labor costs

Entries Tagged as 'labor costs'

Twitter: timeforge

RT @carojcooper: Restaurant cost control tip: Don't tie up cash by having it sitting as stock in your storerooms http://bit.ly/bZLd72 about 10 hours ago from HootSuite
RT @stelzner: Early morning mgr lesson - Don't yell at your employee through a bullhorn. Tends to make you look like an ass. #BullhornAbuse about 11 hours ago from HootSuite
Treat employees like they are customers for lower turnover, happier staff, and greater sales! http://ow.ly/157dz about 12 hours ago from HootSuite
RT @revolutionPOS: revolutionPOS is going to be on the NBC 10 news @ 11 pm tonight. Investigative Reporter ... http://bit.ly/b4nMKQ 12:26:40 PM February 04, 2010 from HootSuite

TimeForge Attendance Improvements

Many of TimeForge’s November and December updates included improvements to scheduling, enhanced multi-unit capabilities, additional Point of Sale capabilities, and new training videos.

We have also been hard at work on many improvements to TimeForge Attendance. TimeForge Attendance is a labor management software tool that focuses on employee time cards and managing payroll expenses. Employees can clock in and out using the system, managers can review staff timecards, and then managers can approve the employee time punches for third party payroll processing.

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 most recent improvements to TimeForge Attendance include:

Several new TimeForge Attendance tutorials are online and available for your review! Don’t get lost or confused about how to edit time cards, modifying clock in parameters, or setting up IP addresses for restricting employee time punches. Review the TimeForge Attendance manual (videos are coming soon), and read about all of these profit saving topics.

Quickly identify employee time punches and problematic time cards using the TimeForge Most Different notifications. As you process and approve / export payroll, TimeForge automatically identifies different (or strange) time punches, and ranks each shift based on how different the shift is from the other staff member time punches. Managers and payroll supervisors can use the “Most Different” field to quickly identify potential problems before cutting checks for staff members.

Show the last person to edit or change time card data. All time card changes are recorded and can be viewed in the TimeForge Daily Log by qualified managers. However, you can now easily review which manager (or supervisor) most recently modified any specific time card entry. Reduce fraud and and identify compliance issues immediately.

View the last manager to edit a time entry

Identify hours worked on the Clocked-In Employees page. You now have the choice to manage labor by scheduled or actual labor costs, or by the scheduled or actual labor hours while you are reviewing who is clocked in, or which staff members were previously clocked in during the business day.

Review Worked Hours and Total Costs

Manage attendance and timecards by departments. When you have a large number of staff members, managing your labor can be complicated. You can now browse and edit staff time sheets based on the department that you are interested in reviewing.

Edit Attendance by Department

Look for more information about recent improvements to TimeForge Attendance very soon. We continue to improve the software so that you can manage your workforce effectively, and go home early!

You should be using a time and attendance system to make your life easy! TimeForge can quickly and easily manage time cards, employee attendance, and export payroll for processing. Sign up for a trial today to use TimeForge Attendance to track employee time.

Clock In and Clock Out Alerts

Are you tired of sitting in front of the time clock to see when your staff members show up to clock in, or clock out for their shift? Monitoring time clocks is a time consuming way to manage employees and while it can often be an effective way to reduce payroll expenses, it also increases frustration and costs among managers and supervisors.

TimeForge already supports a number of ways to manage staff members without sitting in front of the time clock including:

Online employee work scheduling accessible over the Internet,
Web-based attendance that can be viewed remotely,
Enforcing the schedule with a grace period for clocking in or out,
Identifying “most different” time punches, and
Allowing other staff members to act as a witness when employees show up before they are scheduled to work

We now go one step further! Fully manage your business remotely!

TimeForge can notify managers or supervisors when employees show up early or late, and when clocking in or clocking out. There are four new “Alerts” inside of each supervisor and manager account, controlling when alerts are sent to management personnel.

Alerts for early clock in and late clock out

For example, you can receive email and TimeForge notifications when staff members show up more than 10 minutes early for their scheduled shift.

To configure these Alerts, log into TimeForge, go to your Settings page, and configure the applicable Alerts.

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

New Schedule Demo

Haven’t quite gotten started with TimeForge yet? Want to see some of what TimeForge can do for your business? Ready to see how fast TimeForge can build a schedule for you?

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

Get the Flash Player to see this movie.

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

Enforce Scheduled Positions and Clock In Times

TimeForge can directly control labor costs – and improve the bottom line – at your restaurant, retail store, hotel, or other business by stopping employees from riding the clock. TimeForge can disable early clock in’s by staff members, and can also stop late clock out’s.

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:

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

Bike Retailers

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…

Best of all, TimeForge is easy-to-use – you’ll save hours immediately, without weeks of training and complicated set-up processes. If you are still not convinced, read what some TimeForge users say here. Or sign up for a free 10-day trial today to discover for yourself much time and money you can save every week.

Footwear Retailers

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.

Childrens Retail

This is one of the most difficult retail environments in recent memory for children’s product retailers. Still, history has shown that retailers who survive—and thrive—through recessions are those who take the downturn as an opportunity to make changes; to streamline and refine operations.
Because seemingly small changes have big impact.

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

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

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

And in challenging economic times, the ability to manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule those with stronger skills in the high volume time slots, and monitor and forecast your labor costs makes Timeforge not just a time-saver but a budget-booster. In fact, TimeForge can increase retail profits by 3-5%.

