Labor Management. NOW Simple.

Our staff has been hard at work continuing to improve TimeForge – ensuring that it is simply the best employee scheduling and labor management tool on the web.

This newsletter includes some details about new features in TimeForge, several scheduling and labor tips, and other information.   As always, if you have any suggestions for TimeForge, please let us know!

New TimeForge Partners

TimeForge is proud to be a certified Dinerware partner, providing advanced labor management and employee scheduling for restaurants, country clubs, casinos, wineries, and hotels.   Read more about the TimeForge-Dinerware integration here.

We are also very excited to welcome Factor One Technology as a TimeForge Partner.   Factor One provides Point of Sale systems to retail and restaurant businesses in Canada.

Also, TimeForge now supports exporting attendance and payroll data to the world’s premier online payroll company, SurePayroll.   Exporting payroll has never been easier!

New TimeForge Features

• Enjoy the brand new TimeForge Today page – with improved access to schedules, attendance, shift swaps, and much more!
• Perform “What If” scenarios on your labor schedule, and quickly restore previously saved schedules using Schedule Snapshots.
• Bulk insert or update employee, position, and department-level information by using an import file.
• Access TimeForge on an iPhone, Blackberry, or other RSS capable device to receive up-to-the-minute schedule and labor information.
• And much, much more.

Did you know that you can access TimeForge on Facebook?   Check schedules, see who is clocked in, receive and send messages, review time cards, and much more!

Follow TimeForge on Twitter!

Make sure to check our blog for the latest information about TimeForge.

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!

Related articles or pages

• Off Topic: Inventory Managment for Restaurants
• Labor Management for Childrens Retailers
• Generation Y Part One: Marketing
• Employee Schedule Snapshots
• Aquatic Centers

The 2008 year has come to a roaring close and the staff at TimeForge would like to thank you for helping us provide powerful software that lets you compete in business, and be happy in life.

As many of you have probably discovered, TimeForge received massive updates on Wednesday and Friday.   These updates fix a number of software bugs that were reported, and it also includes more than two dozen brand new features available for TimeForge users.

Some of these new features include:

New Reporting Tools! We’ve have released a new reporting solution to provide you with greater control over sorting order, font sizes, and better reports.   All of the TimeForge reports have been re-written to give us enormous flexibility in the coming months.   Be prepared for new reports, and new ways to look at them (exporting to Excel will be available soon).

Automatic Sales and Inventory Forecasts! In addition to being able to track Manager Projections and Actual Values, TimeForge Sales will automatically predict and forecast sales and inventory values , accounting for factors such as seasonality, current staff levels, and others.

Corporate Level Employees! For our customers that manage multiple locations, you can now view employees at the corporate level , all locations in a single list.   Employee management has never been more simple!

Need to Track Certificates, Uniforms, or Employee Reviews? You can now track all of this using the TimeForge Certifications!   TimeForge Certifications can include tracking of test dates, the score received on the test, and when the test expires.   Certifications can impact the schedule, providing warnings when employees with expired certifications (or missing certifications) are scheduled to work.

Smarter AutoScheduling! The AutoScheduler has been improved to look at previous scheduling assignments, and learn how to better assign staff members.   The AutoScheduler can often build the same schedule that the manager would!   Less typing means that schedules are made faster so you can go home early.

Employee-Centric Schedules and Attendance! Need to find out when Sally or Tom works next?   Don’t want to have to go click on the schedule or search the attendance records?   No problem!   Go to your employee list, find the employee and click on “Edit”, and you will see two new tabs, “Schedules” and “Attendance”.   Find out when Sally or Tom is scheduled, or actually worked, in the upcoming weeks, or any previous time period.   Instantly change the schedule directly from here.   We even show schedules from multiple locations!

Break Improvements , Remove Breaks from Calculations. Some businesses track schedules by looking at the whole time that the employee is at work.   Other organizations prefer to ignore unpaid breaks (such as lunch breaks) in the time and cost calculations.   Both paid and unpaid breaks can now be removed from the schedule calculations by changing a few TimeForge settings.

Payroll Period Tracking , If you use TimeForge Attendance, you can now identify your payroll periods and run reports using these periods, rather than entering your own time ranges.   Payroll periods can be set up for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly payroll.

Of course, there were numerous other minor improvements made to TimeForge, including a streamlined sign up process, easier template management, and much more!

