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

Set Up Wizard

marketing — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:20:29 +0000

The TimeForge Setup Wizard was designed to simplify the process of inputting information that TimeForge needs to most efficiently help you manage your labor.

The Setup Wizard will walk you through setting up basic information about your company and staff, like basic staff information, a list of your positions, etc… It also captures your location information, which is displayed on reports (printables), so you never need to worry about determining what schedule applies to which location.

Your location information is displayed in a header on reports.

The Setup Wizard will also ask you some basic questions about how your store is organized. This information helps TimeForge more accurately customize our systems for your maximum convenience and ease-of-use. You shouldn’t have to re-organize your business just to use our product; TimeForge customizes itself to your business. Our “fill in the blank” format saves you tons of time (money), and makes setting up your account easy and fast.

Choosing your own starting day of the week is one of the many little ways TimeForge minimizes your discomfort when getting used to our scheduling system.

Entering information about the operations of your business has never been more simple.

Information about your employees makes contacting them simple. Just enter their email addresses, and TimeForge automatically emails them with a prompt to set up their account. Once their accounts are set up, TimeForge can notify each employee (according their preferences) via email, facebook notification, and/or cell phone message. We make an automatic audit confirming that the employee received notification of the schedule. Never again will you hear, “I didn’t know I was scheduled”!

Add employees to the account fast using our easy "fill in the blank" format, or simply upload an existing employee list from Excel! Super fast!

After supplying position and employee information, your basic set up is complete – you’re ready to start building a schedule!

If you’d like to try out our industry leading software, simply sign up for a free trial of our staff scheduling software, or take a more in-depth look at our labor management software.

TimeForge Improvements

apresley — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:45:52 +0000

We’re always improving and extending TimeForge to improve your business and to ensure that you can quickly and easily build schedules, manage time and attendance, and communicate necessary information to staff members.

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!

Our New Employee Scheduling System!

apresley — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:45:46 +0000

If you are a long-time TimeForge user, you are probably familiar with our system, and how it continues to evolve to take advantage of new technology, faster computers, and easier ways to manage employee schedules and track time and attendance. If you haven’t burned, thrown away, or otherwise destroyed all of your Excel labor spreadsheets , now is the time!

On July 11th, at the Retail Solutions Provider Association (RSPA) trade show held in Las Vegas, we debuted our brand new scheduling system. New users of TimeForge are already using the new scheduling system, and the feedback has been tremendous so far (keep it coming!). The new system looks similar to Microsoft Excel, but includes many enhancements necessary to build a schedule.

Some of the new features include:

The ability to see (and change) the entire schedule from a single screen. Up to seven days can be shown at a time on the screen, and the schedule can be displayed by staff members, or by position , whichever you want to use!

Add a shift to multiple days with a single click. For example, if “Joe” works on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday , there is no need to create four separate shifts. Simply create one, and “check” all of the other days to add the shift to them.

When adding or editing shifts, you can now view all of the other shifts that the employee is working, and can also see their availability. No need to switch screens!

Display shifts by times, hours, or expected labor costs.

View employee totals (such as the number of hours worked by an staff member), and daily totals (such as the expected labor cost for the day) on the same screen.

Drag and drop scheduling! Schedule one employee, and then copy or move their shifts to another employee.

Build Employee Schedules by Employee

TimeForge still includes all of the scheduling features that continue to make us a leader in employee scheduling:

The one and only TimeForge AutoScheduler™ learns about your scheduling patterns, and can build a complete employee schedule in just a few seconds – or use schedule templates to quickly build schedules.

Our proprietary Daily View, providing instant verification of your schedule – do you have too many cooks, or not enough staff members? – and staffing charts (gantt / bar charts). See where your schedule is too heavy, or insufficiently staffed.

Build schedules by department, or for any time range! Divide up responsibility for scheduling among several responsible managers or supervisors.

Compare the schedule to forecasted sales, table turns, guest counts, parked cars, full-time equivalents (FTE), or any other metric , and receive alerts when the schedule is out of line.

Schedule SnapShots allow you to perform what-if scenarios, and the ability to jump back to a previous snapshot at any time.

And much more …

Add or Edit a Shift with Insight About the Employee

If you are currently using the “old” TimeForge scheduling system, that’s ok, you can continue to use it. However, please use and become familiar with the new scheduling system , we will be phasing out the “old” system in the future. To try out the new system, follow these steps:

Go to one of your schedules (or build a new one).
On the “Schedule Detail” screen, click on the “Switch to the new TimeForge scheduling system” link (if you don’t have this link , congratulations! you are already using the new scheduling system).
Play with the new staff scheduling system.
If you want to switch back to the “old” system, simply click on the “Switch to the old scheduling system” link within your schedule.

Build Employee Schedules by Position

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on the new scheduling system.

