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

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

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

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.

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Support for Salaried Employees from within Dinerware

Do you want to be able to track salaried staff members from within Dinerware Point of Sale?  TimeForge now supports employees who are salaried / full-time from within Dinerware – so you can track full-time employees, as well as hourly / part-time staff.

To enable support for salaried staff members, first make sure you are running the latest TimeForge-Dinerware Bridge software.  Then, while inside of Dinerware, open the employee, and edit their positions / job codes.  Set the hourly payrate and the overtime payrate to be $0 / hour, and then save the information.  Run “Synchronize Now” in the TimeForge Translator, as well as the TimeForge Connector (or, just wait for the two systems to automatically synchronize themselves).

Now, you can log in to TimeForge, and go to the employee list.  Find the staff member you modified, and edit their account.  Scroll down to the list of employee positions, and you will see that you can change the payrate / payscale for this employee – it is no longer controlled by Dinerware.  You can now set TimeForge to export a fixed rate, or fixed hourly amount, when the payroll export is run – regardless of any timepunches within the Point of Sale system.

These employees will still need to clock in / out inside of Dinerware, but these time punches will be ignored for the purposes of running payroll reports on TimeForge.

TimeForge reduces turnover and improves retention while freeing up management time and increasing store profitability at your business!  TimeForge employee scheduling and labor management software is used by owners and operators of hospitality, food-service, retail, and other service-oriented businesses around the world.

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Quick Service Restaurants – Employee Scheduling and Labor Management

Quick service restaurants (fast food businesses) can be very challenging to manage. Three influencing factors directly determine the success, or failure, or a QSR restaurant – customers (sales), inventory, and labor. Of these three items, managers on a day-to-day basis have the most control over the labor – controlling costs, turnover, scheduling, and communications with staff members.

Restaurant managers must make sure that enough staff members are on site during busy hours, but managers must also be careful to cut staff when expected need begins to drop.  Scheduling the right number of employees in a quick service restaurant is a constant challenge.

And with a busy restaurant business, managers don’t have time to babysit the time clock to watch employees clock in or out at the right time.  Riding the clock (staff members who clock out late or clock in early), and buddy punching can both have disastrous effects on the bottom line for the business.

Other common labor management problems for a QSR business include:

  • Schedule communications
  • Changing availability
  • Inexperienced / young staff members
  • High turnover
  • Buddy punching
  • And more …

Over scheduling the restaurant will reduce profits with a bigger payroll. Under scheduling staff might cause customers to go elsewhere – reducing income.

Skillful scheduling of staff members for your QSR restaurant isn’t easy – it can be time consuming and tedious. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be.

TimeForge turns labor scheduling and attendance monitoring into a simple management task, giving you back your weekends and increasing the business profits, while keeping staff delighted and reducing turnover.

Read more about TimeForge employee scheduling and labor management for quick service restaurants.

TimeForge will reduce turnover and improve retention while freeing up manager time and increasing store profitability at your quick service restaurant!  TimeForge employee scheduling and labor management software is used by owners and operators of quick service restaurants, and other hospitality, food-service, retail, and other service-oriented businesses around the world.

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TimeForge and RSPA

TimeForge is now a member of the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), and we were at their annual “Retail Now” show this month in Las Vegas.  We spent a lot of time with many of the other members, and were invited to a number of receptions and parties thrown by sponsors of the trade show.  A lot of new and exciting technology was on display for retail, hospitality, convenience store, grocer, and food-service businesses.

Expect some new and exciting announcements from TimeForge in the coming months!

We spent plenty of time with our partners at Dinerware.  If you are in the hospitality or food-service business, and you need a POS package – we encourage you to check out what they are doing, and call your local Dinerware dealer for information about their product, and how they integrate with TimeForge – the best labor management package available.

Also, many thanks to United Bank Card for their amazing party – their announcement of free cash registers for retailers should provide valuable to many small to medium sized retail businesses.  Do you need a cash register for your business?  Check out their new fully-integrated cash register systems (ECR’s) systems, which are now on sale.

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

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Employee Scheduling for Fast Casual Restaurants

Fast casual restaurants can be a very challenging labor management environment.  Restaurant managers must ensure that enough staff are on hand to meet customer needs, but also must take care to not have too many staff on hand.  With a busy restaurant, manager’s don’t have the time to babysit the time clock and must often rely on employees to clock in at the right time.  Clocking in early or clocking out late will cost the business extra money – money that could be allocated for other uses.