Related articles or pages

• What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)
• Part Two: Recruiting and Retaining Gen Y Employees
• Employee Scheduling Done Right – The Newest Version of TimeForge
• Building a Labor Schedule is Complicated. Use Tools to Keep Managers and Employees Happy.
• TimeForge Updates for December

New and existing TimeForge users received a major upgrade on Thursday night, as the TimeForge system was updated to provide more flexible scheduling, new time and attendance functionality, and brand new Communication Log features! Some of the new features include:

• Availability Requests have been upgraded and are now easier to use. Outstanding employee availability requests are presented as part of the schedule making process and employees are constantly informed of any changes to their availability.

• Never accidentally schedule staff before or after closing the store! Open and closing times can be configured while making the schedule, and warnings are displayed when staff are scheduled before the store is open or after the store is closed.

• Employees are automatically notified by text message when management approves a shift swap.

• Export punch-in and punch-out times to payroll for easy processing. TimeForge has partnered with CompuPay, a leading provider of payroll for small-to-medium retailers and restaurants. Hours can be exported to CompuPay with a single click!

• Easily identify which employees need to work in specific stations or sections, and schedule these positions with a single click. No more typing “Section 1″ or “Pizza” or “Lane 3″ when making schedules!

• In accordance with state and federal laws, each position (or job code) can have multiple pay rates, depending on the time of day. Always make sure that employees are paid appropriately!

• Employees can now search for a shift to pick up, or can pick up any shift that has been given up shift by another employee , if approved by management.

• Support for delivery drivers is now included! Drivers can enter tips and mileage for their shifts directly into the TimeForge Time and Attendance module.

• Support for break and meal periods has been enhanced, and managers can now create specific break and meal periods for each shift when building the labor schedule.

• Decisions about your business that include the weather can now be made directly from TimeForge. TimeForge includes weather forecasts on the “To Do Today” page.

• New reports! New TimeForge reports include summary reports for time and attendance, as well as several new scheduling reports.

• Are employees asking for the ability to print the schedule, or a copy of the request log? A setting inside of TimeForge will allow employees to print their own copy of the schedule, breaks, or requests.

• Does your shift need more information than TimeForge normally provides? You can now enter shift notes directly on to the schedule while building shifts!

• Significant improvements to TimeForge Attendance were made , time and attendance entries can be sorted a number of different ways, and a note can be entered for each attendance entry.

As always, feedback on the new TimeForge functionality is always appreciated!

Related articles or pages

• What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)
• TimeForge Newsletter , November Edition (Part 1)
• Spend Less Time Scheduling Labor – More Time Managing Your Business
• Building a Labor Schedule is Complicated. Use Tools to Keep Managers and Employees Happy.
• Time and Attendance – Improved in TimeForge

Would you like help getting TimeForge up and running at your business? Does TimeForge seem too intimidating? Would you like to know what new features and improvements the TimeForge team is working on?

Sign up for one of the upcoming TimeForge training sessions and discover how simple employee scheduling can be! These free training sessions demonstrate how easily TimeForge can be to used to schedule employees while keeping employees happy and getting managers back on the floor.

The upcoming May training sessions are:

• May 14th, 2008 from 1pm to 2pm Central Standard Time
  • 12pm , 1pm MST
  • 11m , 12pm PST
• May 26th, 2008 from 11am to 12pm Central Standard Time
  • 10am , 11am MST
  • 9am , 10am PST

Check here for April Training Sessions.

These free training sessions will be held over the phone using standard “web training” tools, as well as a traditional conference call. Accessing the “web training” tools is as easy as going to a web site …. anyone with an Internet connection can participate in training!

The sessions emphasize individual customer question-and-answer style help, similar to an in-office training session: 20 minutes will be devoted to demonstrating the software, and the last 40 minutes will be devoted to answering individual / specific questions about the software.

To sign up, please send an email to info@timeforge.com with the date and time that you would like to attend, and please let us know how many users will be attending from your location and/or company.

Also: Coming soon … the TimeForge User Manual and Employee Manual! A comprehensive guide to using TimeForge at your company.

How long does it take to make a labor schedule for your workforce? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that labor costs could be as much as 30% of your expenses? TimeForge can help streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your hotel, restaurant, bank, car wash, or other retail business.