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

Recession-Proofing with Forecasting

evangilder — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:11:37 +0000

Want to apply TimeForge’s forecasting to recession-proof your business? Peter Navarro published an article titled Recession-Proofing Your Organization in this Spring’s MIT Sloan Management Review. Navarro outlines a strategy to anticipate the downturns in the business cycle and steps to take competitive advantage of downturns.

Among his suggestions, trim the workforce and inventories to cut costs when leading into a recession. As the economy expands in good economic times, cherry-pick new hires before your competitors and boost inventory. There is no need to to be an economist to become your own business-cycle forecast; Navarro provides a simple forecasting formula and points you to Moody’s Economy.com website for data.

Moody’s won’t forecast your business’s sales or inventory, but TimeForge’s forecasting system provide additional insight into your business. Manager’s can track actual sales and theoretical projections made by staff members, and projections can be forecast with TimeForge to predict staffing levels, upcoming schedule needs, and are useful for tracking inventory turnover.

Visit TimeForge to sign up for a free trial of the most powerful labor scheduling system on the market!

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!

Ignoring Labor Regulations Will Result in Heavy Fines

apresley — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:46:32 +0000

In many locales, labor laws for the service industry severely limit the number of hours that a non-exempt employee can work. Hours worked can be limited by the industry, age, job description (position worked), hourly rate, holiday, length of shift, or even the day of the week. If your business works with service unions, these rules can become even more complicated, requiring that managers spend time tracking breaks and meal periods and indicating whether or not employees wanted to take their break. Some states and insurance companies perform regular Labor & Industries audits, imposing heavy fines or insurance premium increases for non-compliant businesses.

Example: A sandwich restaurant in California employs three sandwich specialists, all of which are scheduled to work less than 8 hours a day, six days of the upcoming work week. On the first day of the schedule one of the employees fails to show up for work and is terminated by management. The remaining two employees must work work the additional 28 hours at the business to cover the terminated employee. Neither employee receives a day off during the work week. Under California law, each of the employees must be paid 1.5x overtime for more than 8 hours of work in a given day, and 1.5x overtime for more than 40 hours per work week. Additionally, the two sandwich specialists will receive 1.5x , 2.0x overtime on the 7th day of their work week, as neither employee will receive a break this week. Failing to pay these increased wages is grounds for a lawsuit and an investigation by the state. Insufficient staffing may cost this California business several thousand dollars , in a single week!

Careful managers schedule around these frequently changing and complicated rules, ensuring that their business is compliant with all applicable labor regulations. However, businesses can inadvertently land themselves in hot-water when employees fail to show up, quit, or are terminated for otherwise legitimate reasons. Inexperienced managers, overburdened by other areas of schedule creation can forget about these rules, which are not core to the “making money” aspect of their business. Stiff fines and lawsuits are the result of failing to be in compliance.

In uncertain economic times managers must be able to schedule labor correctly in a consistent manner, keep employees happy, and reduce fines imposed by legislative authorities, such as the Department of Labor. Businesses should seek to use cost-effective computer systems, such as TimeForge, to ensure that proper scheduling techniques are utilized. Effective scheduling software will be able to schedule meal and break periods, accurately calculate overtime costs, and archive previous schedules for managerial review.

Example: The general manager at a car wash business needs to ensure that one manager is always on duty, as well as a number of attendants to apply soap to the vehicles before vehicles enter the automated car wash machinery. Each attendant is required to receive a number of breaks during their shift, and this particular business prefers to hire employees who are minors to fill “holes” in the schedule. During a normal work day, between five and seven employees are working. By not carefully scheduling the break and meal periods and minor rules, the manager may end up with a shortage of staff as multiple employees take breaks (or leave for the day) at the same time and minor employees leave for home. During the labor shortage, customers will not be serviced appropriately. Alternatively, the manager may choose not to send employees homes or allow breaks to proceed , grounds for heavy fines, a lawsuit, and/or increased insurance premiums.

Labor & Industries (L&I) audits are common in some US states (California, Washington, Oregon, and New York are especially common) in restaurant, food-service, retail, construction, and hospitality-related industries. These audits are performed by the state or by insurance companies to verify that the business has complied with all applicable regulations. Audits focus on unpaid overtime, minors working too late or too early, break and meal periods that are not properly documented, and other violations. Rule infractions can be punished with stiff fines and/or insurance premium increases.

Make sure that all employees are aware of the applicable rules for the city, county, and state / province. Follow federal / national rules (where applicable), corporate rules, and insurance regulations (if applicable). Where possible, automated scheduling systems should be utilized to enforce these rules reducing the administrative burden placed on managers – allowing management to work on other pressing issues such as training, customer service, and management tasks which cannot be automated by cost-effective technology solutions.