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

With TimeForge, Children’s Product Retail Managers Can …

Create fast and painless employee schedules.
Inform employees of schedules, schedule change, meetings or training by text message or email—eliminating employee confusion and missed shifts.
Review daily sales information, important things that happened during the day, approve shift swaps, review employee requests for time off, and monitor employees on the clock either on site or remotely, through the TimeForge website, via a Smartphone (such as a Blackberry or iPhone), and even through a Facebook account.
Stop employees from clocking in before the shift starts or after the shift ends or punching in friends.
Export payroll to many popular payroll providers with a single click.
Monitor and forecast labor costs.
Increase profits by 3-5%.
And much more…

TimeForge is a complete labor management solution for childrens retailers, 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.

Car Washes

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…

TimeForge is a complete labor management solution for car washes, 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.

Efficient Labor Management with the New TimeForge Today Page!

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!

Restaurants

Managing employees and labor costs in the restaurant industry is a process that quickly becomes a nightmare for both managers and employees. Staff expectations and requirements will collide with business requirements leading to higher employee turnover, lower employee retention, and a reduction in “the bottom line”. Not anymore…

TimeForge is a best-of-breed employee scheduling and online labor management system designed for the restaurant, hospitality, and food-service industries. Managers using TimeForge stay on the floor, not stuck in a back office working on the employee schedule. TimeForge produces schedules quickly, monitors and manages time and attendance, and communicates schedule changes directly with staff members – reducing turnover and improving retention. Your business will profit with TimeForge!

Some of TimeForge’s Benefits Include…

Build employee schedules in seconds using the TimeForge AutoScheduler,
Enforce the employee schedule and stop employees from riding the clock,
Record employee time off requests , staff member availability, and other key information,
Provide rapid communications between managers and staff members,
Monitor daily labor costs at one or more stores,
Export payroll and review payroll reports,
And much more…

Increase Store Profits – Enforcing labor schedules (stopping early clock in’s and late clock out’s) immediately controls labor costs, often improving store profitability by more than 3% – 5%. Staff members will know what is expected of them, and are constantly “in the know” about the upcoming schedules. Happy employees stay employed and don’t leave for greener pastures, reducing turnover, onboarding, and training costs.

Fast Employee Scheduling – Build schedules that balance employee needs and business requirements while keeping labor costs within budget. The proprietary TimeForge AutoScheduler forecasts labor needs, and warns of labor shortages, while providing an easy-to-use scheduling system that builds accurate employee schedules in seconds.

Schedule Enforcement – Enforce the labor schedule and stop employees from riding the clock. Staff member clock in’s and clock out’s can require manager approval before clocking in early, or clocking out late. Schedules can be built around sales forecasts or expected hourly (or daily) covers to further control labor expectations.

Staff Scheduling Reminders, Remote Access – The TimeForge employee portal provides remote access for staff members to view employee work schedules, review time cards, make time off requests, change availability, swap shifts with other employees, and receive daily schedule alerts via text messages or email.

Remotely Monitor Time and Attendance – Remotely check on staff members that are clocked in at the store. Monitor daily, weekly, and monthly labor costs and attendance trends through the TimeForge website, mobile smartphones, and Facebook.

Integrate with Your Point of Sale – TimeForge can integrate with your Point of Sale system, synchronizing attendance entries between TimeForge and your POS system in a seamless fashion, recording tips and mileage in both systems, and enforcing the labor schedule without any additional software. TimeForge integrates with several Point of Sale systems, including Dinerware. Contact us, or your Dinerware dealer, for more information.

TimeForge is a complete labor management solution for the restaurant and hospitality 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.

What some of our clients have to say ...

We are one year into it now, well past being enamored with the newness. We are married to TimeForge. It's as essential to us now as any of our management tools today, and we very happy about that.- Steve @ Hermosa Cyclery

We really like the program so far. I know that it is geared towards restaurants, but we are a real estate company and we love it because it is inexpensive and it is so easy to use.- Nicole @ Exit Premier Realty

The Timeforge scheduling system has not only increased our efficiency tremendously; decreased the errors in what is normally an error prone environment; it has also saved us ten times what it costs us each month.- Michael @ Tiara Cafe

I would highly recommend TimeForge to anyone making work schedules. ... What used to take 1-2 hours, now takes 15 minutes. The reports section is comprehensive and useful.- Lawrence Payne @ Mid Pacific Country Club

I've been really pleased with this latest version of TimeForge. I'm really getting familiar with this program and its become a great time saver! Keep up the good work!- Loren @ Fresh Produce

Before using TimeForge, creating a schedule took 2 hours. With TimeForge, it takes less than 10 minutes.- Gail @ Kerr Drug

Quick Contact

3417 73rd Street
Suite G
Lubbock, TX 79423

Phone: 1 866 684 7191
Fax: 1 866 684 7191
E-Mail: info@timeforge.com

About TimeForge

TimeForge builds the best labor management tools available for the food-service, retail, restaurant, and hospitality industries. This includes employee scheduling, attendance management, and other labor management tools.

Labor Management. NOW Simple.

Entries Tagged as 'labor costs'

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Twitter: timeforge

TimeForge Attendance Improvements

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Clock In and Clock Out Alerts

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New Schedule Demo

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Bike Retailers

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Childrens Retail

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Car Washes

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Efficient Labor Management with the New TimeForge Today Page!

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Restaurants

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What some of our clients have to say ...

Quick Contact

About TimeForge