Labor Management. NOW Simple. » Labor Management for Restaurants and Retail

Six Management Tips from RSPA

marketing — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:30:37 +0000

We were recently at the RSPA Retail Now trade show, in Orlando, FL. It was a great show, and we got to sit down with some of our solution provider’s to talk about TimeForge, and how TimeForge was affecting all of our customers. Our dealers include POS providers and manufacturers for restaurants, grocery stores, payroll providers, general retail, and many others.

We had a great time, and got to share some of our experience implementing TimeForge for our customers (and also the experiences of our dealers implementing the software). Some of these key insights included:

Communication amongst personnel is essential to a exceptional schedule. Shift swaps, requests for days off, staffing minimums, changes in availability, and upcoming business requirements (private parties, birthdays, etc…) will require more from the personnel than any one manager will estimate. Communication is crucial to certify a peaceful workday.

Confirm that employees have any required certifications, and that the certifications are up-to-date. A staff member working without the correct certifications can mean thousands of dollars worth of fines by numerous policing authorities, and can land the manager that was on-duty in jail in some locales.

Reusing a schedule from the preceding week is a swift way to build a schedule for the forthcoming week. But this procedure of labor schedule creation assumes that the prior schedule was satisfactory. How do you figure? Use a variety of metrics to decide if the schedule was a good fit for your business – actual vs. theoretical, the number of changed shifts, were staff members content, how many no-shows transpired, was the confirmed payroll within an sufficient range of the actual sales (or customer throughput)?

Cross training is an wonderful management method to certify that when the unpredictable occurs, your business is ready. Workers who have been cross trained are capable of carrying out multiple tasks. When employees neglect to show up to work, or an emergency arises at the establishment, the personnel are equipped to take care of the situation.

Early clockins and late clockouts can greatly diminish the profits from your business. Every staff member that clocks in early, or clocks out late is using up valuable profits that could be used for fund expansion, bestowing raises, and paying bills. Keep an eye out for workers who ride the clock by supervising the employee schedules, and contrasting clock in and out times to scheduled work times.

Management spends hours toying with and putting together the labor schedule every week. Keep personnel satisfied and use TimeForge to build the labor schedules. Staff members stay content because they know what the plan is, and managers are satisfied because they can put together an employee schedule in mere seconds.

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

Give our labor management software a test drive for free! Sign up for your free trial today!

National Restaurant Association Show, 2010

apresley — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:20:09 +0000

On May 22-25, TimeForge will be exhibiting at the 2010 National Restaurant Association restaurant, Hotel and Motel Show at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, where we will be showing our latest generation of labor management software for retail, restaurants and hospitality businesses.

The latest version of our TimeForge labor management product encompasses the entirety of labor management, including staff scheduling, attendance tracking, payroll exports, and many aspects of human resources. If you’re going to be at the show, please stop by and pay us a visit to find out how easy it is to save your business time and money!

TimeForge will be occupying booth 5256 at the 2010 National Restaurant Association show, in between FishBowl, Inc. and Eco-Oil Saver.

NRA 2010 is the largest food service and hospitality event in the Western hemisphere. Last year, more that 2,000 exhibitors from 108 countries participated in this global marketplace for the restaurant and hospitality industry.

Highlights of the event include 60+ education sessions, culinary and designer exhibitions and many opportunities for networking. Restaurant owners, operators, chefs, managers, buyers, servers, bartenders, architects, designers, decorators, caterers, and special event professionals will be there exchanging information and ideas.

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

TimeForge Attendance Improvements

apresley — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:44:51 +0000

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.

Quickbooks and TimeForge

apresley — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:30:31 +0000

You asked, and we now have it! TimeForge now integrates with Quickbooks, Quickbooks Pro, and Quickbooks Enterprise to provide a complete labor management solution for your business , whether you are operating an independent business, a franchisee or franchisor, or are part of a corporate chain.

Now, using TimeForge you can:

Create fast employee schedules with TimeForge.
Communicate upcoming work schedules and schedule changes to staff members with TimeForge.
Capture time punches (employee clock in and clock out) with TimeForge (or use one of our integrated partners , like Dinerware).
Review and approve time cards for payroll with TimeForge.
Export the approved payroll to one of our supported 3rd party vendors with TimeForge.

