Happy New Year from TimeForge!

The 2008 year has come to a roaring close and the staff at TimeForge would like to thank you for helping us provide powerful software that lets you compete in business, and be happy in life.

As many of you have probably discovered, TimeForge received massive updates on Wednesday and Friday.   These updates fix a number of software bugs that were reported, and it also includes more than two dozen brand new features available for TimeForge users.

Some of these new features include:

New Reporting Tools! We’ve have released a new reporting solution to provide you with greater control over sorting order, font sizes, and better reports.   All of the TimeForge reports have been re-written to give us enormous flexibility in the coming months.   Be prepared for new reports, and new ways to look at them (exporting to Excel will be available soon).

Automatic Sales and Inventory Forecasts! In addition to being able to track Manager Projections and Actual Values, TimeForge Sales will automatically predict and forecast sales and inventory values , accounting for factors such as seasonality, current staff levels, and others.

Corporate Level Employees! For our customers that manage multiple locations, you can now view employees at the corporate level , all locations in a single list.   Employee management has never been more simple!

Need to Track Certificates, Uniforms, or Employee Reviews? You can now track all of this using the TimeForge Certifications!   TimeForge Certifications can include tracking of test dates, the score received on the test, and when the test expires.   Certifications can impact the schedule, providing warnings when employees with expired certifications (or missing certifications) are scheduled to work.

Smarter AutoScheduling! The AutoScheduler has been improved to look at previous scheduling assignments, and learn how to better assign staff members.   The AutoScheduler can often build the same schedule that the manager would!   Less typing means that schedules are made faster so you can go home early.

Employee-Centric Schedules and Attendance! Need to find out when Sally or Tom works next?   Don’t want to have to go click on the schedule or search the attendance records?   No problem!   Go to your employee list, find the employee and click on “Edit”, and you will see two new tabs, “Schedules” and “Attendance”.   Find out when Sally or Tom is scheduled, or actually worked, in the upcoming weeks, or any previous time period.   Instantly change the schedule directly from here.   We even show schedules from multiple locations!

Break Improvements , Remove Breaks from Calculations. Some businesses track schedules by looking at the whole time that the employee is at work.   Other organizations prefer to ignore unpaid breaks (such as lunch breaks) in the time and cost calculations.   Both paid and unpaid breaks can now be removed from the schedule calculations by changing a few TimeForge settings.

Payroll Period Tracking , If you use TimeForge Attendance, you can now identify your payroll periods and run reports using these periods, rather than entering your own time ranges.   Payroll periods can be set up for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly payroll.

Of course, there were numerous other minor improvements made to TimeForge, including a streamlined sign up process, easier template management, and much more!

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Weekly Schedule Templates: New in TimeForge

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?

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What's New in Employee Scheduling? (Part 2)

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:

  • Split Shifts. TimeForge’s AutoScheduler will try to not assign employees to split shifts. Employees who close your business will not be scheduled to open the next morning, if at all possible. This makes employees and managers happy!
  • Reports. The main report which runs when you click on “Print” from the schedule page now prints only scheduled employees (not all employees). This makes the printout more concise, and easier to read! There’s also a new report, which can be found on the Reports page, and is called “Costs by Position”. This report gives managers a quick, graphical summary of where labor dollars are being spent on the schedule.
  • Day Parts and Availability. You asked for it, and you got it! One of the most requested features from TimeForge users is to be able to use the request and availability editors with your own “time of day”. For example, your “Morning” shift may run from 6am , 11am, and your “Afternoon” shift may go from 11am , 4pm, and now you can setup requests and availability using “Morning” or “Afternoon” times.Login to TimeForge, and click on “Schedules”, and then choose “Day Parts”. Enter your shifts (such as open, morning, afternoon, evening, or close), and select a start time, end time, and a description. Day part periods cannot overlap. Once you have entered all of your time periods, you can save the Day Parts.

    Once Day Parts are in TimeForge, you can create and edit requests and availability using them. You, and your employees, will have the option of entering a time range, or you can pick a Day Part instead.

Look out for Version 1.9 and Version 2.0! Employee Scheduling will be faster and easier! Spend time doing what you want to do…

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.

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