Labor Management. NOW Simple.

We were recently asked, by a reporter for Women In Business, about some tips for using time tracking and labor scheduling software, and also about the best ways to use the software.   Here’s what we had to say …

3 Tips for Choosing Staff Scheduling and Time Tracking Software

1.   Find software that works the way that your business works.   There are a lot of options, web-based, server-based, cell-phone based, or time-clock based.   The best software will also depend on whether or not you are doing project-based time tracking, or hourly-based time tracking.   Not all software will fit all businesses.   TimeForge, for example, works best with retail and restaurant industries, although it does work well for other groups, including tutoring companies and YMCA’s!

2.   Make sure the time tracking software interfaces with your desired payroll company.   You can always enter hours from a report, but doing this every week or two, combined with the inevitable typos, will quickly add up to a time and profit sink hole.   TimeForge interfaces with many popular payroll products, and we have reports for those that aren’t supported (or call us, and we’ll write that integration for you).

3.   Prepare for the future.   Look for software that can be extended to handle staff scheduling and HR needs, as well as helping with staff communications.   With the combination of Gen X/Y, Baby Boomers, and others in the workplace, the software needs to be able to move with your business direction.   TimeForge provides online scheduling, time card tracking, payroll export, staff messaging, HR management, and a host of additional features.

3 Tips for Best Use of Staff Scheduling and Time Tracking Software

1.   The number one issue will be staff buy-in, especially if your staff is used to what they’ve “been doing”.   Make sure that the staff buy into the benefits, or some employees will continue doing things the old way, causing confusion while getting the new system up and running.

2.   Migrate into the software, starting with the most immediate need, and then adding one or two new features a week from the software.   Doing a complete overnight switch-over of a labor management can be burdensome even for medium and large businesses.

3.   Make sure to track the human factor.   Time tracking systems will produce lots of reports explaining productivity and early / late staff members, or projects that are over budget.   Unfortunately, they don’t account for exceptional customer service, staff members going out of their way, managers making sure that staff get holiday hours, and other human factors that run your business.

You can read the entire article at Women In Business.

Sign up for a free trial of our online scheduling software to see how much more free time you’ll have every week.

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Something a little different for us in this blog post … a testimonial from one of our own staff members!

At TimeForge, we use our own product for scheduling staff, clocking in and out, enforcing the schedule, and staff communication. In the world of technology, this is often called “eating your own dogfood“, and it ensures that if there are critical bugs, or if some new feature doesn’t work – we know immediately, and we feel the same pain that you, our customers, feel (talk about a great reason to fix something!).

A few weeks back, we hired Morgan, an aspiring soccer athlete and summer intern to help answer the phones, respond to emails, and expand our online labor management manual to help our customers manage their labor. Morgan has friends who are doing all sorts of summer jobs, working in grocery stores, life guarding, waiting tables, bar tending, etc… She hears their complaints about staff scheduling, requesting time off, and all of the other issues that go along with being managed (or managing) at your place of employment.

After using TimeForge for about a week, she had this to say about our product line …

This is my first week working here at TimeForge and I have learned that this software is an easier way for both employees and managers to do scheduling, request shifts, clock in and out, and view your time card.

I have many friends who work at retail and grocery stores and they request time off by using a request book. When managers use a request book, it usually takes hours of time to go through everything. After declining or accepting the employees request you have to reschedule and switch swifts for the staff members. Instead, with TimeForge, it only takes a few minutes to do all the rescheduling. Employees log on and request time off, or swap shifts. TimeForge can communicate with management with TimeForge messaging or email, keeping everyone in the loop. You can also receive text messages reminding staff members when to be at work, just so they don’t “forget“.

I have also learned that staff can view their time cards on TimeForge. Your time card shows the amount of hours you worked, the days you worked, and your hourly wage. My friends have also told me that when they clock in, they first have to go to the service counter and they will highlight your name to show management when you worked. With TimeForge all you have to do is log in and click “clock in”, and that’s it! TimeForge saves everyone’s time and it helps get things done quickly.

We can work at marketing and selling TimeForge all day long, but that’s about as powerful of a testimonial as it gets – from someone who has only used our software for a few days.

If you happen to call our offices, and get in touch with Morgan, make sure to say hello!

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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:

1. Go to one of your schedules (or build a new one).
2. 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).
3. Play with the new staff scheduling system.
4. 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!