Follow Up On Starbucks Labor Scheduling

apresley — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 15:45:01 +0000

We previously discussed the Wall Stree Journal article about Starbucks recent change in labor scheduling at most of their stores. The change has been initiated by management to address issues of slower sales in the economy, save on labor costs, and to reduce turnover by providing more hours to (fewer) employees.

It seems that Starbucks baristas and others have written about the changes to the program on the Starbucks Gossip blog. The first blog post / thread discusses the original WSJ article and its implications on the coffee shops and retail experience. The second blog post / thread, discusses that a side effect of the new labor system is that baristas are allowed to make bad drinks – in order to save 5 seconds per drink. That probably isn’t the desired side effect of an improved scheduling system.

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

Starbucks Employee Scheduling

apresley — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:31:04 +0000

According to the Wall Street Journal, the largest coffee retailer, Starbucks, is changing its scheduling system to have fewer employees work longer hours at its various locations. The goal of the new scheduling program is to reduce labor costs for the chain, while improving sales through customer familiarization with the on duty staff members.

Will the plan work? It’s very possible. With smart and accurate labor scheduling, Starbucks should be able to reduce turnover and keep employees happy while lowering their labor costs. However, if Starbucks begins over scheduling employees, the plan may actually backfire on them — creating higher levels of turnover, decreased profits, and lowering sales.

Labor Scheduling at the TRA Show – 2008

apresley — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:58:10 +0000

We just got back from four full days in sunny Houston, TX. We exhibited at the 2008 Southwest Food Expo, hosted by the Texas Restaurant Association. TimeForge occupied booth 1546 right next to the franchise pavilion and we had a great time in Houston! Throughout the show we became friends with many of our neighbors, dined on wonderful food, and spoke to a number of restaurateurs, hotel and retail owners , most need help with employee scheduling.

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.

TimeForge v2.4.5

apresley — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:00:51 +0000

Lubbock, TX , May 28, 2008 , Making a great work schedule week after week is often a painful managerial chore for businesses of all sizes. However, the increased store profits, lower turnover, and improved employee morale make employee scheduling software a worthwhile investment. Many operators in the restaurant, retail, and hospitality industries create labor schedules by hand using pen-and-paper methods that can consume up to seven hours a week in managerial time , an expense of more than $12,000 per year in manager time building and managing the labor schedule! Operators using spreadsheets still spend at least two hours a week scheduling labor.

Well-chosen software solutions can help operators control labor and increase profits, without incurring great expense. For example, TimeForge, a web-based labor scheduling product tightly controls employee labor costs and reduces turnover by providing a simple-to-use solution for scheduling employees. The TimeForge software program, available at http://www.TimeForge.com, ensures that managers spend more time “on the floor” and less time in the back office scheduling employees.

The most recent version, released on May 27, 2008 includes a number of improvements to the software and continues to build on TimeForge’s success as a quick, simple, and affordable scheduling solution for businesses of all sizes. According to Michael, the proprietor of Tiara Cafe in California, “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.”

TimeForge turns employee scheduling into an automated task that can be performed in a few minutes every week , improving store profits by thousands of dollars every year for the store. Some advantages of the new TimeForge include:

TimeForge now includes the ability to track employee tips, which can be entered when an employee clocks out, or later by management!
Schedules and templates can be organized into departments (similar to folders) to easily differentiate between “Front of House” and “Back of House” schedules.
New attendance reports are available for supervisors and managers.
Managers can easily see why an employee cannot be scheduled , regardless if the employee is already scheduled at another location or in a conflicting shift, or if the employee is unavailable.
Locations / stores / units can be organized into a Corporate Hierarchy so that managers can monitor scheduling practices for groups of locations.
Many other improvements!

Independent and chain operators alike can benefit from the many time saving and profit improving features of labor scheduling systems such as TimeForge. Get back on the floor today!

About TimeForge
TimeForge is the premier employee scheduling software, designed to provide fast ROI benefits to the business, and to meet the growing demands of the work force. TimeForge.com is affordable software that works with both independent and chain operations in retail, hospitality, and many other industries. For more information about TimeForge, and to sign up for a free trial, visit the website at http://www.TimeForge.com

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

Set Up Wizard

Related articles or pages

TimeForge Improvements

11 New Reports

Enforce the Schedule

Message Multiple Locations

New TimeForge Partners!

Give Shifts Up

Daily View Improvements

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Our New Employee Scheduling System!

Build Employee Schedules by Employee

Add or Edit a Shift with Insight About the Employee

Build Employee Schedules by Position

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Recession-Proofing with Forecasting

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TimeForge Labor Management, a quick background ….

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Ignoring Labor Regulations Will Result in Heavy Fines

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Follow Up On Starbucks Labor Scheduling

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Starbucks Employee Scheduling

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Labor Scheduling at the TRA Show – 2008

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TimeForge v2.4.5

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