In a fast casual concept, many staff members perform more than one job while at work, and may have another job with another business as well.  Cross training and constant communications about the schedule are key to labor scheduling success.

Other labor management problems include:

  • Fluctuating school schedules
  • Continuous availability changes
  • Young / inexperienced staff members
  • Buddy punching
  • And more …

Over scheduling the restaurant could drain away profits. Under scheduling staff might drain away your customers. Skillful scheduling of staff members for your business isn’t easy – it can be tedious and time consuming. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be. TimeForge turns labor scheduling and attendance monitoring into a simple management task, giving you back your weekends and increasing profits.

Read more about TimeForge employee scheduling and labor management for fast casual restaurants.

TimeForge will reduce turnover, improve retention, free up manager time, and increase store profitability at your business!  TimeForge employee scheduling and labor management software is used by owners and operators of fast casual restaurants, and other hospitality, food-service, retail, and other service-oriented businesses around the world.

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When Staff Members Clock In – Employees Can Witness

One of our most recent feature improvement requests came from Greg Fong, owner of the Garden View restaurant in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Greg wanted to be able to enforce the employee schedule when employees clock in, so that he knows when employees are riding the clock or are coming in too early.

However, he also doesn’t want to have his managers running back and forth clocking employees in and overriding the schedule – this can fragment the managers time, defeating one of the main reasons he uses TimeForge – keeping the manager on the floor.

Greg proposed to allow his staff members to serve as “witnesses” for each other, allowing staff members to act as a temporary manager when clocking in early, or clocking out late.  This makes his staff accountable to one another and frees up the manager’s time.

Guess what? This is now available inside of TimeForge!  To turn on the Employee Witness capabilities, log in to your TimeForge account, and access the Attendance Options.  You will see an option to enable Employee Witnessing (by choosing Yes or No).

As always, your feedback on this feature is very important to us – what do you think?  Should staff members be allowed to “witness” for each other, taking over some of the responsibility of the manager?

TimeForge employee scheduling and labor management software is used by managers of restaurants, retail stores, and other hospitality and service-oriented businesses around the world. TimeForge will increase profitability, reduce turnover, and improve retention at your business!

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iPhone, Blackberry, and Smartphone access for Employee Schedules

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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Better Employee Schedules and Easy Labor Management – 6 More Tips

  • 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.

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Easy Labor Management – 5 Tips to Better Employee Schedules

Easy Labor Management – 5 Tips to Build Better Employee Schedules

  • Employees who ride the clock are draining business profits. Monitor timesheets and schedules to effectively stop early clock ins. Better yet, use a labor management system that does both attendance and employee scheduling – and can enforce the schedule – such as TimeForge
  • Fingerprint scanners are delicate pieces of technology. Use them to clock in/out. Don’t use them to enter PINs.  Restaurant and hospitality staff normally must enter a PIN / id into a Point of Sale system every few minutes, and with greasy hands, fingerprint scanners become defective quickly
  • Not sure where your labor dollars are going? Check your fixed / non-variable (manager) salaries and your variable hours (hourly staff). You may be surprised at what you find as many labor dollars are tied up in non-variable staff members.
  • Take time to review the schedule and compare sales and customer throughput to your staffing levels. High ratios can be very costly to your business.  A high ratio of labor to sales or customer throughput implies one of three business problems:
    1. Staff members are spending a lot of time with individual customers, and are not adequately serving customers who may be waiting (who then leave).
    2. The business is over-staffed, with more employees on site than are necessary.
    3. Profit per customer / order is too low, and needs to be raised.

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

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

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

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Table Spacing and Proximity Impact Restaurant Spending

Table spacing is important for determining cash flow, occupancy, and customer satisfaction and is especially important in fast casual and fine dining restaurants.

Ever wonder how restaurant table proximity or spacing impacts customer satisfaction and spending?

Read Stephani Robson and Sheryl Kimes report titled Don’t Sit So Close to Me: Restaurant Table Characteristics and Guest Satisfaction.

The findings of their report suggest that not only should customers be seated at right-sized tables for the restaurant, but that when the distance between tables is less than three feet, both satisfaction and spending are decreased.

The full report is available from Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research web site.

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

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heartWhat 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

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Phone: 1 866 684 7191
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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.

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