Related articles or pages

• Free TimeForge Training!
• Our Happy Customers….
• Minor Rules and Senior Rules
• Break and Meal Period Tracking
• Another Happy TimeForge Customer

Would you like help getting TimeForge up and running at your business? Does TimeForge seem too intimidating? Would you like to know what new features and improvements the TimeForge team is working on?

Sign up for one of the upcoming TimeForge training sessions and discover how simple employee scheduling can be! These free training sessions demonstrate how easily TimeForge can be to used to schedule employees while keeping employees happy and getting managers back on the floor.

The next two upcoming training sessions are:

• April 24th, 2008 from 1pm to 2pm Central Standard Time
  • 12pm , 1pm MST
  • 11m , 12pm PST
• April 30th, 2008 from 11am to 12pm Central Standard Time
  • 10am , 11am MST
  • 9am , 10am PST

These free training sessions will be held over the phone using standard “web training” tools, as well as a traditional conference call. Accessing the “web training” tools is as easy as going to a web site …. anyone with an Internet connection can participate in training!

The sessions emphasize individual customer question-and-answer style help, similar to an in-office training session: 20 minutes will be devoted to demonstrating the software, and the last 40 minutes will be devoted to answering individual / specific questions about the software.

To sign up, please send an email to info@timeforge.com with the date and time that you would like to attend, and please let us know how many users will be attending from your location and/or company.

Also: Coming soon … the TimeForge User Manual and Employee Manual! A comprehensive guide to using TimeForge at your company.

How long does it take to make a labor schedule for your workforce? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that labor costs could be as much as 30% of your expenses? TimeForge can help streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your hotel, restaurant, bank, car wash, or other retail business.

Related articles or pages

• Schedule Training …. Labor Cost Training …. And …. Free TimeForge Training!
• Our Happy Customers….
• Minor Rules and Senior Rules
• Break and Meal Period Tracking
• Another Happy TimeForge Customer

It’s been one day since the release of TimeForge Version 1.9, which introduced a number of new features such as easy-to-use calendar availability, improved multi-location (multiple unit) scheduling, and many other improvements. And we’re excited to announce that more than 800 businesses have signed up for the most simple and powerful labor scheduling tool on the market: www.TimeForge.com

Although we are obviously excited by the number of TimeForge users, we are more excited about the time savings and cost savings that have been provided to our users. For example:

• On average, managers spend more than 2.64 hours making the schedule, every week with a spreadsheet program such as Excel, by hand, or with an inefficient scheduling system (like most Point of Sale systems).

• On average, managers spend 15 minutes making the schedule, every week using TimeForge.

• On average, managers in retail and hospitality businesses receive an annual salary and benefits package equivalent to more than $62,500. That’s more than $31 per hour.

• TimeForge is directly saving our users more than $59,272 every month! That’s more than $710,000 a year.

Of course, there are dozens of other benefits like reporting, employee notification, reduced employee turnover, less time fragmentation (employees calling your business), etc… which are more difficult to calculate in a direct dollar-to-dollar return on investment (ROI).

Related articles or pages

• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Updates to Employee Scheduling and Time and Attendance Software
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• TimeForge Newsletter , November Edition (Part 1)
• Reduce Turnover with Shift Scheduling Software

Yesterday, some of our users were sent a email describing how well TimeForge.com can assist with labor scheduling at multi-unit or multiple store concepts.

For instance, TimeForge users can manage an unlimited number of locations from their account, and each store can have different employees. Employees can work at more than one store and TimeForge automatically detects when employees are scheduled at other locations so that no staff members are double-scheduled. TimeForge has other multi-store labor scheduling capabilities as well , and we are always adding new features to the software.

However, the email program that sends out short reminders and email tips malfunctioned, sending many of our users multiple copies of the same email. We are truly sorry for “spamming” your mailbox, and can assure you that we have taken the necessary precautions to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

Thank you for your understanding. If you have any further questions, please send an email to our support group.

It should take less than 5 minutes to make the labor schedule for your business! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor expenses through effective employee labor management at your retail business, bar, club, or restaurant?

