Recent updates
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Edit an employee's break
Updated onArticleManaging staff member breaks, meal periods, and scheduled lunches can be a headache for even the most experienced management team. In addition to the ability to view your clocked-in employees, view attendance reports, and approve/export payroll. TimeForge Attendance makes quick work of taking and managing staff member breaks.
You will want to edit employee breaks by date if an employee forgot to clock out during a break, forgot to clock in after a break, or if there was some other attendance error that needs remedied.
Manager Guide Attendance
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Set your location's open and close times
Updated onArticleIn TimeForge, "Open and Close Times" are an optional safety net for your daily labor costs and ultimately payroll. By entering an open or close time, you are telling TimeForge when your "day" actually starts and ends. For example, if you have an open time of 8:00 AM, and an employee clocks in at 5:00 AM, their attendance will be recorded on the previous day. This is because TimeForge believes the current day won't begin until 8:00 AM. On the other hand, if your close time is set to be 10:00 PM, and an employee clocks out at midnight, their attendance will be recorded on the next day.
The "Open and Close Times" should not be the same times as your hours of operation if there is a chance your employees would work outside of those hours. In any case, it is good to allow for extra time in case your employees ever are outside of that range.
Here is how you can easily view and change your open and close times.
Manager Guide Attendance
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Automatically switch the position for clocked-in employees with multiple jobs
Updated onArticleTimeForge is a powerful and easy to use, labor management platform for service oriented industries (restaurants, retail, c-stores, grocers, hotels, etc.). Service-oriented businesses often have difficulties managing the complexities of their ever changing workforce.
TimeForge helps manage labor by making labor management simple. Employees are commonly scheduled to work doubles, or back-to-back shifts. In some cases, a staff member may transition from one job (or position) to another without ever leaving the business, and may forget to switch their position in the attendance system.
To help ease the administration of employees clocking in and out throughout the day, TimeForge can automatically switch staff to the correct position.
For example, a waiter or waitress (server) may work from 10:00am - 3:00pm as a waiter, and then transition to a bartender from 4:00pm - 8:00pm. Or, a lifeguard may work from 8:00am - 1:00pm, then as a swim coach from 1:00pm - 3:00pm.
Manager Guide Attendance
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Configure break options
Updated onArticleThe TimeForge Breaks module is a comprehensive feature inside of TimeForge Attendance that allows management to control employee breaks and meal periods. You can set the Break Options as needed for your business, which provides you significant flexibility in managing and monitoring staff member breaks and meal periods.
You will want to configure Break Options so that they conform to fit your business' operations, and so TimeForge can provide the best possible and most convenient Attendance monitoring to your business. Some of the Break Options you'll need to consider are whether employees are required to take breaks. For example, if your state labor laws require a 15 minute break every 4 hours, you'll want to require breaks.
You also need to consider whether employees can take breaks without being scheduled for a break. For example, if John needs a bathroom break, but isn't scheduled for a break for another two hours, do you want to provide him the option of taking an extra break? Additionally, you should decide whether you want employees to be automatically clocked in and out for breaks. For example, if Jane is scheduled for a ten minute break at noon, do you want TimeForge to clock her out for ten minutes automatically at noon?
Manager Guide Attendance
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Prevent clock-ins from home or with a cell phone
Updated onArticleTimeForge Attendance is a powerful time tracking tool for retail, restaurant, and other service businesses. With this tool, you can view your clocked-in employees, view employee attendance reports, approve/export payroll, and much more!
By default, employees can clock-in from anywhere that has an Internet connection, and this includes work, home, or their mobile Internet on a cell phone. In some circumstances, this is the correct and desired set up. However, for many businesses in the retail and food service industries, it is not desirable to allow staff to clock-in anywhere.
To support these businesses, TimeForge includes the ability to restrict employee clock-in and clock-out functionality to specific IP addresses, or physical locations.
Manager Guide Attendance
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Additional options for clocking in and out
Updated onArticleTimeForge includes a powerful and flexible time and attendance management system, and is able to track (and round) clock in and clock out times on an accurate minute-by-minute clock, which is synchronized with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. TimeForge can use the clock in and clock out times to calculate the payroll for your pay period without any problems. Accurate time tracking is part of what TimeForge does!
Manager Guide Attendance
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Limit clock-ins and clock-outs to a specific IP address
Updated onArticleTimeForge has the ability to limit clocking in and clocking out to a specific Internet Protocol (IP) address. One common concern with web based software and attendance tracking is ensuring that staff members are actually at work before they are allowed to clock in. TimeForge can require staff members to be physically be at the location that connects to a specific IP address before allowing staff members to clock in or out.
IP addresses are unique identifiers for computers on the internet and are normally provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). In some cases, your ISP will provide a dynamic IP address, which changes every few weeks. Most ISPs will allow you to get a static, or sticky-static IP address for a nominal monthly fee. In many cases, multiple computers in a single office will share a single IP address through the use of a router or firewall device (such as those provided by Cisco, Linksys, D-Link, or Netgear). Similar to a phone number, only one physical location at a time can have an IP address.
Note: TimeForge can require that employees must clock in and clock out using a fingerprint scanner, which will restrict clocking in and out to a single physical computer at your location, regardless of the IP address.
Manager Guide Attendance
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Export your payroll
Updated onArticleTimeForge is an extensive and powerful employee schedule and attendance tracking management package, and you can begin to see some of TimeForge's power by clicking on the Attendance tab. Many, but not all, of the time and attendance capabilities occur within the Attendance tab.
With TimeForge, you can add or edit attendance by date or employee, approve payroll for pay periods, export employee payroll to a third-party payroll company, and run numerous reports to review employee attendance.
There are several ways to manage employee payroll inside of TimeForge, and many users simply run one of the many payroll reports at the end of their pay period. This works well for many TimeForge customers.
You can also manage the approval process by approving time cards for a pay period, reviewing any sick, vacation, or PTO time, and then exporting payroll to one of our supported payroll providers. To use this feature, you must first have set up payroll periods for your location.
With TimeForge, you can export employee payroll to many payroll providers, including QuickBooks, ADP, Paychex, SurePayroll, Heartland Payment Systems, CompuPay, and others.
Manager Guide Attendance
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Set up pay periods
Updated onArticleTimeForge will allow you to manage your labor, employee schedules, and time and attendance in the way that works best for your business. If you want to manage different departments differently, TimeForge will let you.
However, to ease the administration of staff schedules, payroll exports, and labor statistics, TimeForge supports the concept of pay periods. Each location, store, or unit can have a specific pay period. Payroll periods can be:
- Weekly, where staff are paid every week
- Bi-Weekly, where staff are paid every other week (common in many hospitality and restaurant businesses)
- Monthly, where staff are paid on a specific date (common in many professional and teaching businesses)
- On the 1st and 15th, where there are always two pay periods in a single month
After setting up pay periods, you will be able to quickly and easily export payroll, approve sick, vacation, and PTO time, and run reports that correspond to your pay periods.
Here are the simple steps to set up payroll periods in your account.
Manager Guide Attendance
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Record tips and mileage
Updated onArticleTimeForge is a complete labor management package, and one powerful feature is the ability to track time and attendance for staff members. TimeForge can track hourly or salaried employees, and can also track information about each shift worked.
In many businesses, employees need to record tips and mileage on a per-shift basis. Tip tracking allows management to accurately report the income that individual staff members are earning, and mileage reporting allows staff members to receive mileage reimbursements for their vehicles.
Manager Guide Attendance