Hello, everyone!
We're always trying to improve the TimeForge experience for all our users. That's why we're especially excited about our conversion of code, which we'll be wrapping up in the next few weeks. Basically, we've been updating every line of our code (the "magic" behind the scenes of TimeForge) to make things run more seamlessly and efficiently. The code conversion should also boost the speed at which we can add new features. Although this process has been challenging, we're nearing the end and are confident that all of our users will experience the benefits.
Here are a couple of other updates we've been working on.
Employee Attendance with All Payroll IDs Report
We've added a new employee attendance report that also shows every payroll ID. In addition to showing the start/end times, regular and overtime hours, and break times for employees, this report includes the payroll ID for each location, department, position, and employee. This report is great for managers and accounting teams who need a quick reference of  any particular payroll ID.

24 Hour Time on Reports
We've added a new personal setting in the "My settings" tab for managers. You can now choose a default setting for reports to display in 24 hour time as opposed to an AM/PM time format. Currently, this functionality exists for certain schedule reports, but we are working to add this to all reports including attendance and HR. Although this setting will change the default format, you can always quickly change between these two settings on the report configuration page while running a report.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Here are a couple of updates we’ve recently added that can help you get even more out of TimeForge.

Expiring Certifications Report

You can now run a report that will notify you of the date when an employee’s certifications will expire. This is great for staying on top of things like work permits and certifications (like CPR or Servsafe) so that you always know your employees are eligible to work.

Leave Type and Unavailable Alert

TimeForge now offers a couple of new notifications for when employees request time off. You can choose to be notified when an employee submits a request to use a leave type. You can also select to be notified when an employee submits an “unavailable” request (“does not want to work”, and “is unavailable to work”). This way, if managers only want to be informed when employees want to use sick time, PTO, or any other leave type, they won’t be receiving emails for simple “unavailable” requests.

Manager Email for PTO Approval

Managers who are allowed to approve PTO and other Leave Types are now able to receive email notifications that a time off request has been submitted from another manager. This way, if one manager wants to put in for time off, but company policy prohibits managers from approving their own PTO, another manager can be notified via email to approve/deny the request.

Attendance Reports for Deleted Departments

We've added the ability to view attendance from deleted departments. Now, if you had any attendance entries in a particular department that’s since been deleted, you’ll still have the option to choose that department when running a report. The deleted department will appear with an asterisk next to the department’s name. An example is given below where the deleted department is outlined in red.

Note: There must be attendance in the deleted department for it to be available on the report. Additionally, if departments don't immediately appear for selection, first input a date range and departments will be available for you to choose. 

Attendance Notification and Breaks

 The option displayed below gives managers the ability to receive notifications when an employee is nearing their maximum weekly hours. This number is first based on the employee’s weekly maximum, and then on the weekly maximum for the location. For example, if your watching your part-time employee’s hours so that they don’t go over 29 hours in a week, which could affect your company in regards to Obamacare, you can set this option to alert you when they hit 28 hours so that you know to send them home.

This option now calculates breaks in real time. So, if your employee is on a paid break when they reach their 28th hour, you will still receive an alert that they are nearing their weekly maximum. 

Invoices

We’ve added the functionality to view your TimeForge invoice as a PDF. This functionality also provides you with the ability to print your invoices. The information on the invoice includes the invoice number, TimeForge plan, reseller information, and payment options. You can easily access your invoices from the “Payment Options” page. Alternatively, if you have administrative access, you can simply find your invoices from the “Admin” page.

PTO and Leave Types

We’ve added new functionality to the PTO approval process. Now from the “Approval Managers” tab on the “Leave Types” page, access can be set for managers that allows for three different options. Managers can either:

• approve everybody’s PTO including their own,
• approve everybody’s PTO other than their own,
• or not able to approve any PTO whatsoever.

Additionally, we’ve added a new way to create Leave Types.

This new concise view of the Leave Types allows you to quickly set-up and customize your Leave Types. First, you select your start and end days. So, if you want to accrue for the month, you could put the start day equal to 1 and the end day equal to 30. Alternatively, if you accrue for the year, you can put 1 for the start day, and set the end day equal to 365. You also select the carried amount (if they carry over a set amount of hours) or the carried percentage (if the carry over is a percentage instead of a set amount). Lastly, you designate how many hours are accrued for the period as well as the maximum number of hours that the employee can accrue.

