wizard was designed to simplify the process of inputting information that TimeForge needs to most efficiently help you manage your labor.

The Setup Wizard will walk you through setting up basic information about your company and staff, like basic staff information, a list of your positions, etc… It also captures your location information, which is displayed on reports (printables), so you never need to worry about determining what schedule applies to which location.

Your location information is displayed in a header on reports.

The Setup Wizard will also ask you some basic questions about how your store is organized. This information helps TimeForge more accurately customize our systems for your maximum convenience and ease-of-use. You shouldn’t have to re-organize your business just to use our product; TimeForge customizes itself to your business. Our “fill in the blank” format saves you tons of time (money), and makes setting up your account easy and fast.

Choosing your own starting day of the week is one of the many little ways TimeForge minimizes your discomfort when getting used to our scheduling system.

Entering information about the operations of your business has never been more simple.

Information about your employees makes contacting them simple. Just enter their email addresses, and TimeForge automatically emails them with a prompt to set up their account. Once their accounts are set up, TimeForge can notify each employee (according their preferences) via email, facebook notification, and/or cell phone message. We make an automatic audit confirming that the employee received notification of the schedule. Never again will you hear, “I didn’t know I was scheduled”!

Add employees to the account fast using our easy "fill in the blank" format, or simply upload an existing employee list from Excel! Super fast!

After supplying position and employee information, your basic set up is complete – you’re ready to start building a schedule!

If you’d like to try out our industry leading software, simply sign up for a free trial of our staff scheduling software, or take a more in-depth look at our labor management software.

Related articles or pages

• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• What's Coming Soon?
• Western Food Expo is a wrap!
• Updates to Employee Scheduling and Time and Attendance Software

Social media is absolutely at the forefront of marketing in 2011, and marketing via social media is a necessity. The TimeForge team has compiled a list of tips for understand social media marketing and getting your social media marketing on a role.

Why Do I Care? Social Media Marketing does a few things that are good for your business. Like all marketing, it gets your name out there and drives customers to your business. It’s also a great way to let your customers develop a more personal and/or religious following of your business and its personality. The goal is to make your profiles easily found, and to make your content drive people to your site and business.

Why Do I Want Customers to Know What’s Going On? Consumers want to know exactly where their money is going these days and whether that receiver is worthy. If your business is deemed less worthy/interesting/helpful than another, you’re bunk. You have to work harder than ever before to earn and maintain customer loyalty, and social media provides a cheap (or free) way to do that.

Which Social Media Sites Really Matter? If you only have two sites that you decide to have a presence on, they need to be Facebook and Twitter, but to really see the benefits of social media marketing, you have to expand beyond that. Your business should have a presence on Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, WikiHow, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Yahoo! Answers. The more, the better. These will all help drive traffic to your site, and consequently, your business.

Email Marketing Counts, Right? Well, not really. Statistically, the number of emails sent out versus the number of emails opened continues to decline. Email is the new snail mail, and social messaging is the new mail. By no means should you stop creating your newsletters, but you should definitely expand beyond email to reach your customers. Some marketers are combining the two to create a click-able, cyclical campaign. Essentially, the social media message will contain a link to an email newsletter, which will contain a link to another social media site, which will then link to another, all the while encouraging the customer to “Follow Us on Twitter” or “Like Us on Facebook“.

Will This Really Work? Yes. Social media marketing will absolutely help you drive customers to your website and business. People are spending beaucoups of time on social media sites, as illustrated by the massive sales of internet tablets (especially the inexpensive android tablets being released in the United Kingdom) with preloaded applications for major social sites.

So What Do I Say? Your social marketing can consist of updates about new products, sales, new employees and team members, new policies, positive business reviews, industry-specific news articles, etc. To really maximize your social media potential, try to incorporate terms related to your business that people might search for into your posts. For example, if you are a producer of ninja weapons, you might incorporate “ninja”, “weapons”, “throwing star”, “nunchaku”, and “katana” into your posts, or post a link to an article about the rising popularity of urban ninjas. You can also post links to your main website.

How Often Do I Say It? Totally up to you. Often enough to keep your readers interested, without annoying them into unfollowing you. Somewhere between once weekly and twice daily should suffice, but try to keep the intervals between your posts pretty regulated. You don’t want your readers to be accustomed to getting an update daily, then not hear from you for a month. They may assume that you’ve altogether stopped posting and stop following you.

TimeForge can help increase your business profits by 3-5%.

Give our labor management software a test drive for free! Sign up for your free trial today!

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• June Newsletter
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• Staff Notification Preferences
• Social Media and Labor Scheduling
• Set Up Wizard

The average company saves over $7,000 for each staff-member idea that is enacted, according to a Fun Factz article. That should make you, the business owner, want to build a giant employee suggestion box! It is imperative that you keep your employees happy, and keeping the lines of communication open is a big part of that.

