Dinerware has a really cool startup story. Carl English is a Harvard graduate who used to be the Microsoft Program Manager… this guy really knows his software! He started running his own restaurant, and learned first-hand what many restaurateurs experience every time they use a touchscreen system. He saw how much time it took to complete simple tasks.

Carl used his software expertise to create Dinerware, a point of sale system built around the restaurateur’s needs. The product is highly flexible, and enables the user to accomplish tasks easily and communicate with the entire staff.   Dinerware tracks all sales, provides report breakdowns by tender type, and calculates the server banks. Server reconciliation is fast so servers and cashiers can print daily reports and settle with the house in minutes.   This saves restaurants time, money

Dinerware is an amazing POS system, and TimeForge is proud to partner with such an innovative company to provide you with superior total management of labor and sales. TimeForge and Dinerware compliment one another, and integration of the two is fast and easy!

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Option One: No software

This is a great option if …

• You like to make charts with pencil and paper
• You don’t have a POS (point of sale) software system
• You like to spend a lot of time with a calculator
• Optimizing your workforce and profit is of absolutely no importance to you, and making a profit at your business isn’t a priority
• You don’t mind if employees are late, and no-shows are sometimes acceptable
• You like to talk to employees on the phone to give them their schedule. If they forget and call back a few times it’s fine, because you don’t mind repeating yourself and you have plenty of time to spare.

Option Two: Offline software.

Offline software is a great option if …

• You enjoy making spreadsheets. It’s a hobby of yours.
• You like to buy software frequently, and like paying annual support fees for the latest version (your version will quickly be outdated, and since it’s offline, you’ll need to purchase the latest version when it comes out … and probably re-enter all of your information)
• You don’t have a POS (point of sale) software system, or integrating with your POS isn’t important to you
• Optimizing your workforce and profit is of little importance to you

Option Three: Online software.

Online software is a great option if …

• You don’t want to spend hours scheduling
• You don’t want to worry about buying software when yours is out of date (although some companies will charge you to get updates)
• You demand the highest profit possible
• You want the happiest employees possible

Option Four: TimeForge.

TimeForge is the best option for you because …

• The AutoScheduler^TM automatically creates the most profit-optimized and employee-friendly schedule instantly , no more spreadsheets!
• You will never, ever be charged to update to the latest version of our software. Updates are free and automatic for all of our customers.
• We can integrate our software with your existing POS software for the most profit-efficient solution.
• Employees can use our staff portal, and don’t need to call you about their schedule, or time off – ever!
• TimeForge’s built-in analytics will show you labor costs, ratios, blown budgets, and a slew of graphs and statistics.
• Labor calculations are done automatically, with no calculator needed by you and your staff.

Dollar-for-dollar, you get a heck of a lot more features from TimeForge than from our competitors. Check out our top products:

• TimeForge Scheduling
  
• TimeForge Attendance
• TimeForge Daily Log

Sign up for a free trial of TimeForge today and see how our system is customized to fit your business!

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• Go home early and stop fussing with payroll and time card mistakes with easy time tracking (electronic time sheets and time cards) and staff monitoring.
• No more worrying about break laws and meal management with easy one-click break sheets and meal management.
• Get done with payroll with a single click with our one-click payroll exports to popular provides like SurePayroll, CompuPay, QuickBooks, and more.
• Rest easy with automatic reminders when staff are late, show up early, late, or start approaching overtime.
• And much more…

Here is a brief overview of some of the features of TimeForge Attendance …

TimeForge Attendance is a powerful replacement for your traditional time clock, or the limited punch in / out included with many Point of Sale systems. Use TimeForge Attendance by itself, or combine with TimeForge Scheduling for a powerful workforce management solution.

TimeForge can also integrate with many Point of Sale systems, stopping employees from clocking in early, or leaving too late.

Use TimeForge Attendance to make your life easy! TimeForge easily manages time cards, staff attendance, and payroll exporting.

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In addition, we have improved our Point of Sale connectivity and integration, with our POS vendors, including Dinerware, Aloha POS (from Radiant Systems), and Micros.

Some of the Dinerware improvements with TimeForge include:

• Use a fingerprint scanner with your Dinerware system to stop buddy punching and keep employees from riding the clock. To use a fingerprint scanner, you’ll need to clock all staff members in to Dinerware one time. You need to do this step, because Dinerware requires that employees be logged in for a variety of reasons, including meal coursing and printing.   After this initial clock in, all additional clock in and clock outs can be done on TimeForge, using a separate time punch terminal with a fingerprint scanner attached.

Use a Fingerprint Reader with Dinerware

• Forecast sales and inventory using Menu Item Groupings inside of Dinerware. While building a labor schedule, you may want to track gross sales, individual item sales, covers, labor hours, or other metrics.   Additionally, you can now build schedules and forecast sales by grouping menu items together.   For example, you may want to schedule staff members based on the hourly sales of porterhouse steaks, crab cakes, and apple turnovers.   Using TimeForge and Dinerware, you now can.

Forecast and Record Menu Items and Menu Item Groups

• You can view Dinerware sales information on your cell phone and view real-time sales and labor information at the same time. Any Menu Item or Menu Item Group that is being forecast or collected by TimeForge can be viewed on your cell phone using the secure TimeForge RSS feed.   Receive real-time labor and sales information on any compatible smartphone or PDA.   You can read more about this in the TimeForge Manual.

• In addition, TimeForge is now compatible with Dinerware version 2.9.1 – the latest offering from Dinerware. This latest version of the Dinerware POS offers a number of improvements for Dinerware and TimeForge customers.   Talk to your Dinerware representative about upgrading today!