TimeForge supports a number of 3rd party payroll vendors, including ADP, Paychex, CompuPay, SurePayroll, Heartland Payroll, and others. Now, with the TimeForge Bridge to Quickbooks we also support Quickbooks, Quickbooks Pro, and Quickbooks Enterprise.

For more information on using the TimeForge Quickbooks Bridge, please contact TimeForge support.

The TimeForge Bridge to Quickbooks will be appearing in the Intuit Partner Software directory soon.

(Please note, exporting payroll requires the use of TimeForge Attendance. We do not support the export of employee schedules for the purposes of running payroll).

Marinas

apresley — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:44:01 +0000

Marina managers have plenty on their plates: risk and liability assessment; fire- and emergency-response planning; environmental management; health and safety compliance; dealing with regulations and permitting; marketing, promotion, and pricing; financial management; and employee scheduling, attendance monitoring, and training…the list goes on and on, but the hours in a day do not.

To be successfully in a difficult economy, marina operators have make the time to plan strategically – without compromising the skillful execution of all of those duties.

It’s not easy.

Take, for example, scheduling and attendance monitoring for marina, harbor, and port employees. You have to juggle multiple shifts, part-time employees (each with their own unique scheduling requests), certifications or specific skill sets required on any given shift, PTO accrued, time off and shift swap requests, and labor laws.

All of this tedious minutia needs to coalesce into one efficient employee shift schedule that ensures you have the coverage you need – particularly in your marina’s peak times – without unnecessary labor costs.

But once completed, your work is not done. You have to communicate that schedule to all the employees, field endless inquiries about next week’s schedule (or worse, scramble to fill a missed shift), monitor attendance so that employees don’t punch in early or late or punch in buddies, monitor overtime and labor costs (both in real-time and forecasting), and deal with late or unexpected time off or shift swap requests (re-creating the schedule and communicating the re-worked schedule to all the employees, again).

It’s just one of many headaches a marina operator faces, but it’s an important one. Poor management of employee scheduling and attendance can be costly – not only in terms of hours wasted and employee morale, but in terms of the bottom line.

If you spend hours every week on marina employee scheduling and attendance, you’re not alone. But you are in luck. Timeforge allows marina and boat center operators to cut employee scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to minutes (literally).

The ability to manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule those with stronger skills or necessary certifications 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 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 (reducing late or absent employees), and the ability to focus your energies on the urgent duties facing a marina 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, Marina Operators Can …

Build employee schedules in seconds – no matter how complicated, or how many locations.
Record staff member availability, employee time off requests, and other key information – as well as record sales and important occurrences during every shift that you can review onsite or remotely,
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 marinas and boat houses, 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.

Footwear Retailers

apresley — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:50:19 +0000

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.

Auto Supply Stores

apresley — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:53:07 +0000

Industry analysts say sales at auto supply retailers have been bolstered during the downturn by customers purchasing replacement parts as they maintain older vehicles rather than investing in new models, a cost-saving trend that is likely to continue as the economy recovers. That’s good news for the auto supply industry.

But that doesn’t mean that auto supply store managers can get sloppy about employee scheduling and attendance monitoring. In fact, dealing with an uptick in business in a downturn makes auto parts supply employee scheduling and attendance monitoring even trickier-you need to schedule enough employees to handle your customers, without over-staffing or watching your profits leach into unnecessary overtime. Without careful management, relatively small successes can lead to large failures.

Even in more normal times, auto parts and supply employee scheduling and attendance monitoring can be a headache. The manager building the schedule has to consider employee abilities/skills, anticipated sales volume, employee availability, individual work requests, accrued PTO, labor laws for employees who are minors, overtime, and overall labor costs.

Make a mistake with any of these details, and the store can lose sales, employees, or be fined. Managers have to communicate the schedule (and every shift swap or schedule update) to all the employees. They have to keep an eye on late or missed shifts, early clock ins and late clock outs, or buddy time punching.

It’s tedious, it’s time-consuming, and it’s crucial.

These are dizzying times for auto parts and supply store managers. The industry-and key players-seem to be changing on a minute by minute basis. Efficient auto parts employee scheduling and attendance monitoring is essential, but there are plenty of other urgent issues vying for a manager’s attention.