Rypple recently reported on a study from McKinsey, whereby 64% of surveyed employees felt that they didn’t receive frequent recognition from their managers.   For a novice manager, remembering to praise your staff can be a hard thing to do, while worrying about all of the day-to-day needs required to keep moving the business forward.

One way to ensure that communications, and money saving ideas continue to flow from staff to management is to use TimeForge.   TimeForge labor management software helps you stay in touch with all of your staff simply and effectively through easy-to-use messaging and notifications.   TimeForge Notifications keep your employees up to date with the latest schedule and schedule changes through email, text message, and Facebook messaging, so you never have to worry about any confusion related to the schedule again.

TimeForge Messaging allows you to broadcast a message to all of your employees or to specific staff members. You can send information about upcoming sales events, company policy reference guides, encouraging information about recent sales figures, or a welcome “Good job!”

Satisfying employee time off requests with TimeForge is very easy – staff members can log in to their own TimeForge account and enter requests or availability changes, and you can approve or deny the requests at your convenience! While building a schedule, TimeForge will let you know when you are manually scheduling an employee during an approved requested time off.

By keeping your employees happy, you can increase productivity (and subsequently your sales figures), reduce the cost of turnover (check out 7 Ways Turnover Costs You and Your Business), optimize communication between these happy employees (and very happy managers), and therefore improve overall workplace performance all around.

Sign up for a free trial of our labor management software to see how happy your employees can be!

Related articles or pages

• Scheduling Salaried Staff
• Why Schedule Labor Properly? – Part Two
• Turnover Affects You!
• TimeForge Scheduling Features List
• TimeForge for Liquor Stores

Employees can opt in or out of emails, text messages, and Facebook alerts about upcoming schedules, shift swaps, and requests by editing their notification preferences.

Employees can change these options by accessing the “Alerts” tab, which is found on the “My Information” page under the employee’s “Set Up” tab.

Employees can edit their notification options on the "alerts" tab, which is under the "Set Up" tab on employee accounts.

It’s automatic, so management doesn’t need to worry about notifying employees anymore!

TimeForge will automatically notify employees through TimeForge Messaging, which alerts each employee of scheduling changes that may affect them whenever they log into their TimeForge account.

Employees have the option to additionally be notified through email and/or   text message.

Notifications can be sent when a new schedule is posted, when a request is approved or denied, when a shift swap is approved or denied, when another staff member wants to swap a shift, when a bid shift is available, and when a bid shift is or is not assigned to that employee.

Make sure management has provided email addresses for all employees, otherwise TimeForge will be unable to contact employees to set up their accounts.

Employees can also connect their TimeForge account to their social networking accounts, like Facebook!

To do this, employees simply need to click “Access TimeForge on Facebook” under the Set Up tab.

Simply click the Access link to start syncronizing your TimeForge account with your Facebook account.

TimeForge is the optimal solution for any restaurant or retail operation with labor management needs.

Sign up for a free trial of our employee scheduling software today to see what TimeForge can do for your business!

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• Social Media Marketing in 2011
• Set Up Wizard
• Scheduling Options with TimeForge
• Marinas
• June Newsletter

Building an employee schedule can use hours of your time each week. Unfortunately, after investing extensive periods of frustrating work and paid management time, costly errors and dissatisfied employees are often still the result. Thanks to our most highly celebrated product, TimeForge Scheduling, developing an employee schedule becomes one of the fastest and easiest aspects of your labor management routine!

TimeForge Scheduling gives you four options to find the best employee for the shift. You can leave a shift “Open“, up for “Bid“, use the “AutoScheduler™“, or manually select a particular employee for a shift.

1. “Open” Shifts are not visible to non-management staff members and require fulfilment by a manager. Open shifts are place holders for work to be done by an employee and are best used when you haven’t decided which employee to assign yet.

Use Open Shifts as place holders when creating a schedule.

For example, an Open shift can be created on your schedule and assigned to a position (such as a Restaurant Waiter or Bank Teller). The schedule can then be posted and sent out to staff members without filing this Open shift. At any time, when you decide which employee should work the Open shift, you can come back to the schedule and assign the appropriate staff member, automatically triggering TimeForge to notify the newly assigned staff member. Open shifts allow management to plan for capacity and unknown scheduling circumstances.

2. Bid Shifts give you the ability to make the allotted shift visible to all qualified staff members, who can then bid on the shift, like an auction. TimeForge Bid shifts are a way to allow staff members to build their own schedule, saving you the hassle of needing to assign staff members to every shift.

Use Bid Shifts to let employees choose when they want to work.

