Recent updates
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Use Sales Analytics to analyze your labor costs
Updated onArticleTimeForge Sales includes a powerful Sales Analytics tool, designed to easily visualize the differences in labor costs, a manager's sales categories (such as gross labor, customer covers, customer counts, or inventory items), and other relevant numerical information. Watching for trends in the numbers will allow management to be proactive in creating business decisions.
There are two ways to access the Sales Analytics tool in TimeForge. Either through the employee schedule page, or through the "Sales Analytics" page.
Manager Guide Sales
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View sales percentages and values simultaneously
Updated onArticleYou can see see sales percentages and values side by side that display the raw projections, forecasts, or actual sales on the schedule.
Manager Guide Sales
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Forecast your sales
Updated onArticleThe TimeForge Sales feature is a powerful and easy-to-use analytics tool that can help you keep track of manager projections, actual sales numbers, and forecast sales using system generated projections that are based on your sales history. Sales numbers can be referenced and viewed on employee schedules, and analyzed using the Sales Analytics tool - a simple solution to ensure that complex schedule forecasts are kept in check.
Manager Guide Sales
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Project your sales for the week
Updated onArticleUsing the TimeForge Sales feature, employee schedules can be compared to Manager Projections, Actual Numbers, and System Generated Forecasts. After creating the necessary Sales Category, numeric values should be entered into the Manager Projections area. Once the week (or day) is over, Actual Values from the Point of Sale system, Cash Register, Property Management System, or other revenue control system can be entered into the "Actual Values" area of the software.
You can project sales quickly and easily, just follow these steps.
Manager Guide Sales
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Set up Transfers and temporary store assignments
Updated onArticleTimeForge helps you dynamically meet your staffing needs by allowing you to temporarily transfer employees and shifts to different departments or locations. The day after the transferred shift ends, the employee assigned to the shift will automatically be removed from the temporary store assignment.
This guide will show you how to properly set up your TimeForge account to allow transfers.
Manager Guide Schedules
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Configure your sales categories
Updated onArticleSales categories are key performance indicators (KPIs), or ways to evaluate the success of your company. Sales categories can be used for things like making an employee schedule, monitoring the labor costs of salaried employees, and even projecting your gross sales. TimeForge offers a very customizable "Sales" feature that helps you stay on top of your business's metrics. If you're integrated with a POS system, we'll likely pull these sales categories from that system. However, if you need any assistance setting up sales categories, please don't hesitate to contact us.
After configuring your "Sales Categories," you'll likely want to consider setting up ShiftBuilder rules so that you can start generating schedules with the ShiftBuilder based on your Sales Projections.
Manager Guide Sales
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Maximize scheduling efficiency using Bid Shifts
Updated onArticleIn an organization with variable labor needs, defining fixed employee schedules can be operationally inefficient. Not only do employee availabilities often change, but schedules in which employee preferences are not considered can have a damaging impact on employee morale and turnover. Many organizations resolve this by utilizing tools likeTimeForge’s AutoScheduler to automatically and fairly distribute shifts to employees. However, it’s important to note that TimeForge offers a powerful alternative to AutoScheduled shifts: bid shifts.
Bid shifts allow employees to pick up their own shifts. While this may initially bring to mind images of mass chaos, our customers find that allowing bid shifts within the structure provided by TimeForge often contributes to a positive culture of accountability and payoff while reducing managerial time spent scheduling. Employees love the control and flexibility that Bid Shift scheduling affords them, and managers appreciate spending less time guessing when people do or don’t care to work.
TimeForge’s Bid Shift feature was designed to complement your other scheduling strategies and works seamlessly with your other settings. Details on how it works are below, but the basics are simple: when a schedule is posted, employees select the shifts they want to work.
Manager Guide Schedules
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Schedule and approve transfer bid shifts
Updated onArticleTransfer Bid Shifts allow managers to open up bid shifts to employees from other locations, as well as prevent employees from being able to bid on shifts that exceed a configurable limit of overtime. The idea is that if two stores are nearby to one another, employees should be able to pick up shifts from either location without necessarily being assigned to that location. TimeForge makes this easy.
Once Transfer Bid Shifts have been enabled, managers will notice "Transfer Bid Shift" as a shift assignment option (in addition to "Open," "AutoSchedule," "Bid," and selecting a specific employee name). Managers will also notice "Transfer Bid" as a new section in the "Pending Shift Swaps" area.
For a primer on bid shifts, see our guide: Maximize Scheduling Efficiency Using Bid Shifts.
Manager Guide Schedules
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View schedules and timecards using RSS
Updated onArticleTimeForge will allow you to view schedules, messages, time cards, and more using any phone capable of reading an RSS feed. Of course, you can always use a web browser, such as Mobile Safari or Opera Mini, to view the TimeForge website at https://app.timeforge.com.
However, TimeForge schedules, messages, shift swaps, and much, much more can be viewed directly on your cell phone, iPhone, Blackberry, or other non-web browser reader by using RSS feeds.
TimeForge uses RSS feeds to deliver the information directly to your cell phone and requires that your phone be able to read both encrypted RSS feeds (over an SSL connection), as well as secured RSS feeds (which require a username and password).
Manager Guide Schedules
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View your daily labor cost
Updated onArticleAnalyzing your daily labor costs, or how much employee wages cost each day, is important for understanding your business operations, noticing any room for improvement, and preventing over- or under-staffing in the future.
In TimeForge, there are two easy ways to view the daily labor cost, and both involve the Schedules page. Here are instructions for both methods of accessing your daily labor costs.
Manager Guide Schedules