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TimeForge is now a member of the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), and we were at their annual “Retail Now” show this month in Las Vegas.   We spent a lot of time with many of the other members, and were invited to a number of receptions and parties thrown by sponsors of the trade show.   A lot of new and exciting technology was on display for retail, hospitality, convenience store, grocer, and food-service businesses.

Expect some new and exciting announcements from TimeForge in the coming months!

We spent plenty of time with our partners at Dinerware.   If you are in the hospitality or food-service business, and you need a POS package , we encourage you to check out what they are doing, and call your local Dinerware dealer for information about their product, and how they integrate with TimeForge – the best labor management package available.

Also, many thanks to United Bank Card for their amazing party , their announcement of free cash registers for retailers should provide valuable to many small to medium sized retail businesses.   Do you need a cash register for your business?   Check out their new fully-integrated cash register systems (ECR’s) systems, which are now on sale.

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

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During bad economic periods, monitoring labor costs, employee schedules, and managing attendance are crucial to maintaining a profitable business in the auto parts and automobile supply industry.

Even in the best economic climates, staff scheduling for auto parts and supply stores can be a headache.   The manager building the employee schedule has to consider staff abilities and skills, the expected sales volume, employee availability and requests, accrued PTO (and sick and vacation time), labor laws for employees who are minors, overtime, and the total labor costs.

TimeForge works wonders for businesses in the auto supply or auto parts industries – managers and employees alike can benefit from the speed and clarity that TimeForge brings to the business.   Employees can check schedules online, request time off, view timecards, and send messages to other staff members.   Managers benefit from the instant employee scheduling, real-time notifications of schedule changes, employee messaging, and one-click payroll exports.

With TimeForge, employee turnover goes down, employee retention goes up, and profits rise.

Read more about TimeForge for Auto Supply and Automobile Parts businesses.

TimeForge labor management and employee scheduling software is used by owners and operators of automobile parts and auto supply stores, car washes, retail, food-service, and other service-oriented businesses around the world.   TimeForge will increase profitability, reduce turnover, and improve retention at your business!

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If your gym is like most, you’re managing instructors, front desk staff, personal trainers, janitorial or maintenance staff, and maybe even massage, nutrition, or spa staff. Scheduling a diverse staff like this can be a real headache. And it’s not just the wide range of skill sets and certifications that are required – you have to also juggle varying availability, part-time schedules, accrued PTO, time-off and shift swap requests, and your club’s busy times during any given day.

It’s tedious, time consuming, complicated and (particularly in this challenging economic climate) extraordinarily important.

Under-schedule the club and you could lose members. Over-schedule the gym and you could lose money.

Smart staff scheduling and monitoring of attendance can cut labor costs and spell the difference between a successful and barely-surviving health club. For many gym managers it can take hours of mind-numbing detail work: tracking down staff with the appropriate expertise to accommodate shift swaps or cover for time-off requests, juggling the schedule to find the most efficient use of staff without compromising coverage, and trying to consider alternative schedules without investing too many more hours into the process. Not to mention monitoring attendance across schedules that encompass far more than a regular 9-to-5 day to prevent punch-in abuses or unnecessary overtime.

And when the schedule is done, you move on to stage two of the schedule process: communicating the schedule to all the employees, fielding endless inquiries about next week’s schedule (or worse, scrambling to fill a missed shift due to confusion over schedules), and when faced with an unexpected time off or shift swap request-doing the entire thing over again, and communicating the changes to all the employees. It’s no wonder that for many gym managers, scheduling and employee monitoring is requires Ibuprofen.

TimeForge allows health club managers to cut employee scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to just minutes.

The ability to manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule those with stronger (or specific) skills in the high volume time slots, keep an eye on attendance, and monitor and forecast your labor costs makes Timeforge not just a time-saver but a money-saver. In fact, TimeForge can increase gym profits by 3-5%.

Add in the ability to integrate simply with payroll systems, to notify employees of upcoming schedules and schedule changes by email or text message (and the resultant drop in late or absent employees), and the ability to your energies on the urgent managerial duties facing an health club 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.

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Now available! Managing labor at your business just became even more simple.   TimeForge Mobile recently launched, providing managers and staff members the ability to review employee schedules, check timecards, send and receive online messages, and perform other labor management related items on an iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, or other smartphone.