For example, a Bid shift can be picked up by several qualified staff members, providing you with a list of multiple employees to choose from who want to work the Bid shift. After employees bid on the available shift on the shift-swapping page, management will be notified who has bid on it and can then make a selection from those staff members. Once the manager has chosen an employee to work the shift, TimeForge automatically notifies them according their customized notification preferences – TimeForge can contact your employees through Facebook, email, or text message!

3.   AutoScheduler™ is an automated solution to solve your scheduling problems. The AutoScheduler™ feature lets you sit back, relax and watch the software do the scheduling for you. All you have to do is select the shift time that needs to be filled, and TimeForge will automatically assign the shift to the best staff member for the job.

Autoschedule shifts to have the best employee for the shift automatically assigned.

The AutoScheduler™ will assign shifts based on a number of factors including historical scheduling patterns, fairness, seniority, availability, labor costs, scheduling practices, skill levels, weekly hours, overtime, and a number of other factors that optimize your schedule to be the most effective and budget-friendly schedule possible.

4. Assign the employee yourself if there is a specific employee you prefer to work that shift. When building the schedule, TimeForge will give you a list of all employees who are available to work the shift, so you can just click on their name to schedule them!

Select from the list of available employees if you want someone specific to work a particular shift.

Assign employees yourself, use Open, Bid, or AutoScheduled shifts, or use any combination while scheduling!

TimeForge makes quick work of your labor management needs so you can focus on running the floor and motivating employees!

Sign up for a free trial to see what TimeForge can do for you!

Related articles or pages

• What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)
• Turn the AutoScheduler Off or On
• Simple Employee Scheduling – Version 1.8.5 (Part 3)
• How Do You Manage Labor?
• Generation Y Part One: Marketing

Generation Y has become a challenging market for many businesses in the restaurant, retail and hospitality industries , and most other industries, as well. Generation Y is very different from previous generations, and, to successfully market to them, you must find ways to appeal to their unique needs and wants. TimeForge’s online, digital products are especially easy-to-use for this demographic.

Generation Y consists of those born between 1980 and 2000 and are between the ages of 9 and 29 (BusinessWeek). With over 70 million individuals, they make up 25% of the population , that’s a big piece of the pie your business could be profiting from!

Generation Y is more ethnically diverse, socially-conscious (green/organic marketing is very successful with them — making TimeForge’s paperless, eco-friendly quality appealing to them) and more accepting of alternative lifestyles than past generations. They spend $100 per week on disposable spending (money spent on wants, not needs) which accounts for $150 billion dollars annually! For the older Generation Y individuals (who enjoy the majority of this spending money,) that’s money spent primarily on things like food and drinks — the vast majority of their money is allocated towards entertainment that the restaurant, retail and hospitality industries provide.

In order to successfully market to Generation Y, you must first understand their appreciation and attachment to technology. According to a study by Forrester Research, Gen Y-ers are estimated to spend 20 Billion dollars online per year. The ability to order out, make reservations and check out a new restaurant/retail establishment online are of vital importance to Generation Y. If you business doesn’t offer this kind of online interactive capabilities, you could be losing out on a lot of potential customers. Additionally, is you don’t have an online system for employees in place, you could be losing out on a large number of Generation Y employees, who prefer the ease of features like text message reminders before shifts, online availability editing, shift-swapping, schedule viewing from their PCs or internet-enabled phones, and more. 90% of Generation Y-ers have a personnel computer, 50% of 12-17 year olds have cell phones, and 45% of 18-24 year olds have internet on their mobile devices, and as those numbers increase, their dependability of these devices does as well.

With this technology, Gen Y-ers base their decisions for making purchases on different criteria that the  generations  before them. Social media such as facebook, MySpace and twitter play a huge role in Gen Y-ers’ lives, and how they interact with their friends and family, which is why TimeForge is accessible from mobile phones, facebook and via text message. Not only will having pages on sites like these and integrating with social media and mobile phone capabilities increase your relevance to Generation Y, but Gen Y-ers are notorious for publicizing every aspect of their lives. If you have an easily linked-to facebook page or Web site, it makes it easy for Gen-Yers to tell their friends/followers about your business, and the experience they had. And, as demonstrated by the Forrester study below, clearly Gen Y-ers (as well as other generations!) are responsive to tips from friends.

As the chart above demonstrates, nearly 60% of Gen Y-ers often tell their friends about products and places that interest them, indicating that word-of-mouth or “buzz” advertising is effective with this age group.  Additionally, nearly 50% of Gen Y-ers as well as Gen X-ers agree that price is more important to them than brand names.

As the Forrester study below demonstrates, Generation Y has a dramatically higher percentage of “Creators,” or  trend  starters, meaning that they enjoy being the first to discover new places, trends, and more. Generation Y’s percentage of “Joiners,” or individuals who hop on the trend band-wagon, is more than double that of other generations. This means that Gen Y-ers are not only eager to discover and patronize new establishments, but they’re excited about being involved in a marketing “buzz.” Where earlier generations were skeptical of marketing ploys, Gen Y-ers enthusiastically embrace and assist them.