You should be using a labor management system with your Dinerware POS system to make your life easy!   TimeForge can quickly and easily build your employee work schedules, manage attendance while enforcing the schedule (and stopping employees from clocking in early), reduce labor costs, and streamline staff management.   Sign up for a trial today to use TimeForge with your Dinerware POS system.

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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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We are a technology company with a focus on operations and human resources for restaurants, retailers, and other businesses that hire part-time employees – we spent a lot of time examining the tradeshow and looking for improvements in technology for operations or human resources.

Some of the very neat technology at the show included:

• Dinerware POS is a phenomenal Point of Sale system, and one of our valued partners.   Several sales staff and other partners were on site to show off their latest version.
• Silverware POS recently debuted and released a best-of-breed restaurant POS product, Avrio, which was onsite at the show.   What a wonderful group of individuals, and a great product!
• MonkeyMedia Software displayed their rocking catering software outside of the Technology Pavilion.   They caused a bit of a comotion by handing out bananas!
• QuandraNet is similiar to OpenTable, but with a very, very smart table management software program that increases table turns in addition to handling reservations.
• Corvirtus was showing off their products that take the guesswork out of hiring. Very neat algorithms, and years of research create a great hiring tool.   Wonderful stuff.

Overall, the show attendance seemed to be down compared to last year, which seems to be the general consensus.

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

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As David Scott Peters points out in a quick blog post over at FOHBOH (Front of House, Back of House), a deep understanding of your Point of Sale system is an absolute must.   David points out that in addition to being a cash register, POS systems can perform a number of additional tasks, such as locating ideal food costs, managing inventory, controlling labor costs, and much more.

However, one aspect that David did not touch upon is that there are often major capability differences between the various Point of Sale manufacturers.   Some systems do have built-in inventory, food costing, and labor management modules, but many others do not have these modules.

In many cases, it is preferable to identify and use a best-of-breed solution designed specifically for the task at hand.   For example, CostGuard continues to develop and maintain the best inventory managament system available for restaurants, bars, and clubs.   TimeForge labor management software is designed from the ground-up to make labor management and employee scheduling easy for restaurant and retail operators.

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Halo, an online provider of restaurant and retail Point of Sale software, recently released their “Halo Zata Restaurant Index” for March.   The Zata Restaurant index tracks gross sales that are made by Halo’s US based customers, and this months numbers show that there may be a light and the end of the economic tunnel.

The month of March saw a sales increase of 0.7% – which may be a sign of an upcoming improvement to the United States restaurant industry.

Read more about Halo POS at their website, and keep track of their blog to see updates on the Halo Zata Restaurant Index.

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Steve Green of Pizza Magazine Quarterly and PMQ.com had the US Pizza Team showing off their skills at the show. Steve stopped by on Tuesday and took a look at TimeForge , it is a perfect labor solution for pizzerias without a Point of Sale solution, and TimeForge is a great add-on to help control labor costs for those pizza shops that already have an existing POS program.

Dave Hwang from DinePoint was in the area attending the show, and we spent some time with him discussing plans for his above store reporting software package. He has had great success with a number of Point of Sale resellers, vendors, and major regional and national restaurant brands adopting his product.

David (also known as David_L) from FoodService.com was showing off the Digital Dining Point of Sale product, along with some girls from Hooters. He regularly posts on the FoodService.com food forums, and it was great to finally meet him in person.

Dominos Pizza had a corporate meeting at the Texas Restaurant Association, and we met with many franchisees about using TimeForge at their pizza business. Most operators and owners were surprised at how simple TimeForge is to use compared to doing things the “old fashioned” way.

Join us in Dallas for next years Texas Restaurant Show – we have already reserved our booth!

How long does it take to make an employee schedule for your employees? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can minimize costs and increase profits through effective employee scheduling at your pizza, restaurant, hotel, bar, club, or retail business. Sign up today for a free trial!

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We really enjoyed spending time with our neighbors from Del Mar College and Ctuit.

• Del Mar is a wonderful establishment, and Chef Mark (heading their program) knows what he’s doing, with years of experience “on the floor”. Anyone looking to enter the hospitality industry , or needing to hire talented graduates , should contact Del Mar College.
• Ctuit is a leading provider of above-store reporting software that integrates with several different kinds of Point of Sale, Accounting / GL, Time and Attendance, and other software packages. Reports are sent to a central location and can be reviewed by corporate, regional, or district level managers. Thanks for demonstrating your product to us!

Next to us was the Franchise Pavilion, and it included reps from Boston’s Pizza Restaurants, Pollo Campero, Which Which, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins, Huddle House, and Franchise Times. It seemed to be a tough show for finding franchisees, but many of them kept the show very entertaining for us. If they (or their franchisees) need labor scheduling, they’ll know TimeForge can help!

Lance, Mike, and the rest of the Focus POS crew were on site, dressed down in their bright orange brand and ready to help restaurant owners find the right Point of Sale system. Of all of the Point of Sale vendors, Focus POS has one of the most full-featured labor scheduling systems. They understand that employee scheduling is hard – and try to make it easy for operators to build schedules. It was good to see them again.

Gary Peek, president of Intura stopped by and spoke with us about TimeForge and its applicability in international markets. I spent some time in the Intura booth on Tuesday learning about their mapping software and their ability to do sales analytics based on geographical sales locations. Very cool technology!

More TRA Expo highlights coming ….

How long does it take to make a labor schedule for your workforce? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can improve profits and minimize costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, hotel, bank, school, bar, club, or retail business.

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