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!

On Tuesday of last week, we received an amazing email from Mr. Lawrence Payne at Mid-Pacific Country Club, located in Hawaii. Mr. Payne has been using TimeForge for a number of months, and as explained in the following text, he’s more than happy with the scheduling product. His “customer testimonial” follows:

Thank you so much Lawrence!

Do you have a success story to share with us about TimeForge? Please send us an email, we’d like to share it with the rest of our users.

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 streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, hotel, bank, school, bar, club, or retail business.

TimeForge daily and weekly schedule templates are now easy to find!

Previous versions of TimeForge sorted the list of daily and weekly schedule templates in the order that they were created. For example, the first template that is created would be listed first in the list of templates. But now, templates are now easier to locate, because they are now sorted alphabetically.

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

TimeForge templates allow you and your managers to create reusable schedule patterns for daily usage, and you can have an unlimited number of templates in your account. The management team at your business can create company-wide standards for staffing specific days of the week, holidays, or any other day by using TimeForge’s template capabilities.

Templates can be “used” on any day of a schedule – instantly creating shifts for employees without the need to create shifts one at a time. TimeForge Templates have always had one limitation – they are only designed to be used for only a 24-hour (one day) time period.

Introducing TimeForge Weekly Templates! Managers specify daily templates for each day of the week, creating a Weekly Template. You can have as many Weekly Templates in your account as you would like!

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

As previously mentioned, the team behind the TimeForge employee scheduling software has been working hard on version 1.9.2 of TimeForge - released today, Jan 1, 2008. Happy New Year!

So, what’s new in TimeForge? A lot! Some of our recent improvements include:

• Messages about your schedule are available on all of the schedule views (including the daily, weekly detail, and weekly summary views). You can see which “rules” have been broken by your management team while building the schedule, whether the shifts were created by the AutoScheduler or by management.

• Day Parts are now displayed in the schedule (on the day view), and can be used to segment your day into different parts (for instance morning, afternoon, and evening shifts).

• Day Parts are also visible when looking at employee availability. You can quickly see what shifts employees are available to work.

• When editing an availability request, you can click on the day of the week to make an all-day request.

• A new report: On the report page, there is a new 7-day schedule, called “Condensed 7-day schedule, sorted by position.” This new report is a variation of the Condensed 7-day schedule, where all of the employees are grouped by the position / department.

• Templates have been updated to look like the Daily Schedule View, including graphing and different views of the day (sort by position or employee).

• Additional numerous small improvements were made to the software ….

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

We are pleased to announce TimeForge version 1.9 – the easy-to-use employee scheduling program for food-service (restaurant, bar, club), hospitality (hotel, motel), and retail companies.

Thank you to our users who provide priceless feedback about the software can make their lives easier!

This version provides significant enhancements to all TimeForge users, and includes several dozen new and improved features. Some of our time-saving improvements include:

• Many areas of the scheduling system, including the creating schedules from templates, publishing a new schedule, and deleting schedules are significantly faster.

• A new field is available for employees, which allows managers to enter an identifier for tracking the employee (such as an internal employee number).

• Internationalization! TimeForge now works in Canada, the United Kingdom (England), Australia, Ireland, France, Spain, Scottland, and many other countries. The best labor scheduling system from the US is now available to anyone, anywhere. In fact, if you are a multi-location (or multiple unit) operator, with stores in different countries or locales, TimeForge will appropriately manage notifications for the whole team.

• Do you schedule more than one location from within your TimeForge account? The improved scheduling system in version 1.9 will automatically disable employees that are already scheduled to work at other locations. TimeForge already disables employees that are scheduled to work on other conflicting schedules.

• Day parts have been renamed “Work Periods”, which is … simple. More improvements with “Work Periods” and “Day Parts” are coming in Version 2.

• A number of minor bug fixes, improvements to Internet Explorer 6, and other changes.

Of course, we look forward to your ongoing comments about changes to the TimeForge scheduling system.

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

Leaving for home early today? You could be if you schedule employees with TimeForge.

With TimeForge’s AutoScheduler, you no longer waste hours checking that every shift has the right employee scheduled. The AutoScheduler understands the many different rules such as minimum and maximum hours for employees, skill levels of employees, whether or not employees can work doubles, labor costs, and when employees are available to work (availability and requests). With this information and without any effort on your part, TimeForge automatically schedules the right employees in the right shifts.

TimeForge’s daily templates make labor scheduling simple! Each daily template can have shifts which are pre-assigned to employees (salaried employees) or they can be assigned to employees when you create the actual schedule (part-time laborers). Many TimeForge users have templates for each day of the week, and additional templates for special occasions. To create Templates, click on the Schedules tab, and then click on Edit Templates.

The TimeForge Availability and Request system helps quickly build accurate schedules that match employees availability and requests. TimeForge assumes that all employees are available by default, so employees only need to enter when they cannot work. Requests can be simple, such as “I need next Wednesday off”, or complex, such as “I cannot work every 3rd Thursday or Friday starting next week.” Requests entered by employees must be approved by a manager or supervisor before the request shows up on the schedule.

Remember, TimeForge requires no contracts and no long-term commitments. There are no additional service contracts, no per-call or per-hour support fees, and you can cancel TimeForge at any time, for any reason. Upgrades are included in the monthly price, and we take care of the data backups. Best of all, setup is free!

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

As you may be aware, we release improvements to the TimeForge employee scheduling software every few weeks, and our team is hard at work developing version 1.9 of TimeForge. The next version will be released around Thanksgiving.

What can you expect to be in our next version of TimeForge?

• Improved Availability. You will be able to view availability as you do now, in a list format – but you will also have the ability of adding and viewing availability on a calendar. Two clicks to create a time-off request! Also, Day Parts will be more integrated with the rest of the TimeForge system – so you can schedule around the different parts of your day.

• Faster. We are aware that TimeForge can slow down occasionally for those of you with a large number of employees. These issues will be resolved in our next release.

• Improved Templates. Templates will continue to receive upgrades, and you will be able to add and edit shifts with the same ease that you edit schedules.

• And much more! If you know of something that will make your life simple … let us know!

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

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

Some of the new features include:

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

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

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

Version 1.9 and 2.0 are coming soon!

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

We’re proud to present the latest version of TimeForge, version 1.3, the most advanced employee scheduling software available for the restaurant and hospitality industry.

After weeks of testing, and more feedback from our valued users (thanks for your feedback!), we have added new features to ensure that TimeForge works the way you, and your management team, work.

Some of the new features include:

• Improved tab interface provides easy navigation around TimeForge.
• Our new Setup Wizard will have you up and running within minutes, streamlining the input of positions, base pay rates, and employee specific information.
• Skill levels can now be applied to shifts and employees to build more accurate schedules that reflect your needs to have experienced staff at certain times. Skill Levels now work with the AutoScheduler™!
• Text message notifications for your staff will now consider your time zone, and will notify employees during appropriate business hours.
• Easily copy existing schedules or templates with one click - create a schedule for next week in a matter of seconds.
• Many of the reports have been improved.

Version 1.4 should be released to our customers (at no extra charge!), with new features, on May 11, 2007. If there are any features you’d like to see in the software, which might help your spend more time “on-the-floor”, and less time sitting in front of a bunch of sticky-notes, please let us know!