Generation Y-ers care about the “cool” factor. Companies like Apple and Target (click the links to see ad examples) are extremely successful in marketing to Generation Y (particularly Gen Y’s “Joiners”) because they focus on marketing their brands as young, hip and fun. They use trendy indie or popular music in their advertisements, tout their green (which a paperless labor management system can help start) or philanthropic initiatives and make their brand relatable to people in the  Genera ion  Y age group.

Online Social Ladder

So, what does all this mean for your business? It means that in order to successfully market to Generation Y, and to create and maintain customers within Generation Y, your business must institute:

1: Social media pages in order to connect with and inform Generation Y. In addition to a facebook page for your business, TimeForge is accessible from facebook, keeping your Gen Yers in-the-know, in their element.

2: Integrate with online technology as much as possible. (Ex: Online ordering and reservations.)

3: Put as much online buzz-worthy marketing out there as possible. If you post it, they will re-post/re-tweet etc.

4: Give your brand a “cool” factor. Your business should seem young, hip and fun. TimeForge manages Gen Yers in a way they can understand and relate to, more than ever before, which will boost staff morale and your employees’ opinions of the business (which this generation is enthusiastic about repeating to others.)

5: Last, but not least: Tout your Green or philanthropic endeavors. If you don’t have any, getting some should be a priority. By simply adding TimeForge to your business’ labor management, our Green product will virtually eliminate the need for paperwork and give your company something Green to add to your list of Gen Y-approved qualities.

To learn more about how TimeForge can help you get Gen Y-ers in the door, click here to learn more or sign up for a free trial today. Also, continue on to Part Two of our examination of Generation Y to learn how to recruit, maintain and satisfy Gen Y employees.

Related articles or pages

• Part Two: Recruiting and Retaining Gen Y Employees
• Easily Manage Labor with Innovative Staffing Reports
• Labor Management Software Update Simplifies Employee Scheduling
• Going Green is Good for Profits
• TimeForge HR: Changing Human Resources in Hospitality and Retail

Marina managers have plenty on their plates: risk and liability assessment; fire- and emergency-response planning; environmental management; health and safety compliance; dealing with regulations and permitting; marketing, promotion, and pricing; financial management; and employee scheduling, attendance monitoring, and training…the list goes on and on, but the hours in a day do not.

To be successfully in a difficult economy, marina operators have make the time to plan strategically – without compromising the skillful execution of all of those duties.

It’s not easy.

Take, for example, scheduling and attendance monitoring for marina, harbor, and port employees. You have to juggle multiple shifts, part-time employees (each with their own unique scheduling requests), certifications or specific skill sets required on any given shift, PTO accrued, time off and shift swap requests, and labor laws.

All of this tedious minutia needs to coalesce into one efficient employee shift schedule that ensures you have the coverage you need – particularly in your marina’s peak times – without unnecessary labor costs.

But once completed, your work is not done. You have to communicate that schedule to all the employees, field endless inquiries about next week’s schedule (or worse, scramble to fill a missed shift), monitor attendance so that employees don’t punch in early or late or punch in buddies, monitor overtime and labor costs (both in real-time and forecasting), and deal with late or unexpected time off or shift swap requests (re-creating the schedule and communicating the re-worked schedule to all the employees, again).

It’s just one of many headaches a marina operator faces, but it’s an important one. Poor management of employee scheduling and attendance can be costly – not only in terms of hours wasted and employee morale, but in terms of the bottom line.

If you spend hours every week on marina employee scheduling and attendance, you’re not alone. But you are in luck. Timeforge allows marina and boat center operators to cut employee scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to minutes (literally).

The ability to manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule those with stronger skills or necessary certifications 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 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 (reducing late or absent employees), and the ability to focus your energies on the urgent duties facing a marina 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, Marina Operators Can …

• Build employee schedules in seconds – no matter how complicated, or how many locations.
• Record staff member availability, employee time off requests, and other key information – as well as record sales and important occurrences during every shift that you can review onsite or remotely,
• 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…

TimeForge is a complete labor management solution for marinas and boat houses, 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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• Is Employee Scheduling Complicated? Not Anymore!
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• Employee Scheduling Complicated? Not Anymore!
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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)

Labor management is usually the largest single cost for both conveyor and self-service car wash operators. In a recession, efficient carwash employee scheduling and attendance monitoring can spell the difference between survival and success.

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.

Related articles or pages

• Marinas
• Time and Attendance Made Easy
• Enforce Scheduled Positions and Clock In Times
• Childrens Retail
• Simple Employee Scheduling – Version 1.8.5 (Part 3)

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.

Related articles or pages

• Gyms / Health Clubs
• 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)