That’s where a powerful employee scheduling and attendance software system like Time Forge comes in.

With TimeForge you can…

Create a schedule in 30 seconds rather than hours.
Manage schedules at one or many locations.
Schedule 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 – eliminating confusion and missed shifts
Monitor attendance from a remote location using the web, a cell phone, or even Facebook.
Stop early clock ins and late clock outs or buddy punching to provide immediate labor cost controls.
Accurately forecast future scheduling needs and labor costs.
Save hours every day that can be used to solve pressing problems not untangling scheduling snafus.
Increase profits by 3-5%.
And much more…

TimeForge is a complete labor management solution for the auto parts 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.

Better Employee Schedules and Easy Labor Management – 6 More Tips

apresley — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:30:16 +0000

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.

New Payroll Period

apresley — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:36:21 +0000

Running payroll reports can be a tedious process, and running a report over the wrong payroll period can cause payroll errors at your business.

TimeForge allows you to run any report using an arbitrary date period, or you can use predefined payroll periods, such as bi-weekly, weekly, monthly, or even twice per month (on the 1st and 15th).

Using the built-in payroll periods provides three distinct benefits inside of TimeForge.

Simple reports. Pick one selection from a drop-down box, and you no longer need to remember the exact payroll dates for that month.
Payroll Approval Process. TimeForge Payroll Approval provides a simple and easy way to scan all of the attendance data for the period, and identify potential problems, theft, erroneous logins, or other costly mistakes.
Sick / Vacation / PTO Tracking. TimeForge PTO can track vacation time, sick time, or other paid or personal time off. Tracking PTO requires the use of TimeForge payroll periods.

TimeForge is a leading provide of powerful and simple-to-use employee scheduling and online labor management software for the restaurant and retail industries. TimeForge software is used by restaurant owners and operators around the globe to increase profits, reduce turnover, and improve retention.

TimeForge Labor Management, a quick background ….

apresley — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:47:29 +0000

The TimeForge product began life about 6 years ago, with the vision of a simple, easy to use, online employee scheduling product for the restaurant and retail industries.

We quickly realized that every business owner and manager has their own idea of what a “simple” employee scheduling system must do to help their business , labor scheduling requirements greatly vary by industry and location. However, saving time and money is important to all business owners …

Businesses in California, New York, and other areas need to schedule employee breaks (not very important in Texas, New Mexico, and other locales),
Large organizations need to schedule multiple departments and supervisors (smaller groups only have one department),
Labor costs need to be accurate, and account for overtime, multiple locations, positions, and job codes (many businesses fly by the seat of their pants, and don’t see the value in this information),
Employee schedules need to be enforced, making sure employees do not arrive too early or leave too late (locations with full-time employees don’t worry about this requirement),
And on, and on -.

Over the past several years, TimeForge has evolved to solve all of these problems , in an approachable manner for new and existing customers.

Multiple versions of the TimeForge service are now available, including:

TimeForge Scheduling, the simple-to-use employee scheduling software, reduces labor scheduling from hours to seconds, improves employee communication (reducing frustration and turnover), and enables staff to check and receive schedules remotely.

TimeForge Attendance, a full-featured time and attendance program, tracks when employees clock in / out, displays employee timecards, enforces the TimeForge Scheduling work schedule, and exports attendance for payroll calculations.

TimeForge Daily Log, a powerful communications tool, records daily activities in an organized and searchable manner , removing the need for expensive physical log books.

Each TimeForge product can be used separately, or the products can be combined together to create a powerful labor management tool. Managing labor with any of the TimeForge products will result in an immediate Return On Investment, but combining the products together will increase your profits in both good and bad economic climates.

The latest release of TimeForge continues to improve on our simple concepts, and continues to make life easy for managers and employees alike. Read more about our latest release here…

Are complicated employee scheduling practices taking up precious time at your restaurant? Are you making the best possible restaurant schedule? How much turnover is created because of bad (or late) schedules? Did you know that TimeForge can improve retention, reduce turnover, and increase profits at your restaurant? Sign up today for a free trial!

Labor Management. NOW Simple. » Labor Management for Restaurants and Retail

Six Management Tips from RSPA

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