Labor Management. NOW Simple.

Employee dissatisfaction is common among businesses in the retail, restaurant and hospitality industries, and will lead to a high turnover rate. High turnover in a business is extremely costly, as new employees need to be recruited, trained and properly certified – each one costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.

To assist with managing the labor requirements of your business, TimeForge offers extensive reports for many tasks including labor costs, breaks, and scheduled labor, among many others. This week, TimeForge introduced several new reports to make labor management more efficient and decrease turnover in your business.

Shift Ranking:

Are your staff happy with their work environment? From the point of view of your staff members, are there problems with certain shifts that need to be addressed? How would you know which shifts are causing issues with your staff, so that you can address the needs of your staff and your business? You’d use TimeForge!

Using TimeForge, employees have the ability to record whether they were satisfied with the shift they just worked. Our new Shift Ranking reports allow managers and business owners to review a comprehensive account of how many employees were happy with their shift – and how many were unhappy – as well as the ratio of satisfied vs. dissatisfied employees, by either position or shift.

These remarkable new reports, an industry first, provide employers the ability to pinpoint problematic shifts and staff positions in order to decrease turnover and maximize profits for the business. Another report displays shift satisfaction among multiple locations to allow multi-unit operators to remotely monitor their business.

Shift Swapping:

Did you start the week with the perfect schedule, but by the end of the week you are paying unexpected overtime and have unhappy staff? One possibility is that staff are making too many shift swaps, changing around the staffing schedule in an unpredictable manner. Use TimeForge to identify heavy shift swapping and make profitable business decisions!

Our latest shift swap reports allow employers to view the shifts that employees are giving up and picking up, during any period of time, as well as the ratios of shifts given up vs. picked up. These reports provide employers the unmatched capability to gain understanding and control over employees’ shift-swapping habits to successfully remedy employee scheduling problems and overtime abuse.

Managing a workforce requires some give-and-take between management and staff members to ensure that the business runs successfully. Use TimeForge to gain insight into the day-to-day labor management at your business. Just look at what TimeForge customers have had to say about our revolutionary product.

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TimeForge is an easy to use workforce management solution for your business, and includes many powerful features designed to improve your business. These include:

• 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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TimeForge is both powerful and flexible!  We provide a stable and simple labor management platform that gives you, the user, the power you need to manage your workforce.

One way that TimeForge provides simple labor scheduling is by providing you, the user, with the ability to schedule staff any way you want to.  That’s right – schedule your labor based on the requirements of your business!

TimeForge supports building schedules in many different ways, and provides flexible, powerful, and easy to use tools to make sure you can get done building the schedule, communicate with your staff members, and go home early!  For example, you can build schedules:

• One shift at a time, using day parts (Work Periods) or specific time periods
• Bulk copying of shifts from one day to another
• Copying work shifts from one employee to another
• Using daily templates with predefined shifts
• Utilizing weekly templates with dozens or hundreds of shifts
• Bid shifts, which allow staff members to help build the schedule
• Copying a previous schedule to create a new schedule for next week
• Daily, using a gantt chart to oversee your exact staffing needs
• Weekly, using an Excel-like interface to quickly and easily schedule staff

And all of these staff scheduling options can use “fixed employee” scheduling … where you, the manager, choose the employee you want to work.  Alternatively, you can build labor schedules using the automated power of the TimeForge AutoScheduler.

Edit a Shift in the Detail View

In addition, you can build schedules using departments, where you can appoint a supervisor to oversee the schedule, availability changes, and staff communication.

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Many of TimeForge’s November and December updates included improvements to scheduling, enhanced multi-unit capabilities, additional Point of Sale capabilities, and new training videos.

We have also been hard at work on many improvements to TimeForge Attendance.  TimeForge Attendance is a labor management software tool that focuses on employee time cards and managing payroll expenses.  Employees can clock in and out using the system, managers can review staff timecards, and then managers can approve the employee time punches for third party payroll processing.

If you are using a standard time clock, or are having staff write their arrival, departure, and lunch breaks on a piece of paper, switching to TimeForge Attendance will save you hours of headaches each and every week!

Some of the most recent improvements to TimeForge Attendance include:

• Several new TimeForge Attendance tutorials are online and available for your review! Don’t get lost or confused about how to edit time cards, modifying clock in parameters, or setting up IP addresses for restricting employee time punches.  Review the TimeForge Attendance manual (videos are coming soon), and read about all of these profit saving topics.

• Quickly identify employee time punches and problematic time cards using the TimeForge Most Different notifications. As you process and approve / export payroll, TimeForge automatically identifies different (or strange) time punches, and ranks each shift based on how different the shift is from the other staff member time punches.  Managers and payroll supervisors can use the “Most Different” field to quickly identify potential problems before cutting checks for staff members.

• Show the last person to edit or change time card data. All time card changes are recorded and can be viewed in the TimeForge Daily Log by qualified managers.  However, you can now easily review which manager (or supervisor) most recently modified any specific time card entry.  Reduce fraud and and identify compliance issues immediately.

