• Talent management
• Tracking staff training and continuing education credits
• Skills tracking and ranking
• Onboarding and hiring processes
• Background verification and skill assessments
• Certifications and qualification tracking
• Raise requests and workflow
• And much more …

In many of these HR areas, we recommend that our users utilize a best of breed solution to ensure the best results for our customers.  For example, Corvirtus is simply the best company around to perform skills assessments in the hospitality and restaurant industries, and we recommend our customers look at Corvirtus for any unmet assessment needs.

However, a few of the these HR areas are easily managed inside of TimeForge’s best-of-breed labor management solution.  Historical raise requests, qualifications, skill tracking and ranking, and others are already available in TimeForge, and more will become available in the near future.

Let’s review employee certifications …

Did you know that TimeForge can track certifications for staff members?  Using TimeForge, you can track any number of certifications (staffing qualifications), testing dates, renewal dates, and test scores.  Each certificate can also include a note about the staff member’s qualification.

Specifics of a Certification / Staff Qualification

TimeForge allows savvy managers to set up certifications which are required before the staff member can be scheduled.  TimeForge can then stop you and your management team from scheduling employees who are not qualified for the job position.

For example, in the state of Texas, a server (waiter) that serves alcohol needs to have taken an alcohol awareness and training course.  Serving alcohol, of any kind, without this certification can land the employee and the responsible manager in jail for the evening.  With a single click inside of TimeForge, managers can ensure that staff are only scheduled if they are qualified to be scheduled.

Add a Certificate, Restrict who can be Scheduled

As an added bonus, TimeForge will notify managers and employees 6 weeks before the certificate expires, so that managers and staff members both know that it’s time to renew the qualification.  The certification reminder also appears inside of the Daily Log.

Use certifications to make your life easy!

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One way that TimeForge provides simple labor scheduling is by providing you, the user, with the ability to schedule staff any way you want to.  That’s right – schedule your labor based on the requirements of your business!

TimeForge supports building schedules in many different ways, and provides flexible, powerful, and easy to use tools to make sure you can get done building the schedule, communicate with your staff members, and go home early!  For example, you can build schedules:

• One shift at a time, using day parts (Work Periods) or specific time periods
• Bulk copying of shifts from one day to another
• Copying work shifts from one employee to another
• Using daily templates with predefined shifts
• Utilizing weekly templates with dozens or hundreds of shifts
• Bid shifts, which allow staff members to help build the schedule
• Copying a previous schedule to create a new schedule for next week
• Daily, using a gantt chart to oversee your exact staffing needs
• Weekly, using an Excel-like interface to quickly and easily schedule staff

And all of these staff scheduling options can use “fixed employee” scheduling … where you, the manager, choose the employee you want to work.  Alternatively, you can build labor schedules using the automated power of the TimeForge AutoScheduler.

Edit a Shift in the Detail View

In addition, you can build schedules using departments, where you can appoint a supervisor to oversee the schedule, availability changes, and staff communication.

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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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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.

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However, to make your life even more simple, TimeForge does integrate with popular Point of Sale, Property Management, and Accounting systems.  What kind of advantages does this provide?  With an integrated TimeForge system, you have:

• No More Double Entry! Add an employee, job code or position, time card, or sales information into your Point of Sale system, and the data automatically appears inside of TimeForge.

• Inventory and Sales Forecasting! Use TimeForge Sales Types and menu item forecasting to forecast sales, build work schedules, or identify upcoming inventory needs with sales data from your Point of Sale system.  Use inventory and sales forecasting to accurately predict labor and staffing requirements.

• Remotely Run Payroll! TimeForge can pull employee timecards from your POS system, and pull the data into our powerful labor management system.  You can then approve and export payroll to a variety of payroll providers, including QuickBooks, ADP, Paychex, CompuPay, SurePayroll, and many others.

• Manage Multiple Locations with Ease! In many cases, TimeForge’s labor management system can extend your POS system, pulling data from different stores into TimeForge.  Easily manage employees who work at multiple stores, check sales data remotely, and enforce reporting requirements across multiple locations.

Integration with your POS, PMS, or accounting system is easy!  TimeForge currently interfaces with these systems, and we are always adding more:

Aloha Point of Sale

TimeForge enables Aloha POS users to manage labor remotely, forecast sales and labor requirements, and much more!  Download the latest version of the TimeForge-Aloha Bridge software, and review the TimeForge manual for installation information.

Dinerware Point of Sale

TimeForge provides extensive labor management capabilities for Dinerware users, such as employee schedule enforcement, sales forecasting, inventory monitoring, and real time sales and labor tools.  Download the latest version of the TimeForge-Dinerware Bridge software, and review the TimeForge manual for installation information.

Micros Point of Sale

TimeForge provides extensive labor management capabilities for Micros RES users, such as employee schedule enforcement, sales forecasting, inventory monitoring, and real time sales and labor tools.  Download the latest version of the TimeForge-Micros Bridge software, and review the TimeForge manual for installation information.

QuickBooks Small Business Accounting Software

TimeForge provides payroll import capabilities for QuickBooks users. Collect time sheet entries with TimeForge Attendance, and then at the end of the payroll period, you can approve the time and import it directly into QuickBooks as individual employee time sheets. Download the latest version of the TimeForge-Accounting Bridge software, and review the TimeForge manual for installation information.

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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.

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!

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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.

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!

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So, if it’s been a while since you last reviewed TimeForge, make sure to come take a look at everything we’re doing to improve your day!

11 New Reports

TimeForge users now have access to eleven new labor management reports, including reports about shift swapping, attendance vs. schedules for employees, and much more!  Read more here.

Enforce the Schedule

TimeForge can now enforce the start time, end time, employee, and position that is scheduled to work, if you would like to enforce the scheduled labor.  Read more here.

Message Multiple Locations

TimeForge can now send messages across locations, allowing you to target managers, or staff members at different stores / units.  Send messages to individual staff members, everyone at certain locations, or identify specific positions to receive messages.  Read more here.

New TimeForge Partners!

We are proud to introduce two new TimeForge partners, who are bringing TimeForge to their clients and respective markets. Mercer Sales & Service serves customers in New York and Pennsylvania, and High Plains Cash Register serves customers in West Texas. Read more here.

Give Shifts Up

Staff members can give up a shift to any qualified employee, or the employee picking up the shift swap can specified by the staff member giving up the shift. Communication among staff members has never been easier! Read more here.

Daily View Improvements

We are always improving our scheduling system to make scheduling easy for staff members and managers. While building a work schedule in the Daily View, you can now see how many hours and shifts each staff member is scheduled to work (this has always been available in the Schedule Detail View). Instantly know what everyone on the schedule is doing! Read more here.

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

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These new reports include the ability to review employee certifications (such as food safety or alcohol certifications, CPR, uniform sizes, or other types), compare attendance (actual work) to scheduled time, identify staff members who were not scheduled or did not work, review time off requests, and compare shift swaps by employee or position.  Enough information to run your business!

Certification Reports

• Certification Test Date Report: View each employee’s certifications based on when certifications were taken, and easily locate which certifications need to be renewed.
• Certification Expiration Date Report:  View certifications by employee and located expiring certifications, and those that need to be renewed.
• Employee Certification Report:  On a list of all active employees, view the certifications that each employee has in their account.

Attendance vs. Schedule Reports

• Attendance vs. Schedule:  Three new actual vs. schedule reports are available to TimeForge Max customers.  Check actual vs. schedule data by employee, or by date.  Compare individual shifts worked and scheduled, or view the labor data at a higher level by reviewing by position data for your store (or multiple stores).

Worked or Scheduled Reports

• Who Did Not Work:  Identify which employees did not come to work during a time range.
• Who Is Not Scheduled:  Identify which staff members were not scheduled during a time range.
• Not Scheduled, with Attendance:  Locate employees who clocked in, but were not originally scheduled to work.
• Was Scheduled, no Attendance:  Locate staff members who were scheduled to work, but didn’t actually clock in.

Attendance vs. Schedule by Employee Reports

• Attendance vs. Schedule by Employee: Two reports are available to review employee schedules and attendance.  One report is a detail level report, showing each and every shift, with variance between hours scheduled and hours worked.  The other report is a summary by employee, also showing time worked, work scheduled, and the variance.

Shift Swapping Reports

• Shift Swapping by Employee:  Which staff members are swapping shifts the most?  Identify which employees pick up, or give up, the most shifts.
• Shift Swapping by Position:  Which positions are swapping shifts the most?  Identify which positions have the largest ratios of giving and picking up shifts.

Sick, Vacation, and PTO Reports

• Employee Time Sheets, with Requests:  Review time off requests that occur one time, while viewing the individual time sheets for staff members.
• Paid Time Off Report:  A PTO report that displays sick time, vacation time, and other PTO requests.

We are always adding new reports to allow you to quickly and easily manage labor issues.

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

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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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