Simple Labor Management – 5 Pointers to Build Superior Employee Schedules

1. Staff members who ride the clock are wasting business profits. Babysit timesheets and schedules to efficiently put an end to early clock ins. Better yet, use a labor management system that will schedule the workforce and monitor attendance- and has the capabilities to implement the schedule- such as TimeForge!
2. Fingerprint scanners can be fragile bits of technology. Clock in or clock out with them. Do not use them to insert PINs into your Point of Sale system. Restaurant and hospitality personnel typically must enter a PIN/id into a POS system every few minutes to ring up orders, open / close a table, and perform other tasks. With greasy hands, fingerprint scanners become damaged almost immediately – make sure your equipment is up to the task.
3. Unsure where your labor dollars are going? Review your fixed/non-variable (manager) paychecks and your variable hours (hourly staff). You may be flabbergasted at what you find; many labor dollars are tied up in non-variable staff members.
4. Take time to analyze the schedule and customer throughput and compare sales to your staffing levels. High ratios can be extremely expensive to your business. A high ratio of labor to sales or customer throughput implies at leas one of three business dilemmas:
   1. Workers are spending a bunch of time with one particular customer, and are not sufficiently serving customers who may be waiting (who then disappear).
   2. The business is over-staffed, with more workers present than are called for.
   3. Income per customer/order is poor, and needs to be brought up.

   Act promptly to determine which issue you’re dealing with, and fix it.

5. Be certain that only one manager per department is in charge of approving requests. Any other way, and there can be bewilderment about time off allotments. If one manager authorizes a time off request for one employee, and second manager authorizes a request for another worker – the possibility of discontented staff, costly turnover, and insufficient staffing is considerably higher than if a single manager is in charge of requests. Exceptional communication is essential to labor management prosperity.

TimeForge is a Best of Breed labor management software, which will streamline your operations to offer the most efficient solution in scheduling, human resource management, attendance tracking, turnover reduction, and communications. Sign up for a free trial today to see what TimeForge can do for you!

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TimeForge Attendance is a powerful time and attendance software system that for employee time cards and managing payroll.   Using TimeForge Attendance, staff members can clock in and out, managers can review employee time cards, and then management can approve time punches for third party payroll processing.

TimeForge Attendance can perform many other time management duties, including:

• Tip tracking and mileage reporting
• Record staff notes about each shift worked
• Stop buddy punching with biometric fingerprint scanners
• Interface attendance and time punches with your favorite Point of Sale system
• Track time off, sick time, and PTO time for quick processing
• Allow staff to check their time cards using the TimeForge employee portal

If you are using a standard time clock, or are having staff write their arrival, departure, and lunch breaks on a piece of paper, switching to TimeForge Attendance will save you hours of headaches each and every week!

Some of the recent improvements to TimeForge Attendance include:

• Automatically switch positions if an employee is already clocked in. Staff members are occasionally responsible for working back-to-back shifts with different departments or positions.   For example, an employee might be scheduled from 10:00am , 2:00pm as a Cashier, but from 2:00pm , 6:00pm as a Delivery Driver.   To ensure that they remember to clock out as a Cashier, and in as a Delivery Driver, at 2:00pm, TimeForge can automatically do this for your staff members.   This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Switch the Clocked-In Position for an Employee

• Clock out staff members at a specific time each day. To ensure that staff members are all clocked out by a certain time, you can set a department-level or location-level clock out time. For example, if your business closes at 11:00pm, and no one should be at work beyond 11:30pm, you can set TimeForge to automatically clock out all staff members at 11:30pm.   This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Clock Out Employees Out At A Specific Time

• Automatically clock employees in based on their posted schedule. Sometimes staff members forget to clock in, even though they are scheduled to work and arrived on time. TimeForge can automatically clock staff members in based on the posted schedule, if they have not yet clocked in.   For example, if an employee is scheduled to work at 8:30am, TimeForge can automatically clock them into the system at 8:30am.   This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Clock In Employees Based on the Schedule

• Receive an email message during the day showing which staff members are clocked in. If you’d like to know which employees are clocked in at your business during an important part of the day , before a dinner rush, just before closing, or after the first morning shift , you can!   Update your alerts and set the time you’d like to receive notification of who is clocked in.

Receive a Daily Email of Clocked-In Staff

• Automatically clock employees out based on their posted schedule. Sometimes staff members forget to clock out at the end of the day.   TimeForge can automatically clock staff members out based on the posted schedule, if they have not yet clocked out.   For example, if an employee is scheduled to leave work at 8:30pm, TimeForge can automatically clock them out of the system at 8:30pm.   This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Clock Out Employees Based on the Schedule

Use a time and attendance system to make your life easy and improve profitability! TimeForge can quickly and easily manage staff timecards, employee attendance, and export payroll for accurate processing.   Sign up for a trial today to use TimeForge Attendance.

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To enforce the employee schedule, you must be using both TimeForge Attendance and TimeForge Scheduling together.   Inside of the TimeForge Attendance Options, you will find two options:

1. Do you want to allow employees to clock in at any time, with any allowed position, regardless of their schedule?
2. Do you want to allow employees to clock out at any time, regardless of their schedule?

The first option controls staff member clock-in’s, and if set to “Yes”, employees can clock in at any time.   The second option control staff member clock-out’s, and if set to “Yes”, employees can clock in at any time.   To stop employee’s from riding the clock, change both of these settings to “No”, and then set an appropriate grace period.

Employees who are clocking in must clock in during their grace period, and if they are too early for their shift, a manager needs to let them in.   The same is true of clocking out!

TimeForge also requires that employees clock-in using the scheduled position, in addition to the time clock enforcement.

You can enforce the labor schedule using the standard time clock within TimeForge, or any other supported timeclock functionality, such as the TimeForge Online Time Clock, Dinerware Point of Sale, TimeClock Mode within TimeForge Attendance, and others.   In fact, you can also use our biometric fingerprint scanner with schedule enforcement!

Use this TimeForge enhancement to control labor costs by removing the ability for employees to ride the clock!

Are you using a labor management product to make your life easier?   TimeForge can quickly and easily build your employee schedule, manage time and attendance, reduce labor costs, and streamline employee management.   Sign up for a trial today!

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• 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.

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A joint press release about our partnership was recently issued, and can be found on the M2SYS website in full.   The interesting tidbits for TimeForge users include:

According to Anthony Presley, Founder of TimeForge, “Our customers already schedule their employees online, but many continue to use traditional time clocks to track when employees punch in and out at their business. The M2SYS biometric product allows our customers to easily track time and attendance data and compare it to existing schedules — providing important and accurate payroll information. By eliminating the need for passwords and employee identification cards, it should significantly reduce buddy punching, which will save our customers up to 5-7% of their annual payroll expenses.”

“Companies in the retail and hospitality industry are quickly recognizing the benefits of using biometrics, including the reduction of buddy punching and an overall improvement in time and attendance data accuracy,” states Michael Trader, President of M2SYS Technology. “We are excited about being chosen by TimeForge, and look forward to a long-standing relationship with them and their customers.”

For more information about pricing, or how to get a Fingerprint scanner, contact the TimeForge sales department.

Can you build a schedule in less than 10 minutes? How many thousands of dollars do you spend making schedules every year? Did you know that TimeForge can minimize costs and increase profits through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, pizzeria, hotel, club, bar, or retail business. Sign up today for a free trial!

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