View the last manager to edit a time entry

• Identify hours worked on the Clocked-In Employees page. You now have the choice to manage labor by scheduled or actual labor costs, or by the scheduled or actual labor hours while you are reviewing who is clocked in, or which staff members were previously clocked in during the business day.

Review Worked Hours and Total Costs

• Manage attendance and timecards by departments. When you have a large number of staff members, managing your labor can be complicated.  You can now browse and edit staff time sheets based on the department that you are interested in reviewing.

Edit Attendance by Department

Look for more information about recent improvements to TimeForge Attendance very soon.  We continue to improve the software so that you can manage your workforce effectively, and go home early!

You should be using a time and attendance system to make your life easy! TimeForge can quickly and easily manage time cards, employee attendance, and export payroll for processing.  Sign up for a trial today to use TimeForge Attendance to track employee time.

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Whew!  We are done with our whirlwind through the NRA 2009 tradeshow in Chicago, IL – what a great two days.

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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TimeForge is a best-of-breed employee scheduling and online labor management system for the hospitality, restaurant and retail industries.  It works with your Dinerware POS system to stop employees from riding the clock, enforce posted labor schedules, and provides rapid communications between managers and staff members.  Decrease turnover, increase retention, and improve the profits at your business.

Read The Case Study

Ready to see the improvements that employee scheduling and a labor management solution can provide when combined with your Dinerware POS system? Read the lastest TimeForge-Dinerware Case Study here.

How it works

TimeForge is a web-based system that becomes a direct extension of your Dinerware POS software.  During the day, Dinerware and TimeForge “synchronize” information that is necessary to manage the labor at your business.  Sales data and time and attendance information is sent to TimeForge, and schedule information is sent to Dinerware to provide a seamless and easy to use workforce management solution.  Access to TimeForge data is provided for employees and managers through an easy to use web interface, Facebook, or a compatible smartphone (such as a Blackberry or iPhone).

Increase your Profits

TimeForge will increase profits at your business with improved labor cost controls.  Directly monitor and control labor costs and stop employees from riding the clock or clocking in early for scheduled shifts.  Enforce the labor schedule with the click of a button.  Indirectly control labor by reducing turnover and improving retention – stop spending money training employees!  Improve the bottom line with an instant Return On Investment.

Text Messages, Facebook, and Online Communications

Employees stay happy when kept in the loop!  Retention at your business will stay low when staff members know what is expected of them, and can schedule both their personal and their work lives.  Using TimeForge, employees can use TimeForge to swap shifts with coworkers, change availability, view their timecard, or request time off.  Employees also receive email and text messages about any schedule changes.  Staff information can be viewed using the TimeForge website, a smartphone (such as an iPhone or Blackberry), or Facebook!

Fast Employee Scheduling

Employee schedules your way!  Build schedules every week, bi-weekly, or monthly.  The back of house and front of house can use the same schedule, or separate schedules.  Use departments, add rules for scheduling minors or seniors, and input required certifications.  The TimeForge AutoScheduler™ learns how managers and supervisors build employee schedules, and automatically creates schedules that adhere to the best labor management techniques while reducing labor costs.

Employee Schedule Enforcement and Remote Monitoring

With TimeForge, management has the tools necessary to monitor when staff members are clocking in and out.  Staff members can be required to clock in and out of Dinerware within a “grace period”, providing managers with a one-click override when your business requires more staff on the clock.  Management can monitor who is clocked in with the use of RSS feeds, a compatible smartphone (such as a Blackberry or an iPhone), or through Facebook.

Compare Employee Schedules and Attendance to Sales

TimeForge synchronizes sales at your business, employee schedules, and staff member attendance.   The TimeForge sales module accurately forecasts the upcoming sales, and can predict usage needs for Dinerware menu items as well!  Use the forecasted sales figures to manage employee time off and changes to availability, order inventory items, and schedule for future needs.

Two Products, One Database

TimeForge calls and reports directly to your Dinerware system, and positions, employees, attendance, and sales are automatically synchronized between Dinerware and TimeForge – no duplications and nothing extra to back up.  Need to make a change?  Just change it in Dinerware, and the changes are automatically sent to the TimeForge website during the next synchronization!  TimeForge extends the capabilities of your Dinerware system – there is no duplicate functionality.

Instant Return On Investment

The TimeForge-Dinerware Bridge is built from the ground up to ensure a fast Return On Investment for your business. Managers keep track of labor costs through payroll reports, schedule enforcement, and fast employee schedules. Employees are always in the know, and can help build schedules by being in the loop and providing constant feedback.  When integrated with Dinerware, TimeForge improves business profits and increases retention while reducing turnover.

Read more about TimeForge Scheduling, TimeForge Attendance, and TimeForge Daily Log – all three products are included with our Dinerware integration!

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• Communication between staff members is the key to a good schedule. Shift swaps, staffing minimums, requests for days off, changes in availability, upcoming business requirements (private parties, birthdays, etc…) will all demand more from the staff than any one person will know.  Coordination is key to ensuring a smooth workday.