TimeForge Mobile can be accessed by pointing your favorite web browser or RSS reader at the TimeForge website.   To ensure the confidentiality of the information that is available, the RSS reading program must be able to use both SSL (bank-level encryption and security) and authentication (username and password).   Some of our favorite RSS readers include:

• Viigo on the Blackberry
• NetNewswire and Pro RSS on the iPhone
• Others (mostly for the desktop) can be found here

Accessing TimeForge Mobile is very simple!   Just add the website or URL of:

http://www.TimeForge.com/Scheduler/rss.html

to your RSS program of choice – enter your username and password – and your schedule, timecard, availability, and messages will automatically load into your RSS program.

Managers and supervisors have additional capabilities, and multi-unit and multi-store operators can view additional information (such as which staff members are clocked in, the days labor costs, and gross sales for the day).   A full list of RSS URL’s can be found inside “My Settings” page within TimeForge.

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

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Do you own or operate a retail or restaurant company?   Perhaps your store sells collectibles, health food products, cell phone accessories or curtains and rugs.   Regardless of the goods being offered, tightly controlling your labor expenses in the current economic climate is crucial to generate a profit.   Relevant employee expenses including payroll costs, training, and turnover should be properly managed.   With the proper procedures and a set of tools to assist with the complex chore of managing labor, your business can increase profitability.

One key to managing a labor force properly is to schedule part-time and full-time employees before they are needed for work (a theoretical work schedule), and then track the scheduled work against when employees clock-in and clock-out (the actual worked hours), a process known actual vs. theoretical, or AvT.   Good managers reduce the difference (variance) between the Actual hours worked and the Theoretical schedule, while maximizing the sales for the business.

Improper labor scheduling will lead to one of two circumstances for your business:

1. Too many employees are scheduled to work, increasing payroll costs, and reducing profits.   Alternatively, employees are sent home (or cut from the schedule) without working hours they were promised on the schedule.
2. Too few employees are scheduled to work, decreasing the number of sales that are made, and reducing profits.

Neither option is desirable, and the key to avoiding both situations is to monitor and refine the AvT at your business.

Smart managers constantly balance employee satisfaction against the needs of the business in an effort to keep payroll costs down, reduce turnover, and increase profits.   Turnover is extremely expensive, and a 2004 study by the Employment Policy Foundation found that the average turnover cost of a single full-time employee is $13,355.   To recover from the effects of the turnover of a single full-time employee, a retail store would need to sell more than 3,000 pairs of khakis priced at $35 each.   A restaurant would need to sell more than 7,613 children’s combo meals at $2.50 each.

One way to reduce turnover at your store is to implement a labor scheduling tool such as TimeForge, an online employee scheduling solution.

Peter Edwards, owner of Zeb’s General Store in North Conway, New Hampshire knows that proper employee scheduling is key to managing a retail business, especially a seasonal business.   Peter chose TimeForge to help him manage full-time and part-time shift labor at his store. reducing employee turnover and lowering labor costs.   Peter uses templates in TimeForge to rapidly build schedules for his business, and TimeForge automatically emails and text messages the schedule to his employees on a daily basis , notifying employees of their upcoming work schedule and keeping his staff happy.

Peter had this to say about TimeForge:

I own a retail company.   We employ 15 full time employees, and between 5 and 15 part time employees depending upon our season.   I signed up for the 90 day trial period and have been using the TimeForge program for about 45 days.   I have found the program to be easy to use and it hits the mark with respect to our staff scheduling needs.   The email notification aspect of the program is a great feature that I am sure our employees will like.

The most important aspect of TimeForge is the incredible customer support.   Responses to the help menu item are emailed within 24 hours, and a live person actually answers the phone to respond to your questions.   I look forward to using TimeForge and would be pleased to talk with any prospective user of the scheduling program.

If you would like to see what TimeForge can do for your restaurant, hospitality, or retail business, then please sign up today for a free trial or contact our sales department for more information about TimeForge.

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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The Financial Side of Labor Management

In the previous articles, we have had a look at tangible and measurable variables that contribute to operating costs. We discussed how inventory control, portion control, budgeting and other sound business management practices work together to keep food costs down to a reasonable percentage of gross sales.

We have also had a brief look at labor costs and their contribution to overhead expenses. Now it’s time to take a closer look at the financial side of labor management and how effective scheduling can keep labor costs under control without negatively affecting the customer’s experience.

One of the most important tasks that any manager faces is staff scheduling. Oddly enough, as important as this task is, few managers receive any formal training in personnel scheduling. It’s something they are simply expected to know how to do. Unfortunately, many restaurant managers do not understand how to effectively schedule staff , and this costs the restaurant money and contributes to the amount of frustration among the managers and employees.

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 employee scheduling at your restaurant, bar, or club.

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