Related articles or pages

• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• What's New in TimeForge? (Part 1)
• What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)
• TimeForge Workforce Scheduling is now listed in FindApps.com
• Labor Scheduling is Easy for Employees Too

As our users know, we continually add new features to our software to make scheduling simple , and we thrive on feedback from our users! Our software updates are released every few weeks (other vendors can take years to release new products), and there is no cost to upgrade to the latest version of TimeForge.

We intended to release our newest version of TimeForge, version 1.9, over the weekend complete with a brand new calendar-style view of requests, much faster editing of schedules, international capabilities, user-interface improvements, and much more.

However, the testing of the new features is taking slightly longer than anticipated, so we have pushed back the release date until later this week. Check back here for updates, and information on what’s coming in version 2.0!

How long does it take to make an employee schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that labor costs could be as much as 30% of your expenses? TimeForge can help streamline and minimize labor costs through effective labor scheduling at your restaurant, bar, or club.

Related articles or pages

• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• What's New in TimeForge? (Part 1)
• What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)
• TimeForge.com Training Webinar – Learn How To Schedule Properly
• TimeForge Update , Version 1.7.2 Available Now!

Our team is proud to announce the latest version of simple employee scheduling … TimeForge version 1.8.6! This version includes a number of minor bug-fixes, as well as some major new features , all designed to save you time!

Some of the new features include:

• Split Shifts. TimeForge’s AutoScheduler will try to not assign employees to split shifts. Employees who close your business will not be scheduled to open the next morning, if at all possible. This makes employees and managers happy!

• Reports. The main report which runs when you click on “Print” from the schedule page now prints only scheduled employees (not all employees). This makes the printout more concise, and easier to read! There’s also a new report, which can be found on the Reports page, and is called “Costs by Position”. This report gives managers a quick, graphical summary of where labor dollars are being spent on the schedule.

• Day Parts and Availability. You asked for it, and you got it! One of the most requested features from TimeForge users is to be able to use the request and availability editors with your own “time of day”. For example, your “Morning” shift may run from 6am , 11am, and your “Afternoon” shift may go from 11am , 4pm, and now you can setup requests and availability using “Morning” or “Afternoon” times.Login to TimeForge, and click on “Schedules”, and then choose “Day Parts”. Enter your shifts (such as open, morning, afternoon, evening, or close), and select a start time, end time, and a description. Day part periods cannot overlap. Once you have entered all of your time periods, you can save the Day Parts.

  Once Day Parts are in TimeForge, you can create and edit requests and availability using them. You, and your employees, will have the option of entering a time range, or you can pick a Day Part instead.

Look out for Version 1.9 and Version 2.0! Employee Scheduling will be faster and easier! Spend time doing what you want to do…

How long does it take to make your employee schedules? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor expenses through effective employee labor management at your business, bar, club, or restaurant.

Related articles or pages

• What's New in TimeForge? (Part 1)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• Supercharged Scheduling from Nations Restaurant News
• Simple Employee Scheduling – Version 1.8.5 (Part 2)

Our team is proud to announce the latest version of simple employee scheduling … TimeForge version 1.8.6! This version includes a number of minor bug-fixes, as well as some major new features , all designed to save you time!

Some of the new features include:

• Employee Messaging. Managers and supervisors can send messages to employees using TimeForge! To send a message, click on the “Schedules” tab, and then click on “Messages”. You can choose to send messages to everyone who works a certain position (e.g. all Cooks), select employees (e.g., Sarah and Joe), everyone who is scheduled to work (e.g. Everyone on next weeks schedule), or everyone who is not scheduled to work. Messages are sent via email to each employee, and employees can retrieve the messages at any time by logging into TimeForge.com You can also send schedules directly from the positions, employees, and schedules pages!

• Security. If you were not already aware, TimeForge is now secure. When you connect to TimeForge, you will notice that your location bar / url turns to “https”, which means that your connection is secure! TimeForge is using 128-bit SSL technology, the same kind your bank uses!

• Templates. Templates received a major upgrade on Monday night and can now be used on an existing schedule. You will see a link to “Use” and “Make” templates on the schedule page (if you have templates). Also, positions are grouped together when editing a template to make editing more simple.

Version 1.9 and 2.0 are coming soon!

How long does it take to make your employee schedules? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor expenses through effective employee labor management at your business, bar, club, or restaurant.

Related articles or pages

• What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• Supercharged Scheduling from Nations Restaurant News
• Simple Employee Scheduling – Version 1.8.5 (Part 1)