• Ensure that staff members have any necessary certifications, and that the certifications are current. An employee working without the right certifications can cost your business thousands in fines by various policing authorities, and in some locales, can land the manager on-duty in jail.

• Copying a schedule from the previous week is a quick way to make a schedule for the upcoming week. But this method of employee schedule creation assumes that the previous schedule was “good“. How would you know?  Use various metrics to identify whether the schedule worked for your business – actual vs. theoretical, how many shifts changed, were employees satisfied, how many no-shows occurred, was the actual payroll within an acceptable margin of the actual sales (or customer throughput)?

• Cross training is an excellent management technique to ensure that when the unexpected happens, your business is prepared.  Employees who have been cross trained are able to perform more than one job duty.  When staff members fail to show up to work, or an emergency happens at the business, the workforce is prepared to handle the situation.

• Early clockins and late clockouts can drain the profits from your business. Every employee that clocks in early, or clocks out late is using up precious profits that could be going to fund expansion, provide raises, and pay bills. Watch out for employees who ride the clock by monitoring the employee schedules, and comparing clock in and clock out times to scheduled work times.

• Managers spend hours messing with and creating the work schedule every week. Keep staff members happy and use TimeForge to make the employee schedules.  Employees stay happy because employee’s know what is going on, and managers are content because they can build an employee schedule in seconds.

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

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Secrets for Hiring Success

Employee scheduling is an important function of human resources and operations at your business.  Good employee schedules will reduce turnover and increase retention, improving cash flow and profits.  Tracking time and attendance is also an important human resource task.  Other HR tasks include processing payroll, hiring, exit interviews, and employee onboarding, among many others.

Hiring is often one of the most complicated and difficult tasks for operations and human resources to perform.  This 7 Secrets for Hiring Success article from Success Performance Solutions is a great reference for hiring managers everywhere in all industries.

Twitter in Human Resources, According to Workforce.com

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging tool that is receiving a lot of press, and has grown significantly over the past 3 years.  A number of industries, including Hollywood, television, music, and others are using Twitter to help grow and keep fans “in the know”.  However, Twitter is also finding a number of uses in the Human Resources (HR) world, as reported by Workforce.com

Make sure to follow TimeForge on Twitter!

TimeForge provides powerful and easy-to-use employee scheduling and online labor management software for restaurant, retail, and other service industries. TimeForge software is used by restaurant owners and operators around the world to increase profits, reduce turnover, and improve retention.

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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!

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Read about punching in and out (and payroll), and labor schedules before reading this post.  Both posts contain information that will make this article make more sense.

Labor Metrics Help Control Payroll and Labor Costs

At the end of the week, time and attendance values will be collected to calculate wages and payroll for the normal “work week”. A side-by-side comparison of the actual schedule (time and attendance values) and the theoretical labor schedule will reveal a variety of metrics that can be used to manage the workforce. This practice of comparing the actual schedule against the theoretical labor schedule is commonly called “Actual vs Theoretical” or “AvT”. For example:

• Which employees routinely arrive for work on time? Consistently reliable employees are valued employees, arriving at work on time, and are the real workhorses of the business. Make sure to reward them for their efforts.

• Which employees are routinely late for work? This can cause a labor shortage during shift changes, and can disrupt other employees. These employees may need to be disciplined for routine tardiness.

• Which employees are routinely early for work? This increases the payroll expense, reducing profit for the business. Disciplinary actions may be required for these employees.

• Which employees do not show up for work, or routinely call in? These employees may need to be counseled and warned that they risk termination, as they are unpredictable in their work habits and lower morale for other staff members.

• Which employees are always available when another employee does not show up? These employees are willing to work on their days off – and should be rewarded for their efforts to keep the business running.

• Which positions are prone to high turnover? Turnover is extremely expensive to a business, and identifying areas with high turnover is the first step to take measures to reducing turnover.

• Which staff members are most tenured? Tenured staff are dedicated team members and should be rewarded for their efforts. Every effort should be made to increase the tenure of employees while reducing turnover and increasing profits.

• Which is more costly, the theoretical or actual schedule? How much difference exists between the two schedules?
  • If the theoretical schedule is more expensive, management is over-scheduling the work force and may be sending employees home without cause. This often indicates aggravated employees and increase turnover – decreasing profit for the business.
  • If the actual schedule is more expensive, management is not scheduling enough work in advance, and is then forced to call employees on their days off. This situation can also create aggravated employees and increase turnover. It often results in unnecessary over-time.

The ideal work environment has a 0% AvT ratio – employees worked when they were scheduled and management accurately identified the business requirements.

Labor, especially in retail and hospitality, is the largest expense which businesses directly control. Comparing metrics such as Actual vs. Theoretical allows management to maintain control of the business, thereby increasing profit. Many metrics can be compared manually using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, but sophisticated scheduling software such as TimeForge, can calculate many of these metrics quickly and easily.

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!

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