Note: If used, these options will override the other options on the screen.  

New Reports

The “Daily Schedule, Attendance, and Hourly Sales Cheat Sheet” report allows you to keep track of your schedule, attendance, labor costs, and sales all in one document. With this report, you can see your labor variance and compare that to your hourly sales for any given day. So, if you want to quickly see your daily labor variance, find out who’s been consistently late, track labor costs, and keep an eye on your sales, you no longer have to shuffle a bunch of papers around or keep track of this information by yourself. TimeForge does it all for you.

The “Locations Flag Report,” can be very handy for businesses using multiple locations. This is a corporate report that summarizes and prints the settings at all locations in your business so that you can quickly identify anything that is set up differently.

Don’t forget, you can set up reports in TimeForge to automatically run and be sent to any email address!

Miscellaneous

• Customers no longer have to enter daily sales percentages to save a sales category.
• Manager mode now works with the mobile TimeClock app.

Happy Monday, ya’ll! Here’s a few things we’ve been doing at TimeForge to make your experience with us as smooth as possible.

Aloha POS Speed Boost
Previously, customers using the Aloha POS system would experience an occasional slight delay when pulling data into TimeForge. This issue was actually caused by the system looking for too much needless data that wasn’t useful for you. We’ve changed this information so that our Aloha integration can run quickly and smoothly for everyone.
Shift Ranking at Each Location
We’ve added the ability to have independent shift ranking options at each location. Before, if an employee worked at two different locations that used different shift ranking options (either allow or not allow), the system would default to allow rankings. Now, each location will be able to set their own rules in regards to employee shift ranking.
Miscellaneous

• In both the department and weekly sales, we’ve change the interaction of the sales number. In the past, if the “total sales figure” was over 100, an alert would appear and have the user reconfigure the numbers so that they were exactly 100. Now, as long as your numbers aren’t over 100 by more than two decimal places, you’ll be able to keep those figures.
• Manager projections can now be entered for future dates.
• We’ve added 2 new countries to our set up options. Our customers can now select if they are from either the Cayman Islands, or the Turks and Caicos Islands when setting up their TimeForge accounts.

We've been working on some updates this past week to make your TimeForge experience even more enjoyable! Here’s what we've been up to.

OnPay Payroll Export

OnPay has been added to our list of available payroll exports. Alright!

Badge Reports for ISS45

The TimeForge “Badge Report,” which produces a note card sized scannable barcode, is now available to our customers who use the ISS45 POS. Now, you have the ability to pull employee information directly from your ISS45 POS into TimeForge, and create a scannable ID for any employee.
HR Documents Upload
For the TimeForge customers using Human Resources, the process to upload HR documents to TimeForge has been simplified. Now, your files are uploaded as soon as you select them so that you know your important documents will be saved.

 Coverage Sheet with Breaks

Our new report, “Coverage Sheet with Breaks” shows the scheduled shift for your employees as well as the actual time your employees took a break or lunch. The breaks and lunches show on the report in 15 minute intervals, so the entire day is covered. You can now quickly see if your employees are taking breaks at the right time and for an appropriate length of time.

Miscellaneous

• The day of the week has been added to shift confirmations so that you don’t have to reference a calendar
• Customers experiencing issues with the timeclock URL have now been resolved.
• Customers who had problems with the Open/Bid shift total cost on the 7-Day Schedule report have now been fixed.
• The “Create New Availability Request” page no longer displays hours if the request is all day.

We’re always working here at TimeForge to make sure you continually have the best  experience possible with your labor management. Here are some of the things we've been updating recently.

A New “Leave Type” Option.

You already know that leave policies (formerly leave types) in TimeForge automatically track how many hours employee’s accrue with things like PTO, vacation days, and sick leave. This new option gives you the ability to control when an employee can accrue a type of leave in respect to overtime. If you check this box, the employee will only be allowed to accrue hours during regular time--not during overtime shifts. If you change any settings, don’t forget to save!

Age Rules

Customers having trouble with the “Next” and “Cancel” buttons not appearing when setting up age rules are now fixed.
Keep an eye for more updates and